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Sermon for Lent 2A

February 24, 2002

Today we begin a series of Sunday readings from the Gospel according to John. On each of these Sundays in Lent, we will hear a story about an encounter between Jesus and some other person, an encounter in which Jesus will offer someone insight, or illumination, or (to borrow a word from the Buddhist tradition) enlightenment—Jesus will offer someone a new way of understanding themselves, and their world, and their relationship with God, a way of understanding that will open up for them a new way of living, a whole new life.

In each of these encounters, the moment of insight, the moment of enlightenment comes when Jesus says or does something that can be taken in two ways: it can be understood with an ordinary, earthly meaning, and at the same time it points to an extraordinary, spiritual meaning. Enlightenment comes—almost like a Zen koan—when the person’s understanding suddenly jumps from one level of meaning to the other, when the surprise of seeing things in a new way opens them to a life-changing experience of the love of God.

In today’s Gospel, the story of the encounter between Jesus and Nicodemus, the double meaning that provokes enlightenment comes in Jesus’ words about being born. Unfortunately for us, the double meaning works better in the Greek language in which this passage was originally written than it does in our English. Jesus says, “You must be born anothen”—that’s a Greek preposition that can mean “again” or “anew,” and it can also mean “above.” I think the closest we can get to it in English is the word “over”: Jesus says, “You must be born over”; Nicodemus hears, “You must be born over again, you must be born another time”; but what Jesus wants him to hear is “You must be born over and above: over and above the physical life you’re already living, you must enter into a new kind of life that comes from the Spirit.” The jump from being born again to being born from above is the surprising insight that is meant to open Nicodemus’ eyes to a whole new dimension of possibilities for his life with God; it is meant to make him aware of a height and breadth and depth of who he can be, and how he can be, beyond anything he’s ever imagined before, alive anew in God’s holy love.

Jesus invites Nicodemus to take the risk of seeing life in a new dimension—and that seeing will be risky. Jesus is asking Nicodemus to enter into a life where people motivated by the Spirit will do things and go places and share words and perform signs and live love in ways that exceed all the measures with which Nicodemus is accustomed to measuring his life. “The wind blows where it chooses,” Jesus says, “and you don’t know where it comes from or where it goes. That’s how it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” People whose life comes from the Spirit, Jesus says, people whose life comes from above, move about in the world in ways that the world can’t always fathom, ways that, to the world’s way of measuring things, don’t always make sense. And it’s not easy to step out of the comfort zones we get ourselves used to and move in a higher dimension of love.

It makes me think of a story I heard a long time ago in math class, of all places. It’s a geometrical parable called “Flatland.” The story is about Mr Square, who lives in a world of two dimensions; everything he knows or believes is contained in width and breadth, a flat plane with no depth dimension at all. One evening Mr Square is sitting in his living room when suddenly a Circle appears as if out of nowhere. This has never happened to Mr Square before: all the Circles he knows have to move about the plane just like any other shape. But this Circle appears out of nowhere, grows at an alarming rate, starts to shrink again, and then disappears altogether. Mr Square is wondering whether he’s having hallucinations, when the Circle appears again, in another place, and goes through the same growing-and-shrinking routine. Then the Shape speaks; and it turns out that it is not a hallucinatory Circle at all, but is in fact a Sphere, a three-dimensional figure, moving up and down through the flat plane of Mr Square’s world. What seems to Mr Square to be strange or impossible or even miraculous behavior is just the ordinary way the Sphere moves in three dimensions, the ordinary height and breadth and depth his life can reach. At one point the Sphere even invites Mr Square to come above and experience the third dimension—and after a dizzying moment of transition, Mr Square discovers a way to engage his world he’d never even guessed at before.

Jesus invites Nicodemus to come above, and to experience life with a new spiritual dimension, to move about the world in ways of love that defy the world’s ordinary measurements of what’s valuable and what’s worthwhile and what’s prudent and what’s safe. The story doesn’t make it really clear whether or not Nicodemus accepts the invitation—and that has the effect of putting the question back to us. Jesus says to us, “You must be born over.” Jesus says to us, “Begin to live in the Spirit, and move in the depth dimension of God’s love.” Jesus speaks to us with two levels of meaning, and invites us to jump from the ordinary to the extraordinary.

And what would that look like? What would it be like for us to see into a deeper dimension of meaning in our experiences? What would it feel like for us to move about our worlds in ways that are motivated and measured by the Spirit, and not just by ordinary earthly measurements?

Well, for one thing, I think we’d be a lot quicker to recognize God’s presence with us in everyday, ordinary things. We’d be more likely to perceive divine love not as some kind of other reality high up and distant from us, but to perceive divine love as the larger shape of even very simple things. Seen in the depth dimension of the Spirit, a simple gift becomes a gesture of great love; a kind word becomes a blessing of compassion; a mere coincidence, say the phone ringing at a certain moment, becomes the way God gets us to slow down and pay attention; a medical procedure becomes the outward and physical sign of an inward and spiritual miracle of healing. Jesus invites us to see into the depth dimension of the Spirit, where there is a deeper meaning of love in all our experiences.

And if Jesus calls us to perceive in that depth dimension, then Jesus calls us to act in that depth dimension as well. Jesus calls us, like Nicodemus, to be willing to take some risks, to be willing to move out of our comfort zones, to be willing to come and go in the world as people whose lives are not measured by worldly standards of success and prestige and power, but whose actions are motivated by the Spirit. And that means committing ourselves to ministry projects—like food shelves or inclusionary housing developments—ministries that, on the corporate bottom line, may seem small and insignificant, but that promise to bring real benefits to real people. It means reaching out to those who are outcast, or abused, or simply ignored by mainstream society. It means taking on tasks with an expectation of grace more than a fear of failure. It means responding with compassion and cooperation in a world that all too often seems to value only competition and coercion. It means being willing to be surprised that God is with us in the places and the actions where we least expected.

In today’s Gospel Jesus surprises Nicodemus with a new way of seeing and being in the Spirit—and Jesus offers that same surprising grace to us. In this Lenten season, in this time of penitence and preparation, let us accept Christ’s promise of grace, and let us renew our baptismal birth from above in the Holy Spirit of God.

In the Name of God: Yahweh, Jesus, and Holy Spirit. Amen.