To Be Born From Above John 3:1-8

We human beings are a mess. I’m not talking about us, you and me,
gathered here in this church this morning, of course. We are a bunch of
very nice, good human beings. That goes without saying. In fact, I’m not
talking about humans individually at all. As we all know, some individual
humans are real jerks, and a few are simply evil monsters who do truly
horrible things. Mostly, though, humans are at least ok, and some are truly
stellar, true giants of the spirit who make the rest of us look like prairie dogs
rooting out a living out on the plains somewhere. (A little western humor
there.) As a species, though, something is clearly wrong with us. History –
ancient history and history happening right now – makes it pretty obvious
that we are capable of anything. Nothing is beyond us. Don’t do it right
now, please, but if you tried to imagine the most horrible thing you can think
a human being can do to another human, or humans, you can be sure it
has been done. Probably over and over. We are capable of anything.
Something is wrong with us.

Traditional, orthodox Christian theology has said it knows what it is. It has
taught for centuries, millennia even, that because of the disobedience of
Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden we are all born with evil hearts. That
evil in our hearts is called Original Sin. Even if you have a problem with that
idea, I don’t think I have to convince you of the reality of evil. The great
theologian of the last century, Reinhold Niebuhr, said you have to accept a
lot of Christianity on faith. Accept it or not in the absence of visible proof.
Except for the doctrine of evil, he said. You don’t have to accept that on

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faith. All you have to do is look around and you can see it. And, of course,
he was talking about the evil that springs from the human heart. Again,
history teaches us that human beings are capable of anything. In the 20th
Century it has been estimated that 123 million people died in wars, mostly
civilians. Plagues and earthquakes and floods come from outside us. Wars
come from nowhere but the human heart. Whatever the cause we say we
are fighting a war for, we end up deciding it is worth the wholesale
slaughter of millions of other human beings, if that is what is called for, from
soldiers hunkering down in foxholes to babies sleeping in their cribs, .

A theological question I’ve heard debated in recent years is who was

responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus. Over the centuries we Christians
have been convinced it was the Jews. Some verses in the Bible teach us
that. Our thinking that the Jews killed Jesus has been responsible for much
of the anti-Semitism in the world that gave rise to things like the Holocaust.
So, we have tried to re-examine the matter. Now it is more clear that the
Romans crucified Jesus. There were no doubt Jews who wanted him dead,
but they had to authority to execute anyone. The Romans had that
authority, so they crucified Jesus. But who were the Romans? Were they a
race of especially evil humans? No, they were simply humans, just like us.
So who really killed Jesus? Humans. Humanity. Us. We killed Jesus. We
as a race are capable of anything, and that is one of the things we have
done.

In most of our minds the greatest recent evil was the Holocaust during
World War II, when millions of Jews and others were rounded up and
murdered. It was a truly horrible thing. Who was responsible for the

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Holocaust? It was the Nazis, clearly. But who were the Nazis, except a
group of people given that kind of power by other people, the citizens of
Germany. So, the German people were responsible for the Holocaust. But,
who were the German people? They were human beings, among the best-
educated, most-cultured, most-churched humans. In other words, maybe
the best of humans. So, when all is said and done, who was responsible for
the Holocaust? Human beings. Us. We were responsible, because we
humans are capable of anything.

I suppose we could spend all day giving examples of how bad humans are.
Here’s just one more. Through human activity 60% of Earth’s animals have
disappeared since 1970. 90% of the ocean’s large fishes are gone. The
bugs are disappearing. We are being told the Earth may be becoming
uninhabitable for life as we have known it. Some have called humanity an
infection on the earth. We are the earth’s viruses, making it sick, maybe
killing it. Remember the comic strip Pogo? It is remembered these days
because of one line – “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

Two space aliens are talking. One says, “It looks like earthlings now have
satellite based nuclear weapons.” The other asks, “Should we be worried?”
The first alien replies, “I don’t think so. They’re aiming them at themselves.”

Something is wrong. I know this is hard to hear, especially in church,

because we have spent centuries convincing ourselves that we are God’s
special creation, the very pinnacle of all that God did, the point and purpose
of God’s creation, the repository of all God’s hopes and dreams. Even so,
this shouldn’t be that hard to accept. The Bible is essentially the story of

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humanity fouling up God’s hopes and dreams. And, sometimes, it is
important to take a good hard look at just who we are.

OK, we’re a mess, responsible for a lot of horrible things, maybe once and
for all messing up the world, but good. What is to be done? If we are the
problem, then the world is not going to be a better place until we become
better human beings. So, the next question has to be, “How do we become
better people?”

As John tells the story, Nicodemus went to see Jesus by night. It is

interesting that John included the fact that it was at night. The presumption
is that Nicodemus, a Pharisee, a leader, a teacher, a member of the
Sanhedrin, didn’t want anyone to see him talking to Jesus. But, he was
drawn to him; and said to Jesus that he was obviously sent from God
because of the signs he had done. Jesus didn’t deal with what Nicodemus
had said. He goes right to what matters most, what may have been
Nicodemus’ deepest concern, maybe even the question of, “What’s wrong
with us and how do we get better?” Jesus said, “no one can see the
kingdom of God without being born from above.” This confused
Nicodemus. “Can one enter again his mother’s womb and be born again?”
This led to Jesus’ words being mis-translated in some versions of the Bible,
to read, “You must be born – not from above – but ‘born again.’” Maybe it is
a subtle difference, born from above or born again, maybe it doesn’t matter
much, but that translation led to massive Christian movement, the “born
again” movement. “Have you been born again?” It is an important question,
especially since Jesus said that without that new birth it was impossible to
see the kingdom of God. The problem is what was done with the words of

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Jesus. We want everything to be as simple as possible, even profound
spiritual truths, including being born again.

These days sharing the faith might sound like this:

“None of that fancy theological mumbo-jumbo, please. Just tell me

what I need to know.”
“OK. Do you believe Jesus was the son of God?”
“Uhh, I guess so.”
“Do you accept him as your personal Lord and Savior?”
“Sure, why not?”
“OK, you’re born again.”
“That’s it?”
“Yup.”
“And now I get to go to heaven when I die?”
“Yup.”

You might think I am somehow making fun of the born-again

movement by explaining it in that way, but I don’t think I am. I think
that’s a pretty honest description of how it works. The problem is that
Jesus was talking about much more than getting people to simply say
“Yes” to a few questions. Jesus was interested in personal
transformation, a transformation so complete it would be as if
someone had been reborn as an entirely new person. The kind of
process of being born again I’ve described doesn’t lead to that kind of
result. The Barna Group is an evangelical polling group that looks at
real-world aspects of church life. A few years ago they published the

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results of one of their studies that found that the lifestyles and
relationships of born-again Christians don’t differ very much from
people who don’t claim to be born again. I’ve heard it said that
Christians have to keep telling other people they are Christians
because otherwise no one could tell. Where is the transformation that
Jesus was clearly pointing to?

There was a time when I thought when someone was born again, or
born from above, that it was a magical thing, as if someone had been
touched on the head by God’s magic wand. Being born again was
something that happened in heaven more than it happened here on
earth. I no longer believe that. I believe being born again is a very
“this world” thing. I believe it happens when an individual human
being looks at the world and at themselves and decides they want to
be more than they have thus far been in their lives, they want to be
better than they have been. They are transformed by a transforming
vision of what their life can and should be.

It finally is all about that transforming vision. Somehow they gain a

vision of who they could be and what the world could be and they
commit to making that vision reality. That vision and that
commitments amount to being born again because a new person has
come into existence.

That transforming vision is the same one that lay in Jesus’ heart and
mind. It sees the world not as merely cooled space dust, but as a
place special in the heart of God, who somehow brought it into being.

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It sees humanity not as an infection but a collection of individuals all
equally loved and treasured by God. It does not see lines drawn on
maps we call borders and does not see the divisions we see – white,
brown, black, yellow, or red; rich and poor; male and female; people
who agree with us and those who disagree. The transforming vision
sees us all as one, and therefore cannot tolerate the fact that any are
hungry or repressed, and cannot imagine any reason that can justify
us killing them and bombing their children. The transforming vision
leads us to see even the earth itself as God sees it, with love for its
beauty and the diversity and wonder of life, and leads us to protect it.

We human beings are a mess and we have created a messy world.

As a human family we are facing challenges unlike any we have
faced at any time in our history. Maybe we will respond to them in
ways that lead to peace and tranquility, or maybe we won’t. It is up to
us, we humans, and no one else. No other species, not raccoons or
meerkats nor any other kind of critter can make the decision that will
lead to peace and an equitable world. It is up to us. Before we can do
it we must have that transforming vision of what we can be and what
our world can be. Yes. That’s what I’m saying. We must be born
again, into God’s own people, people who have been transformed
and who go about building a transformed world.

It pains me to say it, after devoting my life to the church and its
mission, but I have largely lost my confidence in the institutional
church. We are more a part of the problem than we are a part of the
solution. I once asked myself the question of what would happen if

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the church suddenly went out of business. The only answer I came
up with was that a lot of ministers would be out of work. Still, I have
not lost confidence in the Gospel, in the power of the transforming
vision. I still believe we can be born again, I still believe we can build
a better world. I still believe that what this world needs more than it
needs anything else is for an army to arise, an army of born again,
transformed human beings, an army of people truly continuing the
work and mission of Jesus, I still believe in the power of love, the
divine love of God, to move us toward the fulfillment of the dream of
God. I still believe Pierre Teilhard De Chardin was right when he said,
“Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and
gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a
second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered
fire.”

I still believe that all of us, whoever we are, wherever we are on the
path of life and faith, need to be born again. Not once but again and
again and again, every day, as we are led into new paths of love and
acceptance and service. I believe we need to be transformed by the
vision of Jesus, and what the world needs more than it needs
anything else is for us to be so transformed.

Right now I have the feeling I could go on and on about this all day.
Don’t worry. I’m not going to. Let me just ask this:

How is it with you? Have you been transformed by the vision of

Jesus? Have you been born again?

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