John 3: 1-17

Romans 8: 12-17

God’s Children

Elizabeth Macaulay

The Rev. Dr. Robert Tuttle was the conference teacher this year at Annual Conference. He is an evangelist. That’s a word that can make some polite Christians shudder with distaste.

Tuttle wears the label proudly - evangelist. He is an evangelist because he believes that the good news of Jesus Christ is a word of hope and vision to a world more and more strangled by fear and despair.

He’s an evangelist, because he believes that we Christians have traded in the best resource we have - the good news that God walks with us in Jesus and that God is a God a love - for silence.

We Christians - especially those who are left of conservative - have somehow come to believe that it is somehow bad form to talk about our faith. So we don’t invite people to church, even when we can see that they are lost and hurting. And we don’t share with others the way we have found hope through Jesus, even when we know that hope is the reason we don’t drink anymore, or gamble anymore, or feel swamped by despair anymore.

So we don’t share the best thing in our life!

So Robert Tuttle is an evangelist, because he believes the good news of Jesus needs to be shared with all of the enthusiasm we bring to sharing good news of a great movie or restaurant we’ve discovered.

I’m an evangelist, too.

Anyway, while Tuttle was teaching us at Annual Conference, he said you can boil down the teachings of the Bible and you find in doing so that in essence all of the stories and teaching come down to two really clear things that you must do as a people of faith. If you don’t do these things, God gets peeved.

You better take care of the poor.

And, you better remember that you are not God.

So if we are not God, we had better do some thinking about what it means to be in relationship to God. And today’s texts are helpful as we do that thinking.

Nicodemus comes to Jesus under cover of night. It’s an allegory, don’t you think? A way of saying that he isn’t willing to allow the world to see that he is intrigued enough about this Jesus that he wants to engage him? So this leader in his own arena seeks Jesus out at a time when he won’t be seen by others. Maybe a bit like you and I who know that Jesus touches off a hunger for answers in us and we want to know more but we’re not sure we want to be open about our seeking.

Anyway. Nicodemus prompts from Jesus a response that speaks of being born from above. Now, this phrase has been translated to mean “born again”, and we have heard of many who have felt the newness of spirit presence that prompts them to feel born again.

But a careful look at the translation of the Greek word leads us to another interpretation of what Jesus was saying.

The word anothen also means “from above”. Paired with the other words in this passage, I ask us to consider what it means that we are born, each one of us. Given birth and life and soul from above.

This understanding of the translation means that we are, literally, children of God, born through the power of God above, given life from above by the Holy.

AND, that understanding of being born through the power of God meant in the cultural understanding of Jesus’ time that all that is God’s: all of creation. It is inherited by those born of God. That would be you and I. God’s children. Called to be not timid, grave-tending people, but people adventurously expectant, asking God “What’s next, Papa?”

And if God is our one shared parent, the source of life for all, we are all one family.

I want to share two images of what that can mean.

First, a story told by comedian Emo Philips.

I was walking across a bridge on day, and I saw a man standing on the edge, about to jump off. So I ran over and said, “Stop! Don’t do that!”….. There is so much to live for!”

He said, “Like what?” I said, “Well, are you religious or an atheist?” He said, “Religious.” I said, “Me too! Are you Catholic or Protestant?” He said, “Protestant.” I said, “Me too! Are you Episcopalian or Baptist?” He said, “Baptist!” I said, “Wow, me too! Are you Baptist Church of God or Baptist Church of the Lord?” He said, “Baptist Church of God!” I said, “Me too! Are you original Baptist Church of God, or Reformed Baptist Church of God? He said, “Reformed Baptist Church of God!” I said, “Me too! Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1879 , or Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1915?” He said, “Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1915!”

I said, “Die heretic scum,” and pushed him off. (taken from The Sun magazine Sunbeams, April 2006)

OK, contrast that story with this one, the story of Besse Stokes. She would be over one hundred if she were still alive today.

Besse was the child of a Jamaican mother and father. She and her sisters lived in Maine and were orphaned at a very young age, left alone in a country and amongst a people they did not know.

They were placed in a foster home on a farm with a white family. The people who took them in treated them poorly. What Besse and her sister provided was servant help, and what they received was a roof over their heads, and not much more. They were not given shoes that fit nor boots to keep them warm during Maine winters. They lived in misery, and finally had the opportunity to tell the social worker when they came to check in on them.

They were placed with a family in Boston. Again, the family was white. And life was better. Their needs were met, and on Sundays, they even had the chance to get out an move around the city, provided that a member of the family went with them.

In their travels, they neared the color line - the part of town where non white people lived. And this, this was a revelation to Besse, who had never seen so many people who looked like her. She spotted a family on her walk, and ran across the street to marvel at the gift of seeing a girl her age, in the company of a family.

She took up a conversation with the little girl, and the next week when they met again during their walk, she was invited over to their home for Sunday supper. And she was able to go. To be, not servant, but guest.

When she was welcomed into the home, she entered a room where a sacred sort of ritual was going on. The grandmother who had so warmly greeted Besse on the street was sitting in the room on a chair and her hair was loose around her shoulders. And the women folk of the family where brushing her hair. Stroke after stroke, they lavished love and care on the woman who had given them so much.

As Besse watched, awed by this communal sharing of love, she was so moved. Never had she been witness to such tender caring. She didn’t know how to act, and found herself shrinking away.

And then she was offered the brush. Would she like to take her turn combing grandmother’s hair?

With a sense of reverence and wonder, she took her place. With that invitation, she was brought into the family, fully enfolded into something she had only dreamed of knowing for herself. And so it was that Besse Stokes became kin. Bound forever heart to heart. She didn’t share blood, but she was family.

And never did she forget what it meant to feel lonely and alone and afraid. She came to be the kind of woman who opened her home and heart and who brought those she encountered into the fold of family, whether they were blood or not. The lonely, the sick, the frightened. She made family. I know this, because she took my husband in when he was a seminarian in Boston. And she taught him much about the ways of Christian love and ministry.

So… we can be the kind of people who push those different from us off of the cliffs of our judgment, or we can pick up a comb, or kneel at the feet of our friends, or open the doors of our church.

We are people born from above. Seeking to live as family here on earth. Children of God. May it be so.

Amen