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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Not one of us is called as Abram was called in today’s Old Testament Reading (Genesis 12:1-9), to be the ancestor of a great nation and to be the means of God’s blessing all the families of the earth. At the same time, however, all of us are called as Abram was called in today’s Old Testament Reading, to go from our country, our kindred, and our parents’ house to the Promised Land that God shows us. While our literal journeys through our earthly lives may not involve the same extent of travel and separation that Abram’s did, we nevertheless are called, in the words of a Collect of the Church, “to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown” (#193, Lutheran Service Book: Altar Book, 449). But, the spiritual journey of our earthly lives is the same as Abram’s. As we reflect on today’s Readings, especially the Gospel Reading, we realize what Abram’s descendent Nicodemus at least at first seemed to miss, that we are “Reborn from above to enter God’s Kingdom”.
The conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus that today’s Gospel Reading reports is unique to St. John’s Divinely‑inspired Gospel account, and our three-year series of Readings gives us several occasions to hear all or part of it. Especially today we take note of the Reading’s mentioning Nicodemus’s coming to Jesus, Nicodemus’s asking Jesus if an old man can enter a second time into his mother’s womb, Jesus’s speaking about entering the Kingdom of God, and Jesus’s saying that we do not know where the wind or those born of the Spirit come from or go to.
The theme song from the 19‑70s’ movie “Mahogany”, originally popularized by Diana Ross, asked a series of related questions: “Do you know where you’re going to?” “Do you like the things that life is showing you?” “Where are you going to, do you know?” (Wikipedia; Lyrics) In terms of our earthly lives, humanly speaking, we do not know where we are going, and we may not like the things that life is showing us. At various times in the past, present, or future, we may move around more than we would like, have to change jobs, settle for what we consider a less‑than‑ideal home or school, and deal with a loved one’s or our own declining health. Such events can make us feel like we are being re‑routed onto a dead-end path. We may overlook the ways that God has worked through such events in our loved ones’ or our own lives in the past, and we may even fail to trust God to work through such events in our lives now and in the future.
Unlike others of his day who saw the signs that Jesus was doing and believed in His Name (John 2:23), Nicodemus came to Jesus with an incomplete understanding of Who Jesus was and what Jesus’s signs meant. At first Nicodemus did not understand when Jesus spoke about being “Reborn from above to enter God’s Kingdom”. Like Nicodemus, we by nature cannot see or enter the Kingdom of God, for we are born of sinful flesh and so on our own cannot understand heavenly things. We have no knowledge of God, cannot mediate such knowledge, and cannot do anything about our situation (Schweizer, TDNT 8:138). But, as we heard Jesus say in the Gospel Reading, God loved the sinful world by giving His Only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, as we all deserve, but instead have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world primarily to condemn the world, but God sent His Son primarily in order that the world might be saved through Him. Those who by their impenitence and unbelief reject God’s salvation end up being judged by Jesus and His Word (John 8:16; 12:48), but God would rather that all people—including you and me—repent and believe.
When we repent and believe, then God saves us from our sin—sin such as our overlooking how God has worked good for us in the past, sin such as our failing to trust God to work good for us now and in the future, or whatever our sin might be—God saves us from all our sin, and God gives us not the death we deserve apart from faith, but God gives us eternal life by grace through faith in His Son Jesus Christ. As we heard in today’s Epistle Reading (Romans 4:1-8, 13-17), Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness (quoted from Genesis 15:6). We likewise trust God to justify us, who are otherwise ungodly, for the sake of His only Son, and so we become offspring of Abraham, who share his faith in the promises of God, fulfilled in Jesus Christ. And, those promises were not fulfilled in—nor is saving faith in—some warm fuzzy or otherwise nebulous Jesus, but those promises were fulfilled in—and saving faith is in—Jesus Christ, God in human flesh, lifted up on the cross to die for all people, including us. Far more than historical knowledge of the fact that Jesus died, saving faith is our understanding and individually trusting that Jesus died for each one of us as individuals. God makes it possible for us to know and understand these heavenly things and so to see and enter His Kingdom as He gives birth to us from above by water and the Spirit.
Water and the Spirit were connected at Jesus’s Baptism (see Matthew 3:11; Mark 1:10; confer Luke 3:21-22; John 1:33), and they are connected in our Baptism, too. Many people, especially here in East Texas, may be reluctant to understand Jesus to be speaking about Baptism in John chapter 3, but to what else could being “reborn from above by water and the Spirit” be referring? At the Baptismal Font we are reborn from above not of the will of the flesh nor the will of man but the will of God (John 1:13). Such rebirth is “necessary” for us to enter the Kingdom of God, just as, later in St. John’s Gospel account (John 6:53), Jesus says that it is “necessary” for us to eat His flesh and drink His blood, as we do in the Lord’s Supper, in order to have life in us. As saving faith for the Israelites was in a God Who worked through means, such as a snake lifted up on a pole, so saving faith for us is in a God Who works through means, such as water in Holy Baptism and bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper.
“Reborn from above to enter God’s Kingdom” and strengthened with His Body and Blood, food for our bodies and souls, for our journey as pilgrims through the barren land that is this life (LSB 918), we face whatever comes. We may not know where we are going to in terms of our locations, jobs, homes, or schools, and we may not like what this fallen life is showing us in terms of a love one’s or our own health. But, as that Collect that I mentioned at the outset prays, God gives us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go but only that His hand is leading us and His love supporting us. Already now we have the sure and certain hope and confidence of eternal life and all that goes with it, including the eventual resurrection and glorification of our bodies and life in body and soul in God’s presence for eternity. Of that we also can speak of what we know and bear witness to what we have seen, trusting God to bless our efforts as He sees fit.
As I yesterday conducted the weekly service at the Willows of Kilgore, one of our local nursing and rehabilitation facilities, I made use of the appointed Psalm for today, Psalm 121, and I especially noted the promise of verse 8 that served as the Psalm’s antiphon: “The Lord will keep / your going out and your coming in / from this time forth and forevermore” (ESV). We can think that the psalmist envisions the worshipers going out of the sacred assembly for their daily lives and eventually returning back never again to depart. The eternal worship of heaven is where we repentant believers ultimately are going, for, thanks be to God, we are “Reborn from above to enter God’s Kingdom”
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +