Being Born Anew. John 3:16. Fourth Sunday of Lent. March 21 2009.

There is a new book out by Phyllis Tickle which is causing quite the stir in religious circles. Phyllis Tickle is an academic, a publishing agent, and a popular writer on spirituality. Tickle’s new book is called “The great Emergence- how Christianity is changing and why”. Tickle is not the first scholar to believe that we are currently living through a significant time of religious, cultural, social and intellectual change which is on a par with the Protestant Reformation.

As we look around us, it doesn’t take a scholar to tell us that the religious world we grew up in no longer exists today. The church culture is quickly disappearing right across North America. A new world view is taking shape today, which we must learn to address if our faith is to have a meaningful part to play in our ever changing lives. Our faith must learn how to relate to this emerging new world we are to share the gift of faith with this world which God continues to love so very much.

This morning we heard of an encounter between an old world view, and a new world view. The encounter between Nicodemus and Jesus is a meeting which has changed many peoples’ lives, and it still has the power to change our lives even today. In Nicodemus’ world, the Temple in Jerusalem was the centre of religious life. People went there regularly to pray. The Temple was where God lived. For many events during the year, an animal sacrifice would be made, as a way to offer thanks to God. When it was Passover, over 50,000 sheep would be slaughtered and sacrificed in one day. While the temple was God’s house, and it was a house of prayer, it was definitely not a quiet place. As part of the annual Passover celebration, one of the priests would be given the task of taking one of the sacrificed lambs into the Holy of Holies, the sacred place where God resided, just for a moment. This was a once in a lifetime experience, to stand in the presence of God. Only the most senior and important of temple leaders would ever have this honour. It was such a moving moment, that they regularly tied a rope around you, just in case you feinted.

This was the way things used to be, before Jesus comes to town. The actions of Jesus threatened to upset the whole apple cart of the religious structure. For Jesus speaks of finding God outside of the temple. Jesus doesn’t bow down towards Jerusalem when he prays. He sits down wherever, and spends many quiet hours in what he calls the presence of Abba, his heavenly father. Jesus speaks of having a lasting and ongoing relationship with God. He has heard the voice of God on several occasions. He finds examples of God’s presence in the everyday lives of common people. He reveals how God can be found among the shepherds and the fishermen and the house wives. If God has escaped the temple, this challenges the need for the temple and the entire sacrificial system of worship. If Jesus is right, then Nicodemus’s world is about to come tumbling down. He will need to look far beyond the Temple walls to find out what God is up to. He will have to go into the world to catch up with what God and Jesus are already doing in the world.

The Baptist teacher Reggie McNeal describes the world we are living in by saying it is AD 30 all over again. God has busted out of the church walls, and the Holy Spirit is loose in the world. God is going far beyond our expectations of how God should work in the world. McNeal says the people of God have to play catch up if they want to continue to be partners with God in God’s mission of redeeming and blessing this world.

Nicodemus and every other good person of faith of his generation knew sins could only be forgiven by God. It was only offered once a year at the temple. Your forgiveness was only good for a year. When the warranty expired, you would have to come back again next year to be forgiven all over again. Jesus shocks everyone by forgiving sins on the spot. Any time, any place, Jesus offers God’s forgiveness. He also claims his forgiveness is good forever because God’s love is unconditional. This belief in the power of forgiveness will send a tsunami shock wave through the Temple community. The religious authorities no longer have a monopoly on God. God is with his people in the world.

God was considered to be so special, so removed from every day life, that learning about God was also considered to be special. People like Nicodemus would take years of serving and following a teacher before they were given the secrets to the teachings about God. Again Jesus takes a bold new approach. Nicodemus has barely spoken his words of greeting, when Jesus reveals the truth of his teaching. This is not to be a closely guarded secret, which only the select few could know. This is to be a free gift for all people, which we are all to experience and to share. Nicodemus is told he must be ‘born from above’ if he is to be a part of the Kingdom of God.

“You must be born again” is a hard phrase for Nicodemus to fully understand. He wonders how he could possibly be born anew. His failure to understand reveals his lack of spiritual feelings. For without a spiritual life, the religious life is incomplete. There is a big difference between a religious life and a spiritual life. The purpose of organized religion is to give order to spiritual experience. The purpose of a spiritual life is to encounter God. A spiritual life comes from time spent in prayer, worship and meditation. Without the spiritual component, the religious life is a second-hand experience. There is a big difference between telling the story of someone who spoke with God, and actually speaking with God yourself. Where religious authority and tradition used to be good enough for most people to base their religious life on, today people expect to experience God first hand. They want to experience everything in life for themselves. The rise of evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity has shifted authority away from Scripture and Tradition to the experience of the Holy Spirit. For many people, their experience of Christianity is a lot like the faith of Nicodemus. For them, religion is a long set of rules for moral behaviour, and a real shortage of experiencing divine compassion, life changing forgiveness and unconditional love. As a result, is it any wonder that many people today feel organized religion can actually get in the way of a spiritual life.

Phyllis Tickle believes these seismic shifts in expectations in religion, culture and society happen roughly every five hundred years. Today we are living through what she calls the Great Emergence. Five hundred years ago it was the Great Reformation. Five hundred years before that was the Great Schism between Orthodox and Catholic Christians. Five hundred years before that was the birth of the monastic movement at the dawn of the Dark Ages. Five hundred years before that was Jesus. She says we are fortunate to be living in one of these interesting times of colossal change. She believes we are fortunate, because we get to be a part of God doing a new thing in the world of human affairs. We get to experience God first hand.

It can be humbling to remind ourselves what the scriptures say. It does not say “God so loves the church that he sent his son.” The winds of the spirit do not blow just in the church. The wind blows where it pleases. God did not send his son just to save the church. God’s spirit is in the world, to touch the spirit of this world, so it might be born anew. To be born again is an act of creative transformation. To be born anew is to transcend the limitations of the past. To be born again is be open to the possibilities of a future which is grounded in God. It is to see in Jesus Christ all the limitations of our lives disappear. In the spirit of Christ we find our healing, our wholeness. In the Spirit we learn how to live fully, embracing this world which God loves so dearly. Will you let God’s spirit touch your spirit? Will you let the winds of God blow through your life? Will you be born again?