Not so very long ago a dear friend in England sent me through the internet the story of a little girl who was asked by her teacher to write an essay on “birth”.
After getting home from school, she quickly went to ask her mother as to how she had been born. Her mother, who was very busy with the cooking at the time, told her “the stork brought you, darling, and left you on the doorstep.”
Continuing with her research, she went to her father and asked him as to how he was born. In the middle of doing some repairs to his computer, and did not want to be interrupted in his work, her father in a very similar way deflected the question by answering, “I was found at the bottom of the garden. The fairies brought me here.”
Then, still continuing with her research, the little girl went and asked her grandmother how she arrived into this world. Her grandmother told her “I was picked up from next to the pool.”
After having gathered all this information on hand, the girl wrote out her essay. When the teacher asked her to stand up in front of the whole class, she stood up and began to speak in great confidence. “There has not been a natural birth in our family for the last three generations….”
In today’s Gospel reading we read and heard that when Jesus spoke to Nicodemus of being born from above – or being born again – Jesus was not talking of a natural birth. He explained to Nicodemus that he was talking of a spiritual birth – a birth that was, and is still, somehow supernatural and a mystery.
“Very truly, I tell you”, Jesus said, “no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh and what is born of the Spirit is Spirit…”
Let us all take a moment to think about this today – let all of us think about our own unnatural birth – and about the mystery that is involved in our unnatural birth, and about the mystery that is involved in it, the mystery of God, the God who made us in the first place and gave us our first birth, the God who saves us, by becoming one with us, the one who is sinless dying with us, the one who is sinless dying for us, the God who lives and works in us and gives us our second birth, our unnatural birth.
I hope that you will be in agreement that all of our own experiences of God are marvelous and mysterious experiences…it is like looking at the picture of the old woman and the young woman you got inserted in your service sheet today. There is only one and only one reality, yet there is more than one reality at the same time.
And so it is with God.
We have and we know the God Isaiah told us about.
We know the God who is high up and lifted up in his temple.
We know the God who speaks and brings forth all of creation.
We know the God who is Judge, Lord, Ruler, King of all creation.
We know the God who is in light inaccessible, in other words hidden from our eyes.
This God is strange to us. This God is way beyond our understanding. This God we dare not touch, even though we know this God and he knows us, even though we see the signs of this God, signs that are all around us in this world, the wind, the air, and the fire.
And then we have the God who is in Christ. The God who is Christ, the God who is lowly, and humble; the God who reaches out and touches others; the God who humbles himself as a servant and serves others; the God who walks this world with us; and cries and laughs with us; the God who called God Abba, Father, Daddy. The God who is tempted with us, the God who hungers and thirsts with us, the God who embraces us and encourages us; the God who surrenders himself to death for us, having only the promise and the hope of being raised from the dead again.
And we have and know of God the Spirit. God, who gives to us all our visions and dreams; God, who is the source of all my strength and of hope; God, who is the supplier of healing words and of comfort filling prayer. God, who is the wind, the breath, the air we breathe in. God, who is the transformer, the one who gives new birth and new life. God, who is ever presence within us, and in the presence surrounding all of us. God, who is calling to us – calling for us – calling through us, calling in us….
Paul told us that we are all children of God.
When we cry Abba, Father, it is the Spirit of God, who is bearing witness with our Spirit that we are the children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. If in fact we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.
As a Christian, a lay preacher and a student of theology, I do not claim to know all about God, I do not claim to know all there is to know about God. I do not claim nor even imagine that I will ever know all there is to know about God. God is always much greater than my knowledge of him. However, I do know what God has shown or reveal about him to us. I do know God in three different ways, I know him in three ways. I experience him in three ways. I love him in three ways.
In his book “Mere Christianity” C.S. Lewis, tried to describe part of this experience, this three-fold knowing, this three-fold loving. In his description of a Christian at prayer he wrote: “What I mean is this”, he wrote, “An ordinary simple Christian kneels down to say his prayers. He is trying to get into touch with God. But if he is a Christian he knows that what he is prompting him to pray is also God: God so to speak, inside him. But he also knows that all real knowledge of God comes through Christ. The Man who was God that Christ is standing beside him, helping to pray, and praying for him. You see what is happening. God is the living being to which he is praying – the goal he is trying to reach. God is also the living being inside him which is pushing him on – the motive power. God is also the road or bridge along which he is being pushed to that goal. The whole threefold life of the three-personal Being that is actually going on within that ordinary act of prayer.”
What so many people lack in this world of ours in their lives is a sense of the mystery of God and of the mystery of the life that God gives to them.
We keep on trying to develop one simple mental picture of God. One simple portrait of what our life in God is like or ought to be like.
Most people would like to think that things are either black or white, and most of us will go to great and incredible lengths to fit things around us into one or the other category – but God is much greater than any category – any system of thought or classification, and so is our life in Him.
We know that God is just and holy. We know that God demands from us perfect obedience, at the same time; we know that God is a merciful God. He is merciful and forgiving. He is willing to forgive us, no matter how serious our sins are.
I confess that I am a sinner. I am totally unworthy to even touch the hem of the gown worn by our Lord, Jesus Christ. At the same time I know that I am a child of God. As a child of God, I am intimately acquainted with the Spirit of God. I know that Jesus is my brother and I know that I am a joint heir with our Lord, Jesus Christ, in all the riches of heaven.
I know that our God is a mystery. The life that our God gives to us is a mystery. However, I know that God, within that mystery touches us. I know that God, within that mystery touches our souls. I know that it is a mystery that we can all experience and taste and know something of, but we will not know all within this lifetime of ours.
When I became a Christian, when I yielded myself to all the claims of Jesus, no matter how outrageous it may seem to other people. I yielded myself to His claim to be the Son of God. I yielded myself to his claim to be the way, the truth and the life. I yielded myself to his claim to be in the Father, and that the Father is in Him. When I yielded myself to Him, something happened to my life.
My vision in life began to change and started to see new things in the world surrounding me. I began to see the hand of God in the lives of the people around me; the hand of God stirring up the people surrounding me. And to sense that our God is reaching out to people all around this world and calling all of them to Him. I began to sense and see God in people surrounding us. I started to see God struggling to convince the people around us that there is great beauty inside each and every being. And to see the world as a magical place, full of enchantment, full of purpose and meaning. There is within me a compulsion to do things that I had never done before; a compulsion to pray for other people; a compulsion to tell other people that God is all around them; the compulsion to suddenly stop in the middle of the turmoil of my daily life and to give thanks to God for little things, or just simply to take a deep breath, and began to see the fact that there is some divine purpose in life, which is too deep for words, and began to experience within myself a growing peace. A peace that is continuing to grow and grow. I began to experience the suffering in other people as well as their joys; the suffering of creation and in the triumphs of the people surrounding me. I began to see God hand’s in the working of my life. I began to see the need to answer the call, that if I do love Him, I will go and look and feed His sheep!
My life and my birth is not a natural one, and I thank God for it.
What I am experiencing and going through right now is not something that came to me as a result of my first birth from my mother’s womb. I did not learn or experience it by going to any particular school. I did not earn it by living a better life or doing kind deeds. It just happened to me, as a result of my coming to believe in God, and in His Son Jesus Christ, and in asking Him to be my God, my personal God, in the way that Jesus taught us.
Every one who believes in God has this experience. Every one of us who hunger and thirst for His righteousness has this experience. Every one of us who yearn for God will be satisfied by His presence in us. For all of us will experience Grace. All of us will sense the gifts of God of their lives. All of us will experience the incredible miracle of the indwelling God. All of us will know that that they are born from above. Every one who believes in God, know what a miraculous happening that we were born again, and our second birth, just like the first birth, was only made possible by the labours of other people, and not cause by ourselves.
For every one of us who is a believer, because of what we experienced and gone through, we begin to see the words of the Bible about God as the truth in each and every respect. We come to see that God has revealed Himself to us, and know that He is still revealing Himself in many different ways to all of us. We come to see God in the way that has been written in the Scriptures. And to see God in the way that God has been described to us, God as three persons, and yet there is only one God. We come to see God as the creator of all creation, the redeemer of mankind, and the sustainer of all life in the world. We will start to see God as God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. We come to see God as being our loving parent. We will start to see God as a dear brother. We come to see God as a caring presence. We come to see God in a true way, in a life giving way.
That my dear brothers and sisters in Christ, is part of the truth that Jesus was talking about when he was speaking to Nicodemus. Nicodemus had a difficult time in understanding that truth. He had a difficult time in understanding how one could be born anew. It did not seem at all natural to him that one could be born anew. It is, we must all admit, not a natural birth, for it is divine. It is the gift from God, the Father, God, the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
So we preach, and so you believed – says the Apostle Paul. May it be so, both now and forevermore. Amen.
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