Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish ruling council. He came to Jesus at night and said, "Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him."
In reply Jesus declared, "I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again."
"How can a man be born when he is old?" Nicodemus asked. "Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb to be born!"
Jesus answered, "I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, 'You must be born again.' 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." "How can this be?" Nicodemus asked.
John 3:1-9
On February 12, 1993, a small boy who was to turn three in March was taken from a shopping mall in Liverpool by two 10 year old boys. Jamie Bulger walked away from his mother for only a second and Jon Venables took his hand and led him out of the mall with his friend Robert Thompson. They took Jamie on a walk for over 2 and a half miles, along the way stopping every now and again to torture the poor little boy who was crying constantly for his mummy. Finally they stopped at a railway track where they brutally kicked him and threw stones at him and rubbed paint in his eyes.
Two days later, Jamies' remains were found on a lonely stretch of railroad track. He was naked from the waist down — his shoes, socks, trousers, and underpants had been taken off. His penis had been manipulated by his abductors. Once he was dead, his killers laid him on the tracks, and his body was cut in two by a passing train. Venables and Thompson were taken into custody a few days later. Each sought to blame the other for the killing, but both eventually confessed. They were tried, found guilty of murder, sentenced, and placed in separate detention homes. They were only 10 years old.
The judge at Venables' and Thompson's November 1993 trial set an 8-year tariff. Once the tariff has been satisfied, they were to be assessed on the basis of the likely risk they would pose to the outside community. They were to be eligible for release once the tariff has been served, provided they did not impress the court as posing a danger to society.
8 years later on 8 January 2001, Venables and Thompson were set to be released. The High Court of England guaranteed both Venables and Thompson lifelong anonymity plus an unprecedented open-ended injunction barring any publicity about them. Each of these young men were released in June 2001 when they were 18.
As you can imagine, there was tremendous public outcry against the decision to release Venables and Thompson. I was a student in London at that time, and for days on end, the Venables and Thompson case hoarded the headlines. Yes, what they did to Jamie Bulger was horrific. I am not sure if Jamie’s family could ever recover from it. But what really struck me at that time, was the fact that Venables and Thompson, both 18, had to assume a completely different identity somewhere in the UK. They would be given new names, a completely new and untrue set of personal history which they have to live by. They are not to turn around and respond to anyone calling them Jon or Robert. They are not to talk about what had happened, for their own safety. How could anyone live like that? Is it possible to forget one’s own identity just like that, by stroke of the law, and be a brand new and tailor-made person overnight? It really bugged me. I have forgotten all about this case since 2001, until it all came back as I was preparing this sermon.
‘How can this be?’ is the same question Nicodemus asks Jesus. "How can a man be born when he is old? Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb to be born!" But that is what Jesus says we must do in order to see the Kingdom of God. I think most of us make light of this statement the countless times we have read it. After all, the term ‘Born Again’ is familiar to most Christians who attend church, bible study and what have you. Born again – I know what that means. It means to believe that Jesus died for my sins. And if I believe in the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, my sins are forgiven and I will spend eternity with God in heaven. Period. That sounds too easy and not very transformational. Surely ‘Born Again’ has implications of starting all over again. Nicodemus’ remark on entering the mother’s womb again sounds somewhat ridiculous, but it does express the idea of starting over again, beginning with a clean slate, a new identity. Is that what Jesus is alluding to? Some of us wish that we could be a bit taller, have better skin, broader shoulders, bigger dick, nicer breasts and so on. Unless we go for an extreme makeover, we know very well this is wishful thinking and it’s not going to happen. Most of us just live with it, even though some have tragically ended their lives because they could not accept themselves. Some of us wish we were born of a different set of parents and family. But we also know history cannot be undone, we try our best to live with the consequences of our personal history. Is what the English legal system tried to do for Venables and Thompson possible? Is it possible to leave the past behind and assume a completely new identity? Is this what Jesus would have us do in order to see the Kingdom of God?
Most of us would not have to experience what Venables and Thompson are experiencing now. So we may have to stretch our minds to the times in our lives where we began to see or understand certain issues in a completely different light, so drastically different that it impacts the way we make sense of this world and our lives.
The prophet Jeremiah speaks of a new era. Jeremiah 31:31-34.
31 "The time is coming," declares the LORD,
"when I will make a new covenant
with the house of Israel
and with the house of Judah.
32 It will not be like the covenant
I made with their forefathers
when I took them by the hand
to lead them out of Egypt,
because they broke my covenant,
though I was a husband to them, "
declares the LORD.
33 "This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel
after that time," declares the LORD.
"I will put my law in their minds
and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.
34 No longer will a man teach his neighbor,
or a man his brother, saying, 'Know the LORD,'
because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest,"
declares the LORD.
"For I will forgive their wickedness
and will remember their sins no more."
How can the law be written in our minds and on our hearts? The law was written on Tablets of stone by the finger of God as recorded in Ex 31:18.
When the LORD finished speaking to Moses on Mount Sinai, he gave him the two tablets of the Testimony, the tablets of stone inscribed by the finger of God.
How is one supposed to make sense of what the prophet Jeremiah is saying? Why would we not be required to teach our neighbours about God anymore? That’s what our religious leaders and teachers of the law are supposed to do, teach us what to do and what not to do as written on the stone tablets so that we would live a life pleasing to God, and presumably be closer to him. But it seems the consequence of the law written in our hearts is that we will know God. A short cut? How does it work? How strange and incomprehensible?
Perhaps Jeremiah is saying that unless we experience emotionally (our heart) and intellectually (our mind) the God behind each law, we labour and keep the laws in vain. We may have the perfect record, we would still miss the point entirely. How easy it is to rattle off the Lord’s prayer by heart!
Our Father, who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy Name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done,
On earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
and the power,
and the glory,
for ever and ever. Amen.
But do we know what it means to forgive and be forgiven? Not until we are required to forgive someone do we realize how incredibly difficult that can be for there is always justification why our neighbour does not deserve our forgiveness. But God forgives anyway.
A few years ago, a member of our church cheated on his partner of 3 years. I remember a common friend said to him, ‘how could you have done that? I am so disappointed with you.’ Perhaps he might have a different perspective of the situation if he himself had also in a moment of weakness done the same thing. I am not saying cheating on one’s partner is acceptable. I am just wondering aloud how often we say things with our minds without understanding what it means emotionally. To know the God behind the law, we must discover it with our heart and our mind.
Susan and myself were interviewed by Ling a while back as she intended to write an article about FCC and hoped to publish it in some international press. She passed me the draft one Sunday at the service, and while the preacher (I can’t remember who) spoke with fire and passion on some topic which I also can’t remember, I sat at the back row reading the draft. This is called double-tasking. The first thing I spotted was my age. 3 years older than I should be. Hmm…will tell Ling to change that I made a mental note. Then I read a few paragraphs which caused me to pause. And I wondered if that was the message we really want to send out to the public. Let me read them to you:
Church council member Dr. Peter Goh, 33, a civil servant, takes issue with NCCS’s assertion that FCC is promoting the homosexual lifestyle and activities. “It really depends on what they mean by the homosexual lifestyle.
“We all know that straight young people go clubbing, patronising the many nightspots on the island. They drink and drugs are all over the place at parties, but do we come out and say that this is the straight lifestyle? Nobody says that, but they link these things to the gay lifestyle.
“The government bans Nation (Asia’s biggest annual gay party—staged for the past five years in Singapore), citing rampant drug use, but everybody in the scene knows that your ‘regular’ straight parties are the same. So, they have to come out and say just what is the gay lifestyle, and how it’s different from the straight lifestyle.”
“But I believe our duty as a church is to encourage a responsible lifestyle, whether gay or straight,” says Pastor Tang, “Do straight people, Christian or otherwise, not sleep around?”
Dr. Goh continues, “It is not our place to judge and say what is moral or amoral. We are just saying, be responsible.”
I can just imagine people in the mainline churches say, ‘See I told you, these heretics have no moral stand. They are blatantly condoning drugs and free sex. The kingdom of darkness has surely descended upon us. O God, have mercy upon us!’
There are obviously more politically correct ways to say the same thing. Straight or gay, Christians or not, in FCC or some other famous churches in grand buildings, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Rise beyond the hypocrisy and façade of respectability, and face up to the reality that the imperfect flock of sheep under your charge live imperfect lives in this imperfect world. Nothing is neat and tidy as you would want. Should I come out and say pornography is wrong and condemn anyone who uses it? Let me ask you and if you dare answer me, put up your hands – who would say on hind sight that pornography has been a necessary part of your journey in building your identity as a gay person when you were coming out? Am I pushing the boundaries way too far? What can be more drastic than having to go back into your mother’s womb to be born again?
Jesus went on in that conversation with Nicodemus and said, 16"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16
This is the crux of the matter for Nicodemus. He must be born again in order to understand that salvation does not come about by trying our hardest to follow all the laws as is the pharisee’s job to help the people to achieve. For no one is ever able to achieve that. The concept of a God who demands absolute purity and obedience now takes on a new dimension of love so compelling that would demand one man to die for another. Could God have done it any other way? I suppose so, but would we have understood what he was doing? This new dimension of God speaks of ‘Giving’. The concept of ‘Giving’ lies at the heart of the Christian faith for it is the means by which love is understood.
There is this pastor in Vancouver who always tells the couples he marries that “the ancient gods and demons of childhood will come back and haunt you the moment you pledge yourself unconditionally to one another. And the reason is that the journey to love is fraught with peril. Each stage of our life is marked, not just be love’s triumphs, but also by love’s failures. None of us get to adulthood with our hearts in tact. The failures of love at each stage of our journey come back to haunt us as adults. Many people struggle in their marriage and relationship. Why? One partner has demons within him that needs the selfless giving of the other to soothe, while the partner himself has his own demons. If you would stop doing this or that, I would naturally give you what you want, says one partner. The other partner would says, ‘Well I wouldn’t keep doing this if you had given me what I want in the first place.’ It’s not a matter of compromise, it’s a consequence of the inability to give selflessly to the needs of another while being starved of love yourself. I have no easy answers for anyone. But does this not cause you to realize that the only person in this world whose love encompasses all is God? Instead of viewing our challenging marriage or failed relationships as this dark cloud that does want to go away, let’s see it as a means, an exercise, a channel by which we have a glimpse of God who defines Love itself.
The poet Rilke said, ‘For one human being to love another, this is life’s greatest challenge, the last test and proof, the ultimate, the work for which all other work is but preparation.’ Only one person has completed this work. May we be born again to learn and understand how it was done. Amen.
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