where are you from?

Where are you from? 031614   John 3:1-17

Replay my hospitality lecture: my name is Margaret, I don’t think we’ve met….

Polite conversation in our class culture usually starts with some form of    

what’s your name?  where are you from?   What do you do? 

I often get ' I know from your accent that you’re not from here!'

Jesus might have asked this night time visitor….what's your name? Nicodemus

where are you from? from the pharisaic sect of Judaism…

what do you do?  sit on the board of the Sanhedrin

Now Nicodemus could do the same thing with Jesus without asking:

Your name is Jesus, you’ve come from God, we know you’re not from here because you do marvelous things that point us to God.

N often gets a bad rap, but I know him….I am him.  He comes from a pretty clear religious tradition, and has been around Jesus a while, but still doesn’t really understand, he’s still in the dark a bit.  A fellow pilgrim on the journey indeed.

So he comes to Jesus, and starts out with what he’s figured out.  It’s all clear, logical, left brain, legal scholar type stuff.   

And J recognizes a genuine seeker when he meets one, so immediately takes the conversation to a new level….from the sensible left brain into the spiritual, right brain, metaphoric imaginative place.

And he does it, as often is the case in the gospel of John, by a play on words that doesn’t work in English. The word after “born”  Anothen in Greek, can mean both anew and from above.  Nic takes it literally and stays with the ‘again’ meaning…..he’s still on one level and can’t see beyond it.  Sort  of like some of us who get stuck at the ‘are you born again’ question, rather than listening into Jesus’ answer, which leads us deeper into mystery and metaphor—to the more complex spiritual quest that wonders what ‘from above’ might mean.   

Jesus leads this seeker into “a realm of wisdom that is more complex, deep and rich” (Patricia Farris) than anything he’d known.

Nic is invited to be born anew--from above.  This would mean he’d need to throw off his dependence on all the “who he is, where he’s from and what he does” stuff.  And allow God’s spirit (another play on words for another sermon) to make something quite new of him…..not just changing his mind, or changing behaviors (tho both do happen) but something much more profound…it is to be newly birthed from God.  In contemporary spirituality language, to let go of the false self and live into the true self.  Nic’s problem, like some of us, is that he already has a “coherent, integrated sense of self.  He’s a Pharisee, an upright one, a leader of his people, Mr Rectitude” (Neuchterlein).   

 And that needs to be let go to let God blow the winds of new birth into him…to allow life from the other realm, ‘above’ in John, to bring life to and through him.

In spite of our assumptions, this new life isn’t about a one time ‘born again’ experience, though that does happen, but it’s an invitation into God’s love, to live the way of Jesus, to live as ones who are from God.

Many of us are much too familiar with John 3:16 – we have lost a sense of its amazement….God loves so much, that God comes, and becomes attached to the world.  The cosmic force of the universe is attached to us!   So we and God can become at-one in each other.  God didn’t come to die, or send Jesus to die, but to live in us! 

That is how we are born from above..anew…we are from, part of God.  It’s a gift, it’s a grace, it’s a mystery.  But it’s real.

My self introduction might more honestly be:  My name is Margaret; I am from God; I am learning to live the Love way.  And you’ll know that, not by my accent, but by watching me, like N watched Jesus.

Child once asked mother, where am I from?   Mother launched into the dreaded birds and bees speech.  After a pause, the child said, I meant am I from Rochester?   

So where are you from?  What might your honest self introduction be?   How can people tell you’re born anew, from above?