Some of you have heard this story before –it has been making the rounds the last couple of weeks. It’s about a congregation that undertook a long and diligent search for a new minister – and at last settled on one.
On the first Sunday, the new minister went into the pulpit and delivered an absolutely amazing sermon. Everyone was deeply moved. They laughed, they cried, they were filled with awe. On the way out the door at the end of the service they congratulated the minister on his wonderful sermon, and when they got to the parking lot they congratulated each other on the wonderful choice they had made when they selected the new minister.
On the second Sunday, the new minister went up into the pulpit and delivered exactly the same sermon has he had the week before. Again people were deeply moved – but some scratched their heads and wondered what was going on. But, they gave the new minister the benefit of the doubt – perhaps he had just picked up the wrong notes on the way to church that morning – and they didn’t say too much.
On the third Sunday the minister once again gave exactly the same sermon as he had on the first and second Sundays. This time there was widespread consternation. The elders immediately called a meeting with the minister and asked him what was going on.
“Pastor”, they said, “The sermon you preached today is a really great sermon – and we all are deeply impressed by your ability – but you’ve delivered it three times now. Don’t you know any other sermons?”
“Oh, yes!” replied the new minister, “I have scads of them – and they are all just as good as the one you just heard.”
“Well then,” replied the elders, “Why don’t you preach one of them next week?”
“I’m not going to do that”, the minister replied, “until all of you have started following the message of the first one.”
Today I have a new sermon, but I have an old message, a message each one of us needs to hear and to accept. It’s the message of salvation. And it is found in the Bible- and especially it is found in the New Testament passage we heard read this morning– the passage concerning Jesus’s conversation with Nicodemus – where, and I quote, he says to Nicodemus:
“I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”
Some of you here today probably had, at one time or another, the reaction that Nicodemus had to that word from our Lord.
You have felt confused by what Jesus said, and with Nicodemus you may have wanted to say: “How can a person be born when they are old? Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb?”
Others who are less literal than Nicodemus – others who understand the image of rebirth, may still have problems with the message that Jesus gives and the particular language that Jesus uses in today’s gospel story because it
reminds you of all those Saturday morning door knockers and Sunday morning TV evangelists who get in our faces and ask the same question in one of two ways- and often in both – “Are you saved?” – “Have you been born again??”
For some reason a lot of people who come to church, and a lot more who do not, resent that question – in either way it may be asked.
Why is that anyway?
Unbelievers most often resent it because they feel put down by it. – They feel that the person asking them the question is trying to sell them a bill of goods. – That the doorknocker doesn’t really care for them or want to understand them. – That the TV evangelist is simply trying to thrust a bunch of doctrine and mumbo-jumbo at them and scoop their money from their pockets.
That may or may not be true– it depends on who is asking the question -and why they are asking it.
But why do so many church people resent the question?? Especially when the answer ought to be so easy to give??
The things of God are always simple in this way, at least when they come down to the basics.
The basics are known in our hearts simply because we all were made by God and I’m not talking here about the basics of morality – I’m not talking about whether we believe in loving one another and in forgiving one another – as we ourselves hope they will forgive us.
I’m talking about the basic thing in us that lets us know whether or not we have actually connected with the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob – the thing deep down in us that tells us whether or not the God and Father of Christ Jesus our Lord actually lives within us.
You see – God made us in such a way that ultimately it is not enough for each one of us simply to believe in Him as a force who permeates the world- and especially nature.
Most everyone believes in this way – yet our corporations and our companies still rape and pillage our environment – and we ourselves, in personal and particular ways, still hurt our brothers and our sisters and ourselves.
Everything is not right either in us or around us.
God wants us to connect to him personally: – to connect to him as one who is able to guide and direct us in our daily affairs – to connect to him as one who parents us – who is a father to us; – to connect to God as a Father – and to Jesus as a brother – as one who is here to walk with us each day.

God wants us to connect with him as one who nurtures us: – as a mother nurtures her children – as the rain nurtures the dry ground
– as a friend nurtures another friend at a table – with bread and wine and a communion of mind and heart and soul.
God wants to birth us into a new family, his own special family: – where his love rules – and his mercy and forgiveness washes and cleanses – and his spirit gives energy and the seal to the promise of eternal life.
God wants us to know that with him there is a new life to be had and a whole new world a coming that, as it was for Abraham in this morning’s Old Testament reading, there is a whole new land out there for us -and that all we have to do is trust in God and set forth on the journey he calls us to make, the journey of faith.
“Truly, truly, I say to you – no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again”
It’s a process my friends, this being born again. It is journey: – a journey of faith that leads us to places we have not been before – a journey that calls us like Abraham away from our old and familiar and lives into a great adventure where we become part of a great nation destined to dwell in a great land.
It is an event – a process – that has a beginning – a place in which we ultimately say Yay or Nay to the Lord our Savior and an end – when we do not know – when we inherit the kingdom that has been prepared for us.
The journey of faith – the kind of journey that Abraham made and which tradition tells us that Nicodemus also made is a tremendous journey: – a journey we should be glad we are on – a journey we need to be on.
It is a journey that gives us new life – which causes us to be reborn -and it begins – and it ends – in saying, “I believe Lord, and I will follow.”