“Losing Belief, Finding Faith”
John 3:1-21, abridged
An excerpt from Barbara Brown Taylor’s An Altar in the World
Most of the time, most of us walk through the world and through our lives not really aware of how we understand and process experiences and information or how we’ve arrived at the understandings and beliefs we hold. Most of the time, we just assume that our way of approaching the world is the way of most people, and we don’t even think about it.
Until, that is, we run into something new or different, ideas or people or situations that suggest there is more to this life than we realized. Until, perhaps, our way of being in the world runs smack into someone else’s.
That moment arrived most clearly for me toward the end of my second year of college. I was 20 years old and living in a place far away and very different from where I grew up. My head was practically exploding with all the new things I was learning and all the questions I was asking, and my heart was overflowing with wonder and joy over all the new people I was getting to know and the new possibilities and ways of being I was discovering.
I was, in other words, growing up and becoming my own person.
I was in heaven, but my parents were convinced I was going to hell.
In a long, handwritten letter that quoted the Bible several times, I had told them I was leaving the church of my childhood—not leaving church or leaving God, mind you—but simply leaving my family’s church.
But because this church was, for them, the one and only true church, my leaving was a rejection of everything they knew and believed. Because of that, they told me I was on my own. If this was the path I was choosing, they would no longer support me.
And that was when I came to see a key difference between my parents and me: They believed deeply in the things they had always believed—their sense of right and wrong, their interpretation of the Bible, what it meant to be a good person, and which church was acceptable. They were clear as day on all that, and they interpreted and evaluated everything else from that perspective. If something didn’t mesh with their worldview, they rejected it. Even if the “something” was their first-born child or, a few years later, their only son.
I, on the other hand, was a born reporter. While I was steeped in the narrow worldview of my family and church, when given the opportunity I walked through life like a sponge, letting everything soak in. I would discover and learn, observe and analyze, consider my feelings and experiences, consult the scriptures, and study and pray. And then I might modify my ways of thinking and change or expand my worldview.
I’m not saying one way of being in the world is better than the other; in fact, countless studies and academic disciplines show that both these ways of being are among the classic stages of growing up, faith formation, and living in the world.
And, truth is, while most of us aspire to keep learning about God and life and to keep evolving in our thinking and acting and being, there is no such thing as a straight line when it comes to spiritual and emotional growth. Sometimes we will lurch forward; other times we will fall back; and regularly we will be tempted to stay right where we are.
When Nicodemus comes to Jesus, he is in that unsettling place between “I know what’s true and what’s not” and “Wait. What? I wasn’t expecting this. Tell me more!”
He knows enough about his beliefs and the holy longing in his heart to realize that Jesus is of God. He also knows that no one, including him, expected a messiah like Jesus. And so he comes to Jesus in the dark of night, concerned that his upstanding reputation might suffer if anyone sees him fraternizing with the rabble-rousing teacher known for hanging out with all the wrong people.
But while Nicodemus comes looking for confirmation, Jesus is all about transformation. While Nicodemus is focused on being true to a particular set of beliefs and traditions, Jesus wants to talk about the new life available to all.
Nicodemus just doesn’t get the “born from above” business—because he’s always relied on what his mind can understand through reason and what a religious system can codify in beliefs, doctrines, and rules.
We are not so different from Nicodemus, wanting to fit the mystery we call God into our carefully-constructed boxes, trying to figure out what we believe and then get on with life.
But Jesus says we are made for more than that.
“This is how God loves the world,” he tells Nicodemus: “by taking on all the power and fragility of humanity so that you might see what you’re capable of, so that I might deliver you from your tendencies toward denial and self-sabotage.”
Now I need to pause here for an exegetical moment, because this is one of the most weaponized scripture passages in the entire history of Christianity, as in: Become a born-again Christian, or else.
But Jesus is not telling Nicodemus to be born again, or else. Jesus is not saying that belief is the key to the kingdom.
Instead, Jesus is trying to explain what God is up to in and through him. And so he refers to an ancient Jewish story, one in which God provided a life-saving sign for the rebellious Israelites. All anyone had to do was to look upon a bronze serpent raised high in the sky and they would be saved from death by snakebite. They didn’t have to believe that looking would save them; they didn’t have to repent of their rebellious ways; they just had to look at and take in what God had provided.
This is the same way that God is loving the world through me, Jesus says. My self-sacrificial love is yet another of God’s attempts to offer everyone a way out of fear, greed, pain, and self-destructive behavior. God’s love-light shining in and through me shows the way to new and meaningful life.
The way to new life, Jesus tells Nicodemus, comes not from us and our beliefs, but from the Spirit of God working within us—opening and softening our hearts, healing our wounds and teaching us how to love, showing up in all kinds of people and places, and slowly giving shape to our transformed lives.
Or, as Henri Nouwen put it: “You don’t think your way into a new kind of living. You live your way into a new kind of thinking.”
It is the project and practice of a lifetime.
All we need do is be willing. All we need do is trust. All we need do is wake up, pay attention, join together, trust the goodness of God in our bodies, celebrate the wisdom of God in community, and put ourselves in the path of the Light.
It may sound difficult, and it does, at times, feel daunting. Letting ourselves be born again from above requires practice because the gracious, transforming love of God runs counter to the Great Big Lies: that, one, because we are not enough we must devote our lives to pretending and proving that we are; and two, that we are different and better and more deserving of the good life than other people, creatures, and creation itself.
Against that, Jesus speaks the gospel truth: That when we acknowledge our powerlessness and open our hearts, the Spirit of Love will get to work within us, bringing us new life. All we need to do is practice staying open and connected to that Love; all we have to do is let our lives be shaped by that Love. Grace will take care of the rest.
Even Nicodemus, who scoffed at the notion of being born again, was, well, born again. The man who’d been so afraid of human judgment that he first went to Jesus under cover of darkness shows up again in John’s gospel. After the crucifixion, Nicodemus arrives carrying a heavy mixture of burial spices, and it is Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea who anoint Jesus’ dead body in myrrh and aloe, wrap it in linen cloths, and leave it in the tomb.
In that moment of unbearable loss and grief, Nicodemus may have marveled at the sharp turn his own life had taken.
But in three days he would have still another experience of new life. Again, he would say, “How can this be?”
And that, beloveds, is the journey of faith.
