Visualize a room with a lamp in the corner that is farthest from the door. Visualize tripping over luggage and slipping on magazines in an effort to get across the room to that light.
Yesterday morning I had a burning desire to clean my home office. Visualize a desk stacked with at least six inches of desk-top things as well as three paper shopping bags of material to be sorted, recycled or filed, or trashed. See the bin of wires – telephone, computer, who-knows-what-else, half of which fit nothing I still own.
I set to work unearthing treasures: a collection of partially-used notebooks, a full box of blank CDs, a pile of usable greeting cards, the keyboard that goes with my Palm Pilot, and numerous slips of paper business cards for people I'd like to remember.
I spent hours on the office project yesterday and accomplished about 1/5 of what I want to do. I feel victorious. I feel hopeful about the future of my office and about my limited skills at organizing.
Have you had this experience? Cleaning away wreckage – by clearing the dining room table or taking used paint or oil cans to the hazardous waste center – can make you feel pure, successful and free.
So it may not surprise you that on this 2nd Sunday of Lent, we are considering our 2nd Baptismal promise:
Where there is evil, I will resist it. Whenever I fall into sin, I will repent and return to the Lord.
It seems especially appropriate during Lent to clean our spiritual houses and free ourselves of all that is burying us, separating us from God. Another word for that suffocating separation from God is sin and it results from what we do and what we fail to do. From stacking junk on my desk and from failing to remove it.
In today's Gospel, the Jewish leader Nicodemus meets Jesus in the darkness of night. He acknowledges Jesus for his works and signs, "for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God." That's a good start, but Nicodemus is stymied by Jesus' words to him. "No one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit…. You must be born anew, from above."
Nicodemus argues that being born again is impossible. He argues from what he knows about human physiology. And what he knows is true, but what he knows also gets in the way of what he doesn't know, and he leaves his meeting with Jesus and returns to the darkness once again.
What Jesus says to Nicodemus would have been difficult for me to understand in those days. But you and I have an advantage over Nicodemus: we've heard the entire story and not just this portion; we already know that being born of water and the Spirit is about Baptism.
But you know, I realized in studying this reading that what I know gets in the way of what I don't know just as much as it did for Nicodemus. I missed a big point. It says, "You must be born anew, from above." I've gotten stuck on the translations that render this as "You must be born again." There's a good reason: the Greek word (anothen) means both anew or again and from above. There are some contemporary Christians who have made a field day of being born again. But here is the problem of reading it "You must be born again": being born again puts all the focus on me, on the individual. To some Christians, it is all about a personal conversion experience. To me, it has meant that I am to take all the responsibility on myself for living a Christian life. It's about what I do, me, me, me.
My interpretation causes me to miss the biggest point of all: that being born anew, from above, is not just about me, but about God and Christ. To be born from above means that God is taking action. To be born from above is about grace, about God moving in our world.
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. 17“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. (John 3:16-17)
We are born from above. And we are born anew. We are born anew as often as we need to be. We already have the permanent mark of membership in God and Christ through our baptisms. And we can turn away from what separates us from God and Christ at any time, often, always.
The condition of my office points to the fact that I have not yet completed and perfected myself. But I can work toward it's return to order again, and I will. I have the invitation to get that space into shape, and "Where there is evil, in my soul or my office, I will resist it. Whenever I fall into sin, I will repent and return to the Lord." We are given the gift of baptism in the Spirit and the intercession of God through Christ. By accepting it, we have the light of Christ to guide us, and the distance from the office door to that light is not long. It is at hand. Let us prepare for the Lord.