Happy Birthday

John 3:1-17

In C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters, Screwtape, a very highly placed assistant to the devil writes a series of letters to his apprentice, Wormwood. The letters instruct Wormwood on how best to deceive and prevent people from becoming dedicated Christians. The satirical letters are quite insightful into the human condition and to those things that prevent each of us from fully investing our lives in Jesus Christ. At one point in Screwtape’s first letter to Wormwood, Screwtape instructs “thanks to the processes which we set at work in [humans] centuries ago, they find it all but impossible to believe in the unfamiliar while the familiar is before their eyes. Keep pressing home on them the ordinariness of things.”

Screwtape understands something very true about our human condition. If we are focused on the ordinariness of life, we are incapable of focusing on the extraordinary parts of life. We are unwilling or simply can’t comprehend a God that transcends the mundane things of the life that we encounter everyday.

This week I have been finishing up a book by Brennan Manning called The Importance of Being Foolish. Manning makes a similar point about how we often reduce the extraordinary nature of our world to plain ordinariness. Manning points out that for most of us what is most real is our material existence and not God. He continues, “we know our strength of mind and will. We have acquired certain mastery over nature, even over illness. Through modern technology we are able to experience sights, sounds, and happenings never before experienced. There was a time, though, in the not-too-distant past when a thunderstorm caused grown men to shudder and feel small. But God is being edged out of his world by science. The more man knows about meteorology, the less inclined he is to make the sign of the Cross during a thunderstorm. Airplanes now fly above, below, and around entire storm systems. Satellites reduce these once terrifying events to photographs. . . We have become jaded, incapable of wonder and awe.” We perceive everything around us as simply ordinary.

Now Manning’s point is not to dismiss science or to argue that we shouldn’t use reason. His simple point is that we often allow science to push God out of what we experience. Because as we learn more about things, as we begin to master their inner workings, we tend to think of them as ordinary. We tend to arrogantly think that we are in control, that we are the masters of our world. As Manning says, we become jaded, incapable of wonder and awe.

This affects our faith. We become incapable of being surprised. We become incapable of falling to our knees in adoration. Nothing rattles us. Nothing truly moves us. Nothing really transcends the world around us. We think we don’t need God or wonder whether he even exists at all. We believe only in what we see. We trust only in what we can touch.

So when we read that we are to live a life like Jesus Christ. . . that we are to model our lives after Him and that God is to be the center of our lives. . . we do not marvel in awe at Christ’s perfection, but we turn to cynicism and pessimism. We tell ourselves that what the Gospel requires of us is impractical, impossible, and therefore irrelevant. We tell ourselves, “I can’t be asked to do that! I can’t survive in the ‘real world’ out there if I take Jesus’ revelation seriously.” We are stuck in ordinariness. We have no hope. We begin to live in despair and think we must simply do the best with what we have.

This is not reality though. Our Gospel reading today makes this clear to us. Christianity and the Christian life do not originate in this world. Actually some of it sounds quite crazy to those who have not heard it before. And some of it sounds pretty strange even to people that have been going to church their whole lives. But Jesus Christ compels us to see life a little differently. To understand a reality that is not always readily apparent. That cannot be investigated. That can’t always be seen, but is true. Christ calls us to see a reality that is far greater and far grander than our physical world.

It is this extraordinariness that Nicodemus is struggling to see in our Gospel reading today. Nicodemus can’t get passed the ordinary material world around him. So when Nicodemus approaches Jesus and acknowledges that God is with Him and that he is a great teacher, Jesus realizes that Nicodemus is missing something. Jesus is not just a great teacher or even just a messenger from God. He is so much more.

Jesus responds to Nicodemus’ friendly comments with a rather abrupt, “I assure you, unless you are born again, you will never see the Kingdom of God,” Nicodemus is still confused. That makes no sense. “What do you mean, born again? How can an old man go back into his mother’s womb and be born again?” That is crazy. That is foolishness. Nicodemus is stuck in the ordinary world. He has not yet set himself free to see the spiritual.

You see even though Nicodemus approached Jesus in a friendly manner, even though he affirmed that Jesus was doing great things, that his teachings were true, that he even must be from God. . . Nicodemus couldn’t go further. He couldn’t see that Jesus was more than a man. That Jesus was not ordinary. That reality was so much larger than he had ever imagined.

And Jesus saw this. And He used the opportunity to make a point. Jesus draws a very clear distinction between the physical things of this world and the flesh. . . and the things of another more powerful world, a larger more profound world, that of the spirit.

Jesus explains that He is no ordinary teacher. He is no ordinary messenger from God. Jesus responds to Nicodemus’ confusion by saying, “The truth is, no one can enter the Kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit. Humans can reproduce only human life, but the Holy Spirit gives new life from heaven.” And Nicodemus is still confused. “What do you mean?”

By this time Jesus is growing frustrated. How could Nicodemus not understand the spiritual nature of our world. He is a respected Jewish teacher, one who informs others on faith and yet he doesn’t even understand these things. Jesus says, “I, the Son of Man, have come to earth and will return to heaven again. . . For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.”

Jesus lays out the extraordinary truth of what is going on. He is not just a great teacher. He is not just a messenger from God. He is not just an idealistic social activist. He is God’s Son, God Himself, sent to earth to redeem all of creation.

Now before we sigh and point at Nicodemus as that silly guy who didn’t understand. Let’s ask ourselves do we understand? Do we balk when we here the extraordinary things that Jesus says? Do we hesitate when we here about the miraculous things that Jesus did? Are we quick to dismiss certain things as allegory, or exaggeration, or even unattainable idealism? Do we truly realize that these are not just nice stories, but truth? And do we live as if these things really happened and continue to happen?

Are we too distracted by the ordinariness of life to stand amazed and awed at the truth of God, which seems so impossible? It is no wonder that the Bible’s view of wisdom is not based upon how many degrees that you have, what schools you went to, how you did on that math test. No, from a biblical perspective, a great theologian may be stupid and an illiterate child who praises God for the sunset immeasurably more intelligent.

I know Todd has recently completed a sermon series on the DaVinci Code and I have been thinking about the book’s claims quite a bit lately. I haven’t so much been concerned with the validity of the claims because they are made in a book of fiction and so unsupported by evidence, but I have been fascinated with the public’s willingness to believe the claims. . . or at least their fascination with the chance that they could be true. I think we are fascinated because we are scared of the unknown. Jesus scares us. It scares us to think that God came to earth in the form of a man. It scares us that Jesus calls us to such radical living that we are even supposed to love our enemies. We are much more comfortable with the ordinary. With those things that fit neatly into our perception of the world. So any chance we find to try to humanize Jesus. . . to try to tone down the extraordinary nature of his life. . . we take it. So whether it is that he was married to Mary Magdelene, or he had children, or he was just a really wonderful guy. . . whatever, it makes us feel more comfortable if everything just appears more ordinary.

The truth, however, is not ordinary. The truth is so much greater, so much more powerful than the ordinary. The truth sets us free from the constraints of this life and the ways of this world. The truth is that our physical birth, our birth from the womb of our mother is not the most important birth of our lives. We can be reborn. Born again. Born anew in the Spirit of God.

To see Jesus as he truly is requires more than our ordinary birth. To see Jesus as He truly is requires a reversal of much the world teaches us. It requires us to be born from above, from heaven, from God. . . from a land where the last shall be first, where we are to turn the other cheek, where we are to give without hope of receiving. . . To see Jesus as he truly is, we must be set free from the limits of perceiving everything as ordinary. We must open ourselves up to the realization that we are players in an extraordinary story. . . a story that cannot be fully understood, but is nonetheless true.

The fascinating part about this life. . .about reaching and finding the extraordinary is that we are not expected to do it on our own. You see the system was never set up where we had to go out and find God. . . where we had to work our way up to heaven. We don’t have to earn points and then everyone with 1000 at the end of their life gets to God. No. God entered this world to get us. He came after us. He came in the form of His Son to rescue us from our ordinariness. . . to reveal to us the extraordinary.

That is how our reading this morning is summed up. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” God gave his only Son to a world in need of hope. In need of a taste of the extraordinary. God still gives His Son.

As you can see in your bulletin I titled this sermon, “Happy Birthday.” This is a message to all of you. No, it may not be your physical birthday, but every day is your spiritual birthday. Each day we celebrate our birth from above, our birth anew. Because it is by that birth that we are rescued from the ordinariness of life. We are given a glimpse of a hope that is more powerful and more extraordinary that anything the world could ever give us. Though we live here, though we raise our families here, though we work here. . . our hearts are not here. They have been given away to the only true source of everlasting joy.

I told you earlier about a book I am reading by Brennan Manning. The title is The Importance of Being Foolish. Manning’s main point throughout the book is that if we truly try to live like Jesus, if we truly try to think like him, if we sincerely seek after the wisdom of God . . . we will look like fools to the rest of the world.

We can go two different directions when we are encountered by the extraordinary nature of God. Some of us will be uncomfortable with looking like a fool to the rest of the world. We might still go to church, we might still sing the hymns, we might still read our Bibles at home. . . but when it comes to the other 20 hours of our days when we are out in the “real world”. . . we are scared of looking like fools. So we pretend the world is ordinary. We pretend everyone else is right. We sometimes even convince ourselves that they are. We learn to play by their rules. We don’t choose decisively between the world and God, and our procrastination constitutes our answer. We carefully distribute ourselves between the two, picking what we say and how we act depending on the circumstances. Eventually our unwillingness to submit to God causes a crisis of identity. It is not that we are simply afraid to tell others who we truly are as children of God, it is that we truly do not know who we are anymore. We have not surrendered to the Spirit’s free movement in our lives. We are afraid of losing our lives. . . of losing the ordinariness that gives us security and power. Brennan Manning says, “we stand close enough to the fire to stay warm, but we never plunge in. . . We might be nicer than most other people or have better morals, but we do not live as brand-new creations.” Instead, our lukewarmness reveals our divided hearts.

But there is another and better response to the extraordinary nature of God. We can surrender. We can do as Jesus explained to Nicodemus, we can be born again, born anew in the Spirit. We can be transformed and live by a new worldview. A worldview that is extraordinary and not limited by fear.

Being reborn, however, takes many forms and should not simply be seen as a command for non-Christians. Each of us, must be reborn continually. True we enter into Christ through a conversion, but the Spirit must continually work freely through us constantly transforming us into new creations. The point is not to detach from the world, but to see it with new eyes. To look deeply at everything in life and to see that it is not simply ordinary, but that God is in it and working through it. Life is extraordinary.

Nicodemus himself eventually responds to the extraordinariness of Jesus. Later in the Gospel we see that Nicodemus stands up for Jesus in the Sanhedrin and even provides Jesus with an honorable burial after his death.

A few minutes ago we sang Amazing Grace. The song was written by John Newton who was a ship captain in the mid-1700’s. On a homeward voyage, while he was attempting to steer the ship through a violent storm, he experienced what he referred to later as his "great deliverance." He recorded in his journal that when all seemed lost and the ship would surely sink, he exclaimed, "Lord, have mercy upon us." Later in his cabin he reflected on what he had said and began to believe that God had addressed him through the storm and that grace had begun to work for him. For the rest of his life he observed the anniversary of May 10, 1748 as the day of his conversion, a day of humiliation in which he subjected his will to a higher power. He celebrated a birthday of sorts when he realized that our world is far more extraordinary than he had ever imagined. That it is controlled by a God who reaches in and rescues his people. "Thro' many dangers, toils and snares, I have already come; 'tis grace has bro't me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home."

John Newton had been born again and he celebrated this new birthday the rest of his life. We too have been born again, born anew in the Spirit. . . and every day is our birthday. Everyday the Holy Spirit transforms us into newer creations. Our world is not ordinary. We do not see things like others see them. We see something bigger, something more profound that must guide our lives. And though the world may see us as fools or dreamers or idealists, we know that we have encountered something extraordinary. A truth so wonderful and awesome that we can do nothing else but live by it.