A homily by Fr. Gene Tucker, given at St. John's Church, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania on Sunday, March 15, 2015.
"ONCE-BORN"
OR "TWICE-BORN?"
If you’ve not heard that question or
those terms before, perhaps an explanation is in order.
I was privileged to have a wonderful
theology professor in seminary who once phrased the salvation experience that
is a necessary part of our Christian life in just that way. He said, “There are ‘first-born’ Christians
and there are ‘second-born’ Christians.
First-born Christians are those who can never remember a time in their
lives when they did not know God, and who had known Him intimately and deeply,
in their hearts. They were raised in a
Christian home and had come to know and love the Lord from very early
childhood. On the other hand, there are
other Christians, second-born ones, who have had a conversion experience at
some later time in life. These second-born Christians can name a time, a place,
a circumstance in which they purposely gave their lives to the Lord.”
May I add my own comment to the
professor’s excellent description of the faith walk of many of us?: It is this “second-born” experience that is
often called being “born again”. The
term “born again” arises out of Jesus’ conversation with the Pharisee,
Nicodemus, who had come to visit Jesus at nighttime.
But since we pick up the interchange
between Jesus and Nicodemus at mid-stream in our gospel reading this morning,
let’s remind ourselves, first of all, of the overall structure of John’s gospel
account, and then let’s retrace Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus up to the
point where our reading begins this morning.
Finally, let’s look at the implications of Jesus’ comments which we hear
this morning.
First, however, let’s remind
ourselves of John’s writing style:
Oftentimes, in the Fourth Gospel, we find Jesus engaged either in
conversation with someone (such as with Nicodemus), and the conversation or
interchange then leads into a discourse, during which Jesus engages in a
teaching, such as the reading we hear this morning. The same pattern pertains to incidents in
which Jesus was engaged. So the pattern
that we experience often in John’s account is:
Conversation/incident →→Discourse/teaching
Now, let’s retrace the conversation
with Nicodemus, summarizing the course of their discussion.
Early in chapter three, we find that
Nicodemus had come to see Jesus under the cover of darkness. Once inside the house, Nicodemus leads off
with his best foot, telling the Lord that, “We know that you are a teacher come
from God, for no one can do the signs that you are doing unless God is with
him.” (I can’t resist saying this: Do you suppose Nicodemus was a graduate of
the Dale Carnegie Course, whose slogan was “How to Win Friends and Influence
People?”)
But Jesus responds to this kind
opening in a typically enigmatic way. He
says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again[1],
he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
Nicodemus responds by saying, “Can a
man enter his mother’s womb a second time and be born?” (Notice that Nicodemus interprets Jesus’
comment in an entirely literal way. He
responds with the same mindset – a literal one – that we encountered in last
week’s gospel reading (see chapter two, verses 19 – 21). In last week’s reading, Jesus had told the
Jews “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” Those who had heard this comment responded
literally, telling Jesus that it had taken forty six years to build the temple
in Jerusalem up to the point of their conversation. They did not understand that Jesus’ comment about
destroying the temple and raising it up in three days was not a literal
reference to the temple made of stone which stood in Jerusalem, but was,
instead, a reference to the temple of His body.)
So speaking to Nicodemus, Jesus clarifies the meaning of His statement by responding, saying, “Truly, truly, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’”
Nicodemus seems to scratch his head
as he says, “How can these things be?”
Shortly thereafter, Jesus begins to
engage in His teaching, entering into a discourse which makes use of the
imagery of the bronze serpent that God had commanded Moses to erect in the
wilderness during a time in which God’s people were being bitten by poisonous
snakes. By looking at the bronze serpent
on the staff, the people would be cured and delivered from death. No doubt, Nicodemus was very familiar with
this incident and its implications.
Jesus says that, just as the serpent
was lifted up in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up. He adds that whoever believes in this Son of
Man may have eternal life.
In both cases, the bronze serpent
and Jesus lifted on the cross, the agent of death and destruction becomes the
avenue of deliverance and life.
And then follows what surely must
one of the most well-known verses in the Bible:
”For God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that
whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3: 16)
This verse comes brings us back to
the matter of being a “first-born” or “second-born” Christian.
Jesus’ teaching tells us that coming
to faith, coming to the point of believing in Jesus, the Son of Man, is an
essential part of our coming into a relationship with God through the Son. The goal, the end-point, of our journey of
coming to the place of believing, whether it takes the better part of the
lifetime, or if it happens in a singularly memorable experience, is to come to
believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, who was sent by God out of love
for the world, and for the purpose of delivering us from the power of sin and
death.
When we come to faith in Christ, we
are delivered from the power of death, just as the image of the bronze serpent
delivered all who looked upon it from the power of death. We look to Christ, lifted up on the cross,
for deliverance from that power.
Thanks be to God, who has given us
the means to come to faith, faith in the living Son of God who has taken away
the sin of the world.
AMEN.
[1] The Greek word which is usually translated
as “born again” can also mean “born from above” or “born anew”.
