Begin Again
Genesis 12:1-4; John 3:1-17

February 17, 2008


No one’s story starts completely fresh without any precedent. We begin at the beginning, but there is always a story behind us. Abram’s story seems to begin out of the blue, just a lone person in a random city, just out standing in his field.

He wasn’t alone and there are 11 chapters in Genesis before he is standing on the stage, though the tales of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah and his sons, are treated as more of distant relations with a foggy relationship to us now. Many of us have been regaled the legends of our ancestors, and either burst with undeserved pride or laugh at our genetically-related flops.

The Australian Methodist/Uniting Church minister I served under years back was Jim Cain. The surest way to get a rise out of Jim was to speculate about the vague past of his family. “Gee, Jim, Cain spelled like the brother of Abel. Given Australia’s history as a penal colony, do you think your ancestor was a fratricidal murderer?” Jim’s predictable response was that those were fighting words.

A few months ago I received an updated genealogy of the Kitchen family. In confusing detail it took me back to 1800 when Uriah Kitchens was born in Georgia. I knew that from previous investigations. However, that was the earliest the name Kitchen was mentioned as the rest of the tree went off to the families of the wives. Goes back into the 1600’s and there are a number of Dutch connections, and then I must have fallen asleep over a few generations, and there it is: King Edward of England. Keep going back and it’s kings all the way. William the Conqueror, of course, and all the way back to the 800’s. Always felt I had a royal touch.

Did Abram out standing in his field in Ur of the Chaldees, modern day Iraq, know about his ancestors or even know about God? The Lord God Yahweh was known, but not universally, for only certain people seemed to know and worship Yahweh. There was no organized practice of worship and faith. Abram is usually considered the first Jew as well as, of course, the ancestor of Christianity and of Islam. This is where the Story really begins, but it is told so concisely, so sparing of detail, that we tend to miss what really matters.

The Tower of Babel has fallen and all the languages are confused, but the generations march on. Tumbling out of the genealogy list is Abram, son of Terah, and there is nothing to distinguish them except that Terah decided to move to Haran in northern Mesopotamia. Now when Abram is 75 years old, something new happens. Usually at that age, you’ve seen everything, you know all you are probably going to need, and it’s now your job to teach others what the world is like. The best word, though, is “usually.”

For some reason Abram wasn’t usual. Some probably said that he was crazy like Noah, doing something very anti-social and idiosyncratic because there had been this itch in his brain that identified itself to be God, and it told him he was supposed to be leaving his country and his family - what else do you have? - and go where this God will show him. There were obviously more popular gods around back then, gods you could see and imagine, gods you could do something with, but this God had something unusual to demand of him, and maybe Abram was one of those people who responded to such an odd challenge.

This God was requiring Abram to begin again from the beginning, no family, no country, no certainty of destination. Abram is not recorded answering a mumbling word; he just went. Of course, there were perks: your name will be great and your descendants will be a great nation and you will be blessed and a blessing to others. Great promises, although when you get down to it, more than a little vague.

Just for the record, Abram would not always be that faithful and compliant and trusting. He and his wife Sarai found themselves repeatedly in trouble, such as the times Sarai was taken as a concubine and Abram told them she was his sister to save his neck. Abram would have children by his wife’s handmaids in order to make sure the dream would continue and then there was the Ishmael catastrophe. Abram began a new life, but with no loud bang. He was beginning again, born again, yet he kept needing to be reminded just what kind of a new life he was meant to be living.

Years later, a curious member of the Jewish Sanhedrin, a descendant of Abram, traveled to meet another child of Abram to talk about the important stuff of faith. It has never been really that safe to talk about the matters of the heart, for politics and religion always find themselves entangled. Nicodemus knew that his position of power and prestige and privilege would be in jeopardy, perhaps his life, if he were publicly seen talking with this itinerant Galilean preacher Jesus of Nazareth. When that is an issue, you go by night, invisibly.

When they sat down together, Nicodemus doesn’t really ask a question, but tells Jesus what he sees, which is a way of making his soul visible. “We know that you are a teacher come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do, unless God is with him.” His colleagues on the Council, however, would have told him, no, Jesus is a fake, a sensationalist manipulator who doesn’t follow the rules of our faith. Yet, Nicodemus seems to understand that it’s not all about following the rules, that real faith, faith which issues out of a relation with the living God, is something deeper that resists being codified and put down into neat columns in books.

Nicodemus did not formally ask a question, he just put it a different way, “how does truly live with God?” Jesus’ response catches the tone in his companion’s soul, “Unless one is born anew, one cannot see the kingdom of God.... Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, one cannot enter the kingdom of God.” That phrase is meant to be a play on all sorts of words. Born anew, born from above, born from heaven, born again. Nicodemus thinks Jesus is talking biology; he is back to the rules of faith. Jesus goes on to explain the poetry of how the Spirit works, but Nicodemus can only read prose. We never hear whether Nicodemus got the point in the end.

Unfortunately, being born again was quickly encased in a bunch of rules. There are lot more Nicodemuses in the churches than want to be admitted. It’s even part of our own tradition that a born again experience, happening in a singular moment, readily remembered and dated, is still considered the test of whether God has adopted you. Back in the 1600s and 1700s in order to become a member of the church you had to go to the pastor and convince him that you had had an authentic and verifiable born again experience. You could not baptize your children without that membership nor receive communion, nor own property in the community! In time, we lightened up and realized that to be born again is actually fairly rare, a true act of grace and not necessarily the most important kind. Most of us change more slowly, and when we are changing it is not a complete and absolute change.

Abram heard that mysterious God and he went in the direction God pointed, but he certainly messed up along the way trying to get it right. Simply, he began again at the age of 75 from the beginning and tried to do it right again. So you and I are not left off the hook. You do have to be born again, but just as with Nicodemus’ thickness of understanding, it is not only a sudden flash from the heavens that instantly reshapes your mind, soul, and life. To begin again from the beginning, slowly with plenty of false turns and mistakes along the way, is what we are doing when that itch in our brain keeps not getting scratched. There are no rules, but rest assured, there is the Spirit of God that keeps guiding you and putting you back on the right track.

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan