Pastor Thanael Certa-Werner
Scripture | John 3:1-8 (NIV)
3 Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus who was a member of the Jewish ruling council. 2 He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.” 3 Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.” 4 “How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!” 5 Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. 6 Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. 7 You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ 8 The 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.”
We are starting a two-part series looking at the sacraments. To start, it’s hard to have a discussion on the sacraments without knowing what sacraments are. So, what are sacraments? The easiest way to describe them is to say they are the practices which Christ specifically calls all Christians to do. In The United Methodist Church, we hold two of them: Holy Communion and Baptism.
To dive just a bit deeper: the word for sacrament in Greek, mysterion, means mystery, while the Latin work for sacrament is sacramentum which means vow or promise. These two words expose more of what the Sacraments are. In one sense, they are a part of the mystery of Jesus Christ – reminding us that He is the ultimate sacrament. “In the coming of Jesus of Nazareth, God’s nature and purpose were revealed and active through a human body” (This Holy Mystery). In this sense, sacraments are the indwelling and active work of the Holy Spirit displayed through human signs and actions.
They are also a reminder of God’s constant promise of grace given to us. While grace is given to us in any way and at any time that the Holy Spirit chooses, “Holy Baptism and Holy Communion have been chosen and designated by God as special means through which divine grace comes to us.” We take part in the sacraments not just because we’ve done this for a long time, but to remember and experience the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in our midst and to partake in the grace openly offered to everyone through Baptism and Holy Communion.
This week, let’s dive deep into baptism. To begin, think of the last time you had to do dishes. If you’re like me and living without a dishwasher, you were probably thinking how much you’d rather be doing dishes with a dishwasher. Still, there are others, like my dad, who insist that a dishwasher can never accomplish what you can with a sink, a sponge, and determination and I must admit, there can be some special moments when washing the dishes yourself.
Do you have that one pan which is the WORST to clean? It’s got those terrible edges you can never get into, corners which make it impossible to get stuff out of or there’s the pot you’ve been putting off cleaning for a long time. It’s greasy, it’s charred, the food has been stuck on that pot longer than it was on your shelf. It’s terrible to clean these types of things – but when you put in the elbow grease and finally get them clean after literal elbow grease, it is an amazing feeling.
Sometimes I look at those dirty dishes, though, and think I should really just get rid of this and get a new one. It’d be easier than trying to clean up this terrible mess. This pan is too crusty, too grimy, too greasy to ever become clean so it’s not even worth the effort. I’ll just get a new one. The sad reality is that this can be how we see ourselves.
We look at how we’ve lived our lives and how we’ve made terrible mistakes which have hurt ourselves and others; we look at how we’ve made promises only to break them, how we’ve lied to ourselves that we’re living a good life so we wouldn’t have to deal with the fact that we’re not; when we take an honest look at ourselves and see how greasy, stained, and charred we are from life and think, there is no Dawn dish soap powerful enough, no bleach potent enough to erase away this from me. I’m permanently dirty, and there’s no point in trying to even get clean.
In our scripture for today, Jesus tackles this problem. Nicodemus, a priest from the temple, came to talk with Jesus and to learn from him. After he greets Jesus, Jesus immediately gives Nicodemus a lesson in dealing with dirty dishes.
He says, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.” 4 “How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!” 5 Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit.” We don’t know why Jesus leads in with this statement. Nicodemus had said nothing before this to indicate that he needed to hear this, but clearly Jesus knew this was something Nicodemus needed to hear.
Jesus says that in order to see the kingdom of God, we must be born again. I think Nicodemus has a point when he asks, what on earth do you mean, Jesus? We can’t be born again! But what Jesus is talking about is not a physical birth again, but one of the Spirit. He says, “Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.” We have all been born of flesh, without choice, but now we have the choice to be birthed by the Spirit.
What’s exciting about what Jesus says is that we must be born of both water and Spirit. Water is what cleanses us on the outside. We use it every day to wash our bodies, our hair, our dishes, our cars, our clothing. Everything which is dirty and needs to be cleaned is washed with water. Even during this time, the Jews would take special baths in water to clean them in order that they would be able to enter the temple.
But this is only the first step. After we wash ourselves on the outside, we need to wash ourselves on the inside. Jesus isn’t talking about brushing your teeth rather washing our souls by the power of the Holy Spirit. He’s telling us that it’s easy to clean ourselves on the outside, but the challenge is cleaning ourselves on the inside – to be born again by the Spirit.
Notice, however, that Jesus does not say you need to be this clean to be born of the Spirit. There is no minimum requirement for baptism when it comes to being sin-free. In fact, the whole reason Jesus is telling us that we need to clean both the outside as well as inside of our bodies is because we are dirty! There is no possible way for us to be too dirty for the Holy Spirit to make us clean again. It is impossible for us to have too much grease in the cracks, too much scratches or dents for Christ to make us clean.
Jesus says in Mark 2:7, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” We are the sick, the dirty, the sinners and we are who Jesus has come to save. Through Baptism, we are washed clean, not just on the outside but our entire being is washed clean. We are given a clean slate as if nothing had ever happened before.
But with new birth comes death. It sounds scary, but there is no way to talk about new life without something passing away. In baptism, we embrace a new way of life and in doing so, we are also rejecting the old way of living we used to hold to. Just as dishes lose the grim and slime which they went into the sink with, we loose the parts of ourselves which keep us sinful when we are washed by water and the Spirit.
Baptism also means a death to other ways of living. When we are baptized, we publicly proclaim for ourselves or for our children that we are choosing the path of life Jesus has set before us. As Jesus says in our text, “The 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.” We’re not going to choose to live as we want, but as the Holy Spirit chooses. We no longer chase after those things which gave us pleasure or took hold of our lives before. We give up chasing after money, authority, control, sex, food, or experiences and instead decide to live lives like Jesus as servants of humanity who love God first and love our neighbors as ourselves.
This is challenging work – to turn our backs on the ways in which the world lives around us and to decide instead to live in a way which is completely different from that of the world. So, Christ has given us a constant reminder of the grace which has been given to us through baptism by placing water throughout our lives. Whenever we do dishes, or take a shower, or swim in a stream we are reminded on the cleansing waters of baptism which have washed over us and that we are made new in the Spirit.
So our challenge for this week: 1) To remember our vows of baptism, 2) To give up our old ways, 3) To learn more about the ways of God, 4) And to live into those ways with the help of the Holy Spirit. This is a challenge for us, but one which we do not take on alone. The Holy Spirit is here to constantly guide us in the ways of godliness that we may become more like Him who extends grace to us now. May it be so. Amen? Amen!