(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on May 27, 2018, Trinity Sunday)
A Deep Spiritual Problem:
Living in the Present
“How can anyone be born after
having grown old?”
Nicodemus asks this question
while Jesus is talking about the kingdom of God. Jesus had said that seeing the kingdom of God and entering
it was like the experience of birth.
He said to see and enter the kingdom you had to be “born from above,”
“born of the Spirit.”
Nicodemus interprets these words
rather literally and tries to work out the mechanics of a grown person entering
the womb for the second time. Even
as I can’t help but laugh a little bit at Nicodemus’ naïveté, I also can’t help
but feel that his question unwittingly points to a deep spiritual problem,
which is this: How can anyone let go of their past and their growth, enough
that they might live in the present?
“How can anyone be born after
having grown old?”
Why Give Up His Life?
Growing up, visiting my
grandparents was a treat. It meant
the adventure of an eight-hour car ride through the mountains to Kentucky, then
a dinner full of good home-cooking; after that a game or two; and then finally,
sleeping in a basement full of ancient treasures. We usually visited twice a year: summer break and
Christmas. They are some of my
fondest memories.
When I was eight years old, my
grandmother had a stroke that paralyzed part of her body. Not too long after that, she moved into
a nursing home. And so did my
grandpa. I couldn’t understand it
at the time. My grandpa could
still get around. Why give up his
life? Why sell the house—where we
had had such great dinners and played games together, where there were all
sorts of treasures—why sell the house when he could still live there?
But my grandpa sold the house and
went into the nursing home. When
my grandma passed away, he lived eleven more years there before his death. We would still visit every summer and
every Christmas. I remember
crowding into his little room. He
would always have collected a stash of candy from the gifts he had received,
and he would give these to my brother and me. He would also bequeath old possessions to us that he would
never need again: books, ties, desk supplies. Every Christmas, we celebrated at the end of the hallway
with a piece of pie and ice cream, and my grandpa would invite the nurses whom
he’d befriended to join us. In the
months between visits, he would write notes to us, cards, then emails, and then
finally a friend of his would type the emails for him.
Living by a Different Spirit
When my grandpa first moved into
the nursing home, I could not understand why. But I think now I do.
Now I can see that he was living by a different Spirit than that which
possesses much of our world. He was being born anew.
From my observation, there are
two ways of growing old. (I
realize that here I’m preaching of things some of you know much better than
I. I’m preaching more from
impudence than experience—so please feel free to set me straight afterward!)
On the one hand, I have observed
folks who grow old with bitterness and resentment. Having spent a lifetime accomplishing great achievements and
accumulating possessions and developing a fine reputation, they now face the
loss of all these things. Their
bodies weaken and so does their command and control, they must downsize and
leave behind prized possessions, and they fade ever further from the public eye
and its favor. They resist the
change. They grasp after the past
even as it leaves them. Perhaps they
never entered the kingdom of which Jesus spoke because they have been too busy
trying to build their own kingdom—and now it is crumbling fast.
On the other hand, I have
observed folks like my grandpa who grow old with freedom and grace. I have observed the same sort of thing here. (Pat comes immediately to mind.) They receive life not as a matter of
their own control but as a gift and a responsibility. My grandpa did not cling onto his home or his things or his
reputation. He let these go, not
only because they were leaving him anyway, but also so that he could receive
new gifts: the gift of a few more years with his wife, the gift of befriending
others at the nursing home, and the gift of blessing his family and the people
around him. Rather than cling and
claw to the past, my grandpa grew old with a different kind of Spirit—with
trust and humility and gratitude for the many new possibilities before
him. In a way, he really was
reborn: he became like a child for whom everything is new, everything a gift.
A Faith That Is Not In Control
In the church, the words “born
again” are shorthand for making a personal decision to follow Christ. They suggest that the life of faith is
a matter of our control. But according to Jesus in today’s passage, faith is about
what is beyond our control. “The wind blows where it chooses, and
you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it
goes. So it is with everyone who
is born of the Spirit” (3:8).
Who among us can tell the wind
where to blow? Being born from
above, being born of the Spirit is just like the real experience of birth. A newborn child is not in control in
the least. Being born of the
Spirit has to do with how we live when we are not in control.
Entering the kingdom of God has to do with how we live when
circumstances change and we are at a loss.
Being born of the Spirit means
being a little bit like a kite, allowing the Spirit to move us and work through
us wherever we are. For my
Grandpa, being born of the Spirit meant that even as he lost his home and his
things and his reputation, he trusted that the life of God would fill his sails
and give him life. So he received
his new life as a gift and blessed others in simple ways, with table fellowship
and generosity and notes of love.
And so he saw and entered, I believe, the kingdom of God. A kingdom that is neither a pie in the
sky nor the sweet by and by, but that is always already near us, even among us
here, now, if we would believe the words and witness of Jesus (cf. Luke 17:21).
To Empty Ourselves and Open Our Sails
“How can anyone be born after
having grown old?”
It’s a question worth asking
wherever we are in life. Because
whether we’re 15, or 45, or 95, the temptation is to build and measure our life
by the past and by our growth: by what we have achieved and gained and how
others have seen us.
To be born anew would mean to
lose all of that, to leave behind the personal kingdoms we’ve worked so hard to
create. And yet that’s just the
point for Jesus, isn’t it? To see
and enter the kingdom of God is to deny ourselves, to empty ourselves and open
our sails to the Spirit wherever we are. When we relinquish control of our lives and open ourselves up
to the present reality and the Spirit that blows there, the holy wind of God will sweep
us unpredictably into the life of a kingdom far greater than our own, the kingdom
of God.
Prayer
Christ who comes to us,
Self-emptied
And full of the Spirit—
Inspire us with your example
And the examples
Of your followers,
That we too might be born anew
Of the Spirit,
Not through our own control
But through acceptance
Of your love and life,
Which dwell in all things. Amen.
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