Daily Lesson for August 13, 2018

Today’s Daily Lesson comes from John chapter 3 verses 1 through 8:

Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews.2He came to Jesus by night and said to him, ‘Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.’ 3Jesus answered him, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.’4Nicodemus said to him, ‘How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?

5Jesus answered, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. 6What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7Do not be astonished that I said to you, “You must be born from above.” 8The 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.’

Entry into the kingdom of God is not a strictly biological event. Life in God is a birthright for all people, but not all people do enter into the fullness of that life in God. For the process of being “reborn” is often costly and painful and requires a kind of separation from the former life we have lived.  Jesus’ words to Nicodemus in today’s Lesson show that he understands Nicodemus’s difficult dilemma. Jesus knows that as a leader amongst the Pharisees, Nicodemus will have to leave much to come and follow Jesus. He will have to start all over again.  It will be like a death and then a rebirth. 

My Baptist forbears attempted to dramatize this all with their practice of believers baptism. Predicated on John the Baptist — another man who left his birthright as a Jewish religious leader — who baptized his followers as a symbolic ritual representing the death of a former life and the rebirth of a new one. 

Though oftentimes these Baptist forbears may have confused the sign (Baptism) with the signified (new life in God’s way), what they were trying to say was something about the end of one way of life and the beginning of another. Many of them left prominent households and government and clerical positions to follow their conscience and be rebaptized as adult believers. They were rejecting a kind of burgeois religious outlook which equates being religious as being compliant and embraced a religious experience which imagined the spirit of Christ alive and transformative — both of the person individually and also the society at-large.

We must be born again. Or, as Jesus said elsewhere, we must lose ourselves to find ourselves. This is the meaning of our baptism — we are birthed from the womb of the water, bursting its protective seal, and entering into a whole new life. 

It’s quite the journey.