There
was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night
and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God;
for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you,
no one can see the kingdom of God without being born anew.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born
after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be
born?” Jesus answered, “Very truly,
I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and
Spirit. What is born of the flesh is
flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You
must be born anew.’ The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of
it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the
Spirit.” Nicodemus said to him, “How
can these things be?” Jesus answered
him, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?” (John 3:1-10)
Born
again, in protestantism at any rate,
conjures up an emotional rite of passage, typically in adolescence, in which
you are thought to give your heart to Jesus.
The Billy Graham crusades in NZ in the late 1950s made much of
this. I read about the last American
President that he was born again… although it was scarcely apparent to me. They seemed to assume this would resonate
with the voters.
The
Greek anōthen (ἄνωθεν) means literally
from above, but it can also mean anew, afresh, again. Nicodemus himself initially understood it naively:
Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born? The crucial sentence here however is
about the wind: The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of
it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the
Spirit. The problem with this is
that it sounds so elemental. Why would I
want to be blown around by the wind, like leaves on the driveway? The wind can be exciting, out on Kawau Bay,
it may be, or on the South Col of Everest.
But we like having suitable shelter… “Sing out if you’re in a draught”…
a draught was bad, to our parents’ generation, you might get a chill.
This
is where some of us find the Benedictines quite helpful. One of the three pillars of the Benedictine
approach is called in Latin conversatio.
It is an ongoing process of newness, day by day. The wind is decidedly outside our control. As Jesus pointed out, you can never be sure
which direction it will blow in, or its strength, or how long it will last. Even on a still morning, with Kawau Bay like
glass, the air is moving. At other times
it may blow old stuff clean away. Conversatio
means standing in the wind, availability to change, making friends with
difference, distinguishing risk from recklessness… there are times when it has
meant making friends with the inevitable… or as the Japanese Emperor told his
people in 1945, enduring the unendurable. It is understanding that this is the wind of
God’s Spirit, the Spirit of the Risen Christ.[1] The newness continues each day… a new wisdom,
a fresh insight, a rediscovery of something old, but now with new meaning or
importance; some great hump from the past suddenly isn’t like that anymore… Jesus was inviting Nicodemus, this leader of
the Jews, to get out and stand in the wind.
Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these
things?
[1] Interestingly,
for Benedictines, this pillar of life, conversatio, stands alongside
another pillar, stabilitas, stability – yet another illustration of the
facility mature Christians develop, finding truth in what seems contradictory.
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