40 Days of Lent: Day 9

1Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish ruling council. 2He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him.”

3In reply Jesus declared, “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.”

4″How can a man be born when he is old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb to be born!”

5Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. 6Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. 7You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ 8The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”

What was it, I must ask, that caused Nicodemus to take a chance with his reputation and status by daring to go by himself to visit with the itinerant rabbi, Jesus? What did Jesus have that Nicodemus wanted?

There was an authenticity about Jesus- Nicodemus said it was obvious that he was from God, with God. When Jesus said that this came from being born again, Nicodemus (as would anyone) misunderstood. Nicodemus knew of only one way of being born, while Jesus was telling him about another.

Many of us think we know what born again means, but I know how traditions and unexamined “truths” can get in the way of real understanding, so I wonder, too, if we don’t sometimes misunderstand that phrase as badly as Nicodemus did upon first hearing it?

In some churches it means saying a prayer, in others it comes from walking down the aisle in response to an emotional message by the preacher. In still others it means performing ancient rituals- baptism, cathecism, confirmation. The commonality of all those methods is that a person publicly declares Jesus to be “the way, the truth, and the life,” repent of his/her sin and, thus, become a child of God, and not only a child of human parentage.

That has always seemed too superficial to me..sorry. Birth is a traumatic process and I think really becoming a child of God- becoming real, becoming authentic- is a process. It’s a process of enlightenment- step by step, little steps, big steps, a journey that never ends. I often say that I have been born again and again and again; I am not the same follower of Jesus as I was that first day I believed. In fact, it is more like I am continually being born- I am always moving from belief to faith, from knowledge to understanding, from moments of happiness to longer periods of serenity.

And I do that by getting better- more sensitive- to that blowing wind Jesus referred to: the ruach of God. Ruach is God’s spirit, God’s breath, God’s wind. And we don’t know where we will be moved by it. It may be toward a sunset, or a lifetime of sacrificial work on behalf of others. It may be toward a special sermon (it’s possible!).  More likely, it will be toward the eyes, the presence of one in whom we can see God’s presence already, or in deeper ways than we have so far perceived God’s presence in ourselves. It might even be in the love of a dog, the breath taking of a wildflower field, or the singing of children.

The point is we don’t know how that wind will blow or where it will come from, which makes every moment the most important one we have ever lived. Because this might be the moment when we become authentic, real, whole, complete, and born again, like Jesus.

40 Days of Lent: Day 6

Mark 1: 9-11 (from The Message): At this time, Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. The moment he came out of the water, he saw the sky split open and God’s Spirit, looking like a dove, come down on him. Along with the Spirit, a voice: “You are my Son, chosen and marked by my love, pride of my life.”

The gospel writers, Mark among them, are not reporters. They were not there- on the scene- during every event that they go on to write about. They were compilers, arrangers, transmitters of the stories of Jesus to particular audiences.

Mark is relating here some things that apparently only Jesus experienced at his baptism: a  vision (the sky splitting open and something “like a dove” descending on him) and a voice. This testimony of Jesus is the beginning of Mark’s gospel of Jesus. This is, for Mark, the beginning of Jesus’ “Sonship.” It was- it seems- a bestowal of status on Jesus by God.

Matthew and Luke would claim that Sonship to be biological- with the impregnation of Mary through God’s Holy Spirit. I have to wonder why such a significant event was not even mentioned by Mark, while the personal testimony of Jesus was. Had Mark not heard the story of Jesus’ in utero origins? Or had he heard it and rejected as a legend connected to other ancient stories of virgin births?

I don’t know the answer. But I see Mark’s editorial role here as making Sonship itself accessible to anyone who would, as Jesus had, accept the message of John the Baptist to “Repent!” Here’s the Baptist’s message, told by Mark (Mark 1: 4, New International Version): And so John came, baptizing in the desert region and preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River.

The arrival of Jesus at the Jordan River had been being anticipated by John. Something about his third cousin had impressed John, maybe for much of his life (he was six months older than Jesus). John claimed that Jesus was greater than himself and would baptize others not with water, but with the Holy Spirit.  If Jesus believed this of himself as well, then he would have had need of that Holy Spirit to baptize others with, and would have been highly sensitive and receptive to the receiving of it.

I think this is the supremely important part of the story of which Mark wrote: Jesus was ready for this status; he was willing and wanting to receive it. As he would go on in his life and ministry to prove, it was not a matter of satisfying a ravenous ego that he sought this status; rather, it was a genuine calling- a desire that others would know the real nature of God. Jesus wanted, it seems to me, for others to know that they, too, were loved by God, and that God had pride in them, too!

That’s a pretty radical desire to have within a faith community that was rife with judgement on the part of the priestly leaders. It’s a revolutionary role to want to assume in a culture where the “poor in spirits” were left out of everything.

But, after his baptism by John, Jesus left the Jordan River community, went into the wilderness for 40 days, emerged at one with God, and went on to demonstrate that others could indeed live in the love and pride of God, free of the burdens of guilt, and also at one with God.

That was impressive to Mark.

It’s impressive to me, too.

A Genealogy

Matthew 1: A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of David, the son of Abraham:
2Abraham was the father of Isaac,
         Isaac the father of Jacob,
         Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers,
3Judah the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar,
         Perez the father of Hezron,
         Hezron the father of Ram,
4Ram the father of Amminadab,
         Amminadab the father of Nahshon,
         Nahshon the father of Salmon,
5Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab,
         Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth,
         Obed the father of Jesse,
6and Jesse the father of King David.
      David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah’s wife,
7Solomon the father of Rehoboam,
         Rehoboam the father of Abijah….

Blah blah blah blah blah…

It is not wrong, I don’t think, to maybe expect the story the story of Jesus Christ, son of God, savior of the world, to start off with just a little bit more of a bang, is it? These are the first words of the New Testament, and as dull as they may at first glance be, they are important. Because they are about a journey through time that will, 28 generations after Solomon, begin to converge in a whole series of journeys across time and geography- journeys that include the chapters of our own lives right here, right now.

The genealogy I just read covered 14 generations, from Abraham through Solomon- about 700 years. Another 14 generations would take the genealogy of Jesus into the time of Israel’s captivity in Babylon. And then another 14 generations later, a total now of almost 2500 years from the time of Abraham, the birth of Jesus would happen. It was 2500 years of Jewish history in the making, and it’s been 2000 years of world history in the remembering.

But first, buried within that seemingly dull list of names, there were four surprises, planted there by Matthew like warning flags to tell his readers that what they would be reading was going to be a very unusual story. Normally, a Jewish genealogy was about one thing- the line of patriarchs- the honorable and pious men who passed on their legacy- I guess- in spite of all the women in the way.

Now, the surprises placed in this family tree, however, were exactly that- women! Something had happened in the mind of some very Jewish, culturally patriarchical men like Matthew, that had caused them to open their eyes wider than they had ever been before. Something had caused Matthew to acknowledge the personhood, the importance of women at a time when that just wasn’t done. There was no reason to, after all! Women weren’t men, and in the thinking of the time, men were what mattered. Men, and the number of donkeys they owned.

So when Matthew sneaks the names of Tamar and Rahab, prostitutes, and Ruth, a conniver, and Bathsheba, a woman who took baths on her roof in full view of King David..when Matthew makes sure the reader knows that Jesus has these women’s blood pulsing through his veins, Matthew is saying, without shouting it, that everything, as it has been known, was being turned upside down.

The doors to a relationship with God, being a co-creator with God in the Kingdom of God, had just been opened a whole lot wider than they had ever been before.