When did you last look at your birth certificate? I've had to locate mine again, in order to complete yet another CRB Disclosure form. My own birth certificate was issued by the Superintendent Registrar of Newtownards, the town in Northern Ireland where I was born, more than 21 years ago! The one thing this birth certificate isn't needed for is to prove that a birth actually took place. That proof is standing here in front of you.
Yet when some Christians talk about being 'born again', about 'new birth', or 'second birth', they so often forget this. Some people experience their entry into Christian faith as a hugely significant event, with a dramatic build-up, and a truly memorable moment of decision. And they are easily tempted to think that this moment - this spiritual birth - itself is the centre of what it means to be a Christian, as though all that God wants to give us is a single one-off spiritual experience, to be remembered ever afterwards with a warm glow. However that's a bit like you and I framing our birth certificates, hanging them on the wall, and showing them to everyone. What matters for most purposes is not that, once upon a time, you and I were born. Rather, what matters is that we are alive now.
So it is with the life of faith. Our religious pedigree is like our birth certificate. I myself was baptised at three months, was confirmed at 13, and experienced a significant period of faith renewal at 21, but that is the record of what is past; it's part of my personal history. Instead the searching question being asked of us - just as it was of Nicodemus by Jesus in today's Gospel - is this: How alive to God am I now?
Nicodemus certainly had an impressive pedigree. He was a leader both of church and state, a Pharisee belonging to the strictest sect of the Jewish religion, and a member of the governing council called the Sanhedrin. He was also someone attracted to Jesus by the signs He was performing, and by the truth of His teaching. But Nicodemus was clearly still in the dark, when it came to understanding what God was now doing through Jesus.
In his commentary on John's Gospel, Tom Wright makes the following point: "The Judaism that Nicodemus and Jesus both knew had a good deal to do with being born into the right family. What mattered was being a child of Abraham. … Now, Jesus is saying, God is starting a new family in which this ordinary birth isn't enough. You need to be born all over again, born 'from above'" (John for Everyone p 29 SPCK 2002).
Nicodemus was clearly puzzled. He asks - and repeats - this question : "How can this be?" Here was a respected teacher of the faith, a professor in theology, around whom students gathered to study the Jewish faith. Nicodemus would have known how the great prophets such as Ezekiel spoke of the need for renewal, of Israel's restoration through a cleansing of sin by water and an inner transformation by God's Spirit (Ezekiel 36 : 25-27). Yet Nicodemus simply couldn't understand what Jesus meant by speaking of the need to be "born from above", and "born of water and the Spirit", in order to see and enter the Kingdom of God.
Maybe - like me - you have some sympathy for Nicodemus. For, if we're honest, sometimes it can be really hard to see who or what is staring us in the face. I wonder if some of you can recall this nursery rhyme:
Pussycat, pussycat, where have you been?
I've been up to London to look at the queen.
Pussycat, pussycat, what saw you there?
I saw a little mouse under her chair.
The cat saw what it was really looking for, and got the answer to the question it was really asking. Mary, Rosie, Joanna and myself are certainly hoping that Milo, our own pussycat, will take a healthy interest in mice!
Sometimes we're looking for the wrong thing. For example, Nicodemus was talking with the King, but he couldn't see Him.
God's Spirit was on the move, like a fresh spring breeze, throwing the Kingdom open to everyone. But Nicodemus seemed reluctant to open the window, and to let the breeze in.
Maybe that is also true for us. It can be hard to let go of the securities to which we cling. Even the securities of what we've come to understand of God, and what we think we know of Him. Yet, try as we might, the ways of God cannot be easily or neatly pinned down. In his wise and insightful book God of Surprises, the Jesuit priest Gerard Hughes reminds us that this is 'par for the course' in the journey of faith: "God is mystery, a beckoning word, and he calls us out beyond our narrowness. … The journey to God is a journey of discovery and it is full of surprises" (p 33, 36).
Abram certainly found that to be true when he responded to God's call. In the Old Testament reading, we heard how Abram was called by God to leave behind what was familiar, and instead to set out on a journey to an unknown destination. This journey was indeed to be one of discovery, as Abram - or Abraham as he became known - was to learn more of the ways of God. The One who had first sought him out, who called him to live by faith, and whose steadfast love and care sustained Abram on his physical and spiritual journey of discovery.
God calls, and - like Abram - we need to be open to respond. So how are we finding the journey through Lent this year? One way of taking stock of where we are on our journey is by doing a Spiritual MOT. The questions prompt us to reflect on where we are in our relationship with God, one another, and ourselves, and then to consider how we might move forward. As one of those who has recently used it on the Growing Leaders Course, I warmly commend it to you, and I have some copies of the MOT with me today if you'd like to have one.
However you and I keep Lent, may it enable us to reflect on this question: How alive to God am I now? If our journey of faith feels like it's in a bit of a rut, in a dry, dark or lonely place, then let us be assured that help is at hand. We are not left on our own. For it is the Lord who enables us to see and to enter His Kingdom, who pours out His Spirit on us, and who so loves the world that He gave His one and only Son - allowed Him to be lifted up on the cross - "that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him" (John 3 : 15). And as we look at Jesus, see in Him the full display of God's saving love, and trust in Him, so you and I will discover more of what it truly means to be His beloved people. Those who - through the transforming work of the Holy Spirit - are becoming more like the One who makes us fully alive to God.
John Barr
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