Long Beginning
Genesis 12:1-4; John 3:1-17

February 24, 2002

You may have heard about the Big Bang: it could be the reason we are here today to talk about it. A lot of matter condensed together until it exploded, creating the universe. The Earth was one of the pieces which gradually cooled down enough to foster life as we know it. The Big Bang was when time began.

There is lots of debate about the Big Bang, not least of which, what was happening before the beginning? It is almost impossible for us to conceive of a beginning without anything preceding it. The medieval theologians called God's act of creation to be ex nihilo, out of nothing. Yet, even Genesis 1 cannot speak that way, for the earth was a formless void and a darkness covered the face of the deep. It may have been formless, chaotic, but there was something before God made something more out of it.

The brief story of God appearing to Abram is usually interpreted as the real beginning of the Biblical story. Abram is the first Jew, which the Evangelist Matthew underlines in the genealogy of Jesus in the first chapter of the Gospel. Matthew begins the family tree, not with Adam as Luke does, but with Abraham.

This is the beginning of the long story, but there is a prelude that matters. We aren't starting from scratch.

Last week, we heard Adam and Eve's faux pas, but then Cain's antipathy towards his brother went far beyond eating at the wrong restaurant. Gradually, human behaviour deteriorated to the point that God concluded it had been a mistake. A new start had to be made: Noah walked with God and the floods came. God had no stomach for what happened and resolved to effect change differently next time.

Yet it all wound down again as the Tower of Babel demonstrated humanity's continual desire to wrench away God's power from him. Nothing has changed with our technological towers.

Things are bad, the human experiment has failed again - and how are we to doubt that? Abram appears unobtrusively without heralding. He moved with his father from Ur of the Chaldees to Haran in northern Mesopotamia, and he marries Sarai, but she is barren. Nothing is working, there is no hope for the future.

God speaks to Abram, no lights, no born again experience, just talks to him about how it will now be different. God is creating again, and starting with a 75-year-old with no children. A new place, a new people, a new purpose to life is the creation.

We know how the story stumbles along. Isaac the almost-sacrificed, Jacob the holy scoundrel, Joseph the one sold to slavery who administers the greatest kingdom, the people Israel enslaved until Moses leads them to the freedom of wandering.

A conquering nation, David and Solomon's glories, then once again defeat and exile, and once more freedom into the wilderness, but for Israel there is no more freedom. Nicodemus sneaks into the night to visit Jesus when Israel is no more, occupied by the greatest nation of antiquity. What glory Rome?

Born again? Nicodemus couldn't believe his ears, nor his mind. He had worked long and hard and had reached the pinnacle of Judaism as a member of the Pharisees.. He was educated, could read and write (when perhaps only 10% of the population could), most likely knew the Scriptures by heart. Now he would have to be born again, twice-born, as if none of what he had become counted.

Born again. John's Gospel plays upon the word after born. Jesus meant born "from above," a spatial metaphor indicating a spiritual change; while Nicodemus heard him talk in terms of time, born "again." He believed Jesus meant to repeat his life, to do the same thing all over again.

But this time God got it right. No more floods or natural disasters or acts of God. Focusing on one family, one nation, one land, didn't go far enough. This time God became human and a new human being was born.

Not just a repetition of our weaknesses and faults and sins, but a different way of living, a new creation. When anyone is born again, he or she sees the world through different eyes, through God's eyes.

If you have been a member of a Christian church for any length of time, you probably know by heart Jesus' description of this new vision of a new creation. It's almost a mantra among many Christians. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life."

God loves the world, though few others do. God gave of his own intimate nature so that we might see and experience and imitate God's love and being.

It is possible to have a born again experience and not have it change your life. Happens all the time when people believe it is something special which confers honour and prestige to themselves. I know someone has been born again, born differently, when I hear that as a result of an accident, a near death, a death in the family, or simply the grace of one's eyes being turned a different direction, a man or woman observes that now they no longer take time for granted, that they live each day to the fullest, one day at a time.

To appreciate every minute, every hour, is to understand that God has created every second for us to use, and each moment needs to be enjoyed, celebrated, and not squandered.

Yes, you accomplish a lot more, but seeing time that way changes your perspective in everything you see and do. People are now God's creation, faulty of course, but deserving only of the love God offered us through his only Son.

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