The Reverend Max Lynn, Pastor

I was a teenager, maybe sixteen, hanging out in the street in the late afternoon. Two evangelists came up and asked me "Are you ‘Born Again?’" "Are you ‘saved?’" "I think so", I replied. "Well, you either know it or not." The fact is that I wanted be saved. I had always struggled with my faith and I didn’t want to struggle. I wanted to be walloped by belief in God. The evangelists tried to convince me. If I didn’t feel born again, then it was somehow my fault. I was insincere in giving my life up to God. I needed to pray again, with real feeling this time. And so we prayed together there, in the street, that I would accept Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior, that I would be born again. The two evangelists left, looking extremely pleased with themselves for adding another notch on their belt.

Somehow I felt uncomfortable with these believers and their unflinching self-assurance. Somehow the show of self-assured faith seemed, paradoxically, to reveal spiritual weakness. Indeed, in the conversations with evangelicals, my doubts often seemed to threaten their faith and salvation more than it did mine.

Even as I continued to envy a simple unquestioning belief in God, I began to have an almost allergic reation to the question, "Have you been born again?" This question has become a sort of litmus test with all sorts of implications. Being born again seems to come with an individualistic approach to morality and faith. There is a sense that if I have my own personal Jesus, I can just walk off with Him and leave the world behind. Jesus, in this sense offers more than protection from a threatening world, He offers release of responsibility. Dietrich Bonhoeffer called this "cheap grace".

Somehow I don’t think this was Jesus’ or John’s intention. Nevertheless, in allowing the Right to coopt the Bible and images such as being born again, I wonder if we liberals may stop short, like Nicodemus, from the full implications and power of the Gospel. Nicodemus was a member of the Sanhedrin, the powerful religious, political and legal body just below the Roman government. A man of worldly learning who no doubt commanded respect of his own, Nicodemus shows humility and open mindedness to Jesus. And he makes a confession of sorts, calling Jesus a "teacher who has come from God."

Indeed, Jesus is a teacher, but what He is teaching requires more than knowledge or understanding. Jesus offers a total transformation of mystical union with the Spirit.

William Countryman, a professor of New Testament over at the GTU describes "mystical union" in his commentary on the Gospel of John. Mystical Union is "the experience of things or persons outside yourself as direct and unmediated as my experience of myself…It is an opening of two realities into one another." John describes Jesus as a "Door" and a "Way." John sees Jesus as an opening, a portal to the cosmic love and life of the universe. The goal of faith is not to understand but to experience the very Spirit of life. This Spirit does not isolate us from others but connects us to them. The water of baptism symbolizes the amniotic fluid of the womb of the Spirit from which we are born into the mystical union with all life. In Joel we see that when the Spirit of God is renewed, wild animals and pastures, trees and their fruit rejoice and all people join in. Sons and daughters prophesy, old men dream dreams, young men see visions.

That this way of Jesus and his idea of being born again has come to symbolize a selfish, exclusive and irresponsible faith is a tragedy in desperate need of redemption. The idea of being born needs to be born again.

As a youth I struggled with my own worth, with a sense of disconnection and meaninglessness. Then one Summer I went on a backpacking trip with an Episcopal minister and his youth group. One morning the minister woke us up at five in the morning to hike by moonlight to the top of a 13,000 ft. ridge. The minister asked us to take five minutes for silence, just as the sun was rising. He asked us to listen for God. I discovered in those moments a sense of connection to God and to all Creation. God assured me there on the mountain top, that the love and beauty of life would never be overcome by the darkness. Even the darkness was as light to God. I didn’t stop struggling, but I gained a profound sense of hope that the struggle has a purpose and is well worth the effort.

For Jesus, faith is a releasing. It is the farthest thing from a requirement or a duty. On the one hand it is true that we must have faith to see this wonderful reality of God’s cosmic eternal life and love, but the action of faith is more of a letting go of ourselves than a grabbing hold of anything. This is why faith is described as freedom. When we freely let go, then we see, free from the constraints of our minds and bodies, free from our personal limitations and imperfections.

At the same time, being born again, a mystical union with Christ gives us eyes to see our bodies and the physical world with greater truth. And while we are free from the laws and constraints of the world, we want to give ourselves to the world. We give ourselves for others, not out of obligation but out of love, out a desire for all to understand, to see, to join together.

It is not necessary that we all have the same vocabulary, the same names to describe this Way. We are humans and so we live within a language, a tradition and a culture. But language is always limiting and therefore a mixed blessing when used to describe the mystery of the Creator. And so we can say that the Way of Jesus is the Only Way and at the same time say that this way of Jesus may be described without using the word "Way" or the name "Jesus at all". We may call it "mystical union with all life," we may call it "Enlightenment." This other language may help, but surely as we are human, we take this language too and attach our limitations and agendas as well. The point is, here we can use our language and names to see or to blind, to love or to hate. Jesus came that we would see and that we would Love. It is not about the language or name, it is about seeing and loving and being. Still, we ought not give the vocabulary and name of Jesus away to those who abuse them. I am a Christian, I have been born again.

In this new life, while I see in a mirror dimly, I see Jesus and what Jesus saw, the beauty and value of all life. This realization or experience is not something simply to contemplate. It draws me not out of the world and away from people but into the world together with people. The Spirit draws us up to the mountain and back down again.

Friday night I came over to the church to listen to Matthew Fox in a panel discussion during the conference on "Wisdom and Action". Sharif Abdulah, an African American on the panel told this story. A white friend of his invited him to a conference in Africa. He arrived early to discover eight Africans were the first ones there. His friend stuck his head into the tent where people were to gather and asked "Is there anyone here yet?" Sharif looked over and said "No". Apparently they were not "anyone." One of the Africans looked over at Sharif and said, "He does not see." Sharif replied, "I know." The African said, "No, he doesn’t see and we have to see for him." The inclusive unifying love of God is something we allow to transform our lives whether it transforms others or not, until is does.

I finish this sermon and begin my ministry among you with his challenge. Let go with your mind and allow your heart to experience the Spirit of Christ. Open yourself to the transforming power of God’s love. Open yourself to the full way of Christ and you will be, we will be born again.

As a youth I struggled with my own worth, with a sense of disconnection and meaninglessness. Then one Summer I went on a backpacking trip with an Episcopal minister and his youth group. One morning the minister woke us up at five in the morning to hike by moonlight to the top of a 13,000 ft. ridge. The minister asked us to take five minutes for silence, just as the sun was rising. He asked us to listen for God. I discovered in those moments a sense of connection to God and to all Creation. God assured me there on the mountain top, that the love and beauty of life would never be overcome by the darkness. Even the darkness was as light to God. I didn’t stop struggling, but I gained a profound sense of hope that the struggle has a purpose and is well worth the effort.

For Jesus, faith is a releasing. It is the farthest thing from a requirement or a duty. On the one hand it is true that we must have faith to see this wonderful reality of God’s cosmic eternal life and love, but the action of faith is more of a letting go of ourselves than a grabbing hold of anything. This is why faith is described as freedom. When we freely let go, then we see, free from the constraints of our minds and bodies, free from our personal limitations and imperfections.

At the same time, being born again, a mystical union with Christ gives us eyes to see our bodies and the physical world with greater truth. And while we are free from the laws and constraints of the world, we want to give ourselves to the world. We give ourselves for others, not out of obligation but out of love, out a desire for all to understand, to see, to join together.

It is not necessary that we all have the same vocabulary, the same names to describe this Way. We are humans and so we live within a language, a tradition and a culture. But language is always limiting and therefore a mixed blessing when used to describe the mystery of the Creator. And so we can say that the Way of Jesus is the Only Way and at the same time say that this way of Jesus may be described without using the word "Way" or the name "Jesus at all". We may call it "mystical union with all life," we may call it "Enlightenment." This other language may help, but surely as we are human, we take this language too and attach our limitations and agendas as well. The point is, here we can use our language and names to see or to blind, to love or to hate. Jesus came that we would see and that we would Love. It is not about the language or name, it is about seeing and loving and being. Still, we ought not give the vocabulary and name of Jesus away to those who abuse them. I am a Christian, I have been born again.

In this new life, while I see in a mirror dimly, I see Jesus and what Jesus saw, the beauty and value of all life. This realization or experience is not something simply to contemplate. It draws me not out of the world and away from people but into the world together with people. The Spirit draws us up to the mountain and back down again.

Friday night I came over to the church to listen to Matthew Fox in a panel discussion during the conference on "Wisdom and Action". Sharif Abdulah, an African American on the panel told this story. A white friend of his invited him to a conference in Africa. He arrived early to discover eight Africans were the first ones there. His friend stuck his head into the tent where people were to gather and asked "Is there anyone here yet?" Sharif looked over and said "No". Apparently they were not "anyone." One of the Africans looked over at Sharif and said, "He does not see." Sharif replied, "I know." The African said, "No, he doesn’t see and we have to see for him." The inclusive unifying love of God is something we allow to transform our lives whether it transforms others or not, until is does.

I finish this sermon and begin my ministry among you with his challenge. Let go with your mind and allow your heart to experience the Spirit of Christ. Open yourself to the transforming power of God’s love. Open yourself to the full way of Christ and you will be, we will be born again.