I
Peter 1:17-23
“You have been born anew, not of perishable but
of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God.” [I Peter 1:23]
To be born anew… what
is that about? That was the question
that a man named Nicodemus asked Jesus one time. Jesus had told him,
“Very
truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from
above.” 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?” [John 3:3-4]
It’s a good point. The Greek phrase that the Bible uses here can
be translated as “born from above” or “born again” or “born anew”. The meanings are pretty much indivisible. Nicodemus,
however, tried to split it up. He went
with the most physical, least imaginative way he could have taken it, maybe
because it brushes off the idea that an older person can undergo the kind of
life change that comes along with spiritual renewal. Nicodemus was old, by his own estimation, and
there’s this idea that we all have on some level that after a certain point you
become so set in your ways that you turn into a fossil. It’s not just a modern attitude. The word “curmudgeon” goes back at least to
the year 1568, so the idea of the cranky old man who’s convinced everything is
going steadily downhill goes back far beyond that.
Nobody
expects people of a certain age to change much.
“You can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” right? Of course, that overlooks the fact that
seniors or elders actually deal with a lot of difficult change on a regular
basis. They see people who have been
part of their lives for decades move away or become incapacitated or die. Maybe they themselves are the ones who suddenly
have to leave a house where they’ve been comfortable for a long time on their
own and find themselves sharing a smaller setting with family or in a care
facility where they no longer determine for themselves when supper will be or
if they can keep a pet. Not all the
changes are negative, mind you. It can
be a big relief for some people not to have to deal with the snow shoveling or
the broken water heater, and a great joy to be around children who keep things
lively. But it is change, and change can
take work.
Nicodemus
shows up two more times in John’s gospel after his first meeting with
Jesus. That first time he went to see
Jesus at night, fearful of being seen consulting with him. The second time, the Pharisees were trying to
silence or arrest a man whose sight Jesus had restored, and Nicodemus spoke up
in his defense [John 7:50-52] and the Pharisees gave him a hard time about it. The last time we see him is on Good
Friday. When most of the disciples have
fled, he goes against the other religious leaders and in a dangerous step joins
Joseph of Arimathea in taking Jesus’ body from the cross to give him a decent
burial [John 19:49].
Tell
me he did not discover what it meant to be born anew. And if he could be born anew, a man who (as a
leader in his society) had a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, who cannot?
What brings the change, what encourages even
someone who would most likely long for and relish stability and constancy above
all else to meet bravely and even embrace the risks of living fully is “the living and enduring word of God.”
[I Peter 1:23] That makes the difference
between the curmudgeon and the sage.
Faith makes it possible to be born anew, to set behind all that is past,
both the bad parts for which we are offered forgiveness, and the good that
sometimes also needs to be let go. In
the words of Alfred Tennyson,
“The old order changeth, yielding place to new,
And God fulfills himself in many ways
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.”[1]
One
of my personal heroes is my cousin Peg.
Seven years ago I went to see her in Lititz to congratulate her on her
hundredth birthday. She was very
excited, not so much about turning 100, but she told me that she was moving to
Kansas, where her son and his family live.
She would be leaving the next morning.
Mind you, except for a few years in Philadelphia, she had lived her
whole life in Lancaster County. We
talked about a lot of things but the time came to say, “Goodbye,” and she did
that in a way I will never forget. She
said, “Well, I don’t think we’ll see one another again in this world, but I
know we’ll have a chance to get caught up again on everything in heaven.” Wow!
The ability to speak like that, and do it from the heart, comes from
faith in Jesus and his victory over death.
“Through him you have
come to trust in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that
your faith and hope are set on God. Now
that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth so that you
have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply from the heart. You have been born anew, not of
perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of
God.” [I Peter 1:21-23]
But let’s not put any age
limitations on that kind of faith. The
new birth is available to anyone at any time.
It is a gift from God that comes through faith and comes to anyone who
asks, and it changes how they see the world and how they live within it. As John Wesley put it,
“the love of the world
is changed into the love of God; pride into humility; passion into meekness;
hatred, envy, malice, into a sincere, tender, disinterested love for all
[hu]mankind. In a word, it is that
change whereby the earthly, sensual, devilish mind is turned into the ‘mind
which was in Christ Jesus.’ This is the nature of the new birth.”[2]
That
is what I invite you to receive from God today.
[1]
from “The Passing of Arthur” in Idylls of
the King.
[2]
John Wesley, “The New Birth”, Sermons
(45, II, 5.) at http://new.gbgm-umc.org/umhistory/wesley/sermons/45/
.
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