Born Again

Don: In recent weeks we have been discussing the subject of Innocence, which came out of a discussion of what are the characteristics of “childlikeness” essential to entry to the kingdom of heaven. We have looked for insight to the social science and psychology and child development literature.

But Jesus goes further than “childlikeness” in John 3, when Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night and Jesus tells him he must be born again. This is similar enough to the passage in Matthew (where he says you have to be childlike) that one can perhaps conclude that Jesus is talking about a newborn rather than about a child, because a “child” has age and an accompanying level of development, whereas a newborn does not.

The characteristics of the newborn include total innocence, total dependency or lack of independence, total lack of guile, and perhaps a total lack of fear. The totality soon begins to wear, however. For instance: One of the natural processes of bringing up a child is to teach them fear: “You must not run into the road, or talk to a stranger, or touch the fire,” etc.

Peter 1:23 Peter says: “..for you have been born again not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is, through the living and enduring word of God.”

I wrote a sermon some years ago about the Christmas story that may offer some insight into the topic of being born again. Jesus said you have to be born again of the spirit and of water.

Hail Mary Full of Grace

I like Christmas. I like the Christmas story. It’s compelling and full of enchantment for young and old. It has shepherds and wise men, cattle, donkeys, a manger, hay, the inn, the star of Bethlehem, angels singing, intrigue, suspense, and even sex and violence. But one aspect of the Christmas story prominent particularly among Protestants is that the virgin Mary does not figure much in it, even though she is the key player in it.

My big ten of the Christmas carols are:

• It Came Upon a Midnight Clear
• Silent Night
• Angels We Have Heard On High
• Joy To The World,
• Hark The Herald Angels Sing
• O Come All Ye Faithfull
• Away In a Manger
• The Little Town of Bethlehem
• The First Noël
• Angels From The Realm of Glory

In all of these there are only three references to Mary. If there were no manger, etc., there would still be a Christmas story, but without Mary there would be none.

It’s clear that Mary was only 12-13 years old when the angel Gabriel suddenly appeared to her. Luke 1:26-38:

Now in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the descendants of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary. And coming in, he said to her, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” But she was very perplexed at this statement, and kept pondering what kind of salutation this was. The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name Him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David; and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and His kingdom will have no end.” Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” The angel answered and said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy Child shall be called the Son of God. And behold, even your relative Elizabeth has also conceived a son in her old age; and she who was called barren is now in her sixth month. For nothing will be impossible with God.” And Mary said, “Behold, the bondslave of the Lord; may it be done to me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her.

Mary was a child, and she was at first suspicious of this apparition and it’s message. The angel tells her not to be afraid–that’s a message we see often in the new testament–and tells her that she is going to be mother to a great king. She knows enough to know how babies are made and that as a virgin she cannot be a mother.

This birth produced the son of god, and our rebirth produces sons of god. We are all brothers and Jesus is our brother, and nothing is impossible with god.

Mary responded with humility and acquiescence, but it’s clear that she did not fully comprehend that she had been chosen by god to have a baby that had already been named and would become a king in the line of David. It is a symbol that like Mary, we too are innocents who are to be used as tools in the hand of god, that we are to be given grace without asking for it and without understanding it.

The last verse of O Little Child of Bethlehem…

O holy Child of Bethlehem
Descend to us, we pray
Cast out our sin and enter in
Be born to us today
We hear the Christmas angels
The great glad tidings tell
O come to us, abide with us
Our Lord Emmanuel

… is the essence of what this story is all about. Each of us becomes brother or sister with one another and with Jesus and god. This is not the work of ovary and sperm; rather, it is an act of grace. It is a new divine light implanted in us by the holy spirit. It’s a paradox in that we are both born again but we are also giving birth in the sense that we are producing something new within ourselves.

Like Mary, god chooses us, we don’t choose him. Like Mary, we are his tool, he is not our tool. Like Mary, we must allow the holy spirit to enter in, like Mary, we must bear and give birth to the god within us. It will fill us with grace and produce a new life within us, making us be born into the kingdom of heaven, into the community of brotherhood.

Here we see community being driven by a transformative infusion of spirit that fosters brotherhood and sisterhood. It seems to bear upon our discussion.

David: I wonder what being “born of water” means. Is it referring to baptism? As for fear, fear is born of knowledge, and we begin acquiring knowledge from the moment of birth and possibly even before. Do we then need to be reborn on a daily basis?

Don: There is a sense in which the new birth is a continuous, day-by-day process.

David: There seem to be two themes: One is being born again for life on earth; the other is being born again for life in heaven. Yet the Lord’s prayer says “thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven” which suggests that they are one and the same.

Joe: I feel born again on a daily basis by my practice of daily prayer.

Harry: Ego seems to be the issue. Ego is the “unreal” or “false” person we develop into as a result of the knowledge we acquire and the teaching we receive. When one is born, one has no ego, and one is truly one’s self, the real you. I take issue with the concept of Belief, but I agree with the concept of Faith, in the certainty that something just is, something’s is truly original. We know that the sun exists. We know that gravity exists. We don’t “believe” they exist–we know it to our core. So it is with god. He just is. There is nothing to fear. With faith, one becomes a part of god and brother or sister to everyone. You know that what you see in your brothers and sisters is not really them. Rebirth for me now means the death of ego. Belief stems from a fear of not knowing.

Robin: Regarding the question of re-birth by water: John 4:7-14 is instructive:

There came a woman of Samaria to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give Me a drink.” For His disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. Therefore the Samaritan woman said to Him, “How is it that You, being a Jew, ask me for a drink since I am a Samaritan woman?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.” She said to Him, “Sir, You have nothing to draw with and the well is deep; where then do You get that living water? You are not greater than our father Jacob, are You, who gave us the well, and drank of it himself and his sons and his cattle?” Jesus answered and said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.”

Also 1 John 5:56-8:

This is the One who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ; not with the water only, but with the water and with the blood. It is the Spirit who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. For there are three that testify: the Spirit and the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement.

David: This water is then a spiritual matter. It’s more than mere metaphor. To lose one’s ego involves losing more than fear, it involves losing all knowledge. But even a newborn is born with primal knowledge written in the genome and imprinted in the neural circuits, so we cannot be born again in a physical sense (because we are inherently tainted with knowledge.) The references to being born again must therefore mean being born again as a spirit, in the kingdom of heaven. In contrast, to be “born again” on earth is a trivial, temporary thing. That’s the only logical conclusion that I can see.

Jay: The separation of the kingdoms of heaven on earth and in heaven is not that great a separation, it seems to me. Rebirth is a process, and it is one that does not have much to do with us. We get it only through the grace of god. Titus 3:5-8 talks about rebirth on earth and about what we can do when we receive that grace on earth. Even though we were once wicked, rebirth makes us do good.

He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by His grace we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

Don: In the passages prior to that’s it talks about becoming obedient to the truth. It has purified your soul for a sincere love of the brethren. Purification of the soul is not just for the spiritual realm but for the here-and-now on earth.

Harry: it’s almost impossible to love one’s neighbor if one has ego. The Boston bombing is a crystal clear case of an ego-driven act. If you strip away the ego from the bomber, then you can have sympathy for him–for the real him, not the false him who did the bombing. How do you get to the kingdom of heaven which Jesus (in Matthew) says is at hand? You don’t just find a place, a community, a belief, to join. You abandon your ego, you empty yourself and allow god to drive you. Then you are in the kingdom.

Don: the Boston bombings remind us of how community springs up in the face of such tragedies. People put their own lives at risk to help others. So good came out of evil. Without the evil, we would not see this good. It seems perverse.

Harry: Adam and Eve developed a flawed idea of good and evil as a result of eating the fruit. Evil exists; it needs to exist; it just is.

Veronika: How do you let go of ego in a world that surrounds you in ego? In the movie The Crude [?] the family head often reminds his family to be afraid all the time. Joe’s father received bad treatment many times in his lifetime, but he never complained.

David: Just like Jesus. Is it fatalism? Carelessness? When I lived in Malaya, I often saw Malays sauntering across busy roads in relative disregard of traffic. I was told they did so out of a sense of fatalism, that we are bound to die when our time has come but not a minute before. Is that what scripture is telling us? But if we relinquish our fear and our ego, won’t we be taken advantage of by those who choose not to relinquish theirs?

Jay: We teach our children to develop their egos, yet breaking down their ego is what we are supposed to do. We often fall down in that regard.

Harry: When you know that you are eternal, death does not matter to you. Because god is inside us, there are times when our ego disappears and we risk our lives for others. We don’t fear death and we should not, since we are eternal. We can still be hunter gatherers yet be cautious and risk averse.

Robin: There’s a difference between physical and spiritual fear. We should fear things that cause us harm or are simply foolish, but on a spiritual plane I think of people who had to take a stand even on pain of death–people like Martin Luther King, the Macabees, John Calvin. Spiritually, they learned to not fear what man could do to their bodies. That does not mean you should not respect things that are dangerous in the physical realm.

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