1 I lift up my eyes to the hills; * from where is my help to come?
2 My help comes from the Lord, * the maker of heaven and earth.
Last Thursday, Kathy Clausen and I attending a training at the Congregational Church in Lee on building a sanctuary community. The training was offered by Berkshire Interfaith Organizing and taught by Leena Matthew, a community organizer from the Merrimac Valley Project. She shared with us the urgent need for people of faith to be aware and active in supporting our immigrant neighbors. Sanctuary is an ancient practice as places set aside where people fleeing unreasonable charges could find a place of protection to live normal lives in safety.
The larger church has in its history offered sanctuary to people fleeing war torn places, often offering protection from federal law authorities who wanted to return them to their violent countries. Today we are speaking of protecting immigrants without proper documentation who have lived in our country for many years, working hard, raising their children, who in many cases are American citizens, and being responsible members of our communities. While the possibility of deportation has been a reality for many for several years with our deeply broken immigration system, the volatile rhetoric that began during the national presidential campaign, the emboldened vigilance, and the heightened enforcement coming from the directives of our new president’s administration is sending shock waves of fear and isolation through the immigrant community. Ms. Matthew told us about what is happening in the Merrimac Valley where 27 communities of faith have come together to offer sanctuary and/or to bear witness if members of their community are threatened with deportation without having been given access to judicial oversight.
Many people at the training asked good questions about what “offering sanctuary” means and what is needed to provide sanctuary to someone who is resisting being deported? It is not a straightforward or easy path, but there was a strong desire to meet again to ask further questions, to explore more areas of interest, and to learn what resources are available to be of help.
Nicodemus comes to see Jesus in the dark. It is a time of searching. We do not know whether he chose the night to avoid the scrutiny of his fellow Pharisees or whether it was a time of questioning and study and so it was then that he sought out this radical Rabbi to learn more. But what we do know is that Nicodemus was a man of stature. He was a Pharisee and leader of the Jews. He was a member of the Sanhedrin—the council of Judges chosen to establish laws and hold authority over all the people of Israel. He had heard about the actions of Jesus that he called “signs” which pointed to the fact that Jesus was from God, because “no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” (3:2b)
Jesus wastes none of this man’s time. He immediately puts before him the charge that no one can “see the kingdom of God without being born from above.’ The word used in Greek is ambiguous. Anothen can be translated “again” “anew” or “from above.” Nicodemus heads off in the direction of “born again.” He seems confused, which is not unusual with Jesus’ teachings in John’s Gospel. How can one of his age enter again into his mother’s womb? How can this be required for one to see the kingdom of God? Jesus stays with him, telling him that to enter the kingdom of God one must be born of water and Spirit. Jesus tells him that entering into God’s reign is not a manipulation of the flesh, but a gift that comes completely from God and like the wind, it blows where it chooses.
Some would laugh at Nicodemus wondering how he could be so simple minded. But I agree with others that Nicodemus was not being slow or thick. I believe that in receiving the life-altering words of Jesus, he was stalling for time. Jesus has told him that in order to see or participate in God’s kingdom, one must willing to be go beyond just being a good rule follower, one must become new again. Embracing Jesus as the Christ does not mean becoming a better person, but a new person. Who among us faced with this choice would not try to buy a little time.
Because to be reborn—born from above—requires a dying. It means a dying to some of the ways you see and do things. It may require giving up things that you previously held to be true. It may require conflict and letting go of strongly held beliefs. It may mean looking at your own blindness and being willing to accept complicity. It may mean going to a new place, turning over things you formerly thought to be secure and settled and safe.
William Temple, an archbishop, teacher and preacher said in one of his sermons, that Nicodemus had inherited a great tradition, as a Pharisee. He had tested it in the experience of life. He had conformed to it his habits of conduct, speech, thought, and feeling. How could he break away from all of this and begin again? It was as hard as it would be literally for him to return to his mother’s womb and be reborn.
Nicodemus comes by night in a search for truth. He may have had an inkling that he was in the dark himself. But in his visit, he finds himself totally exposed. “How can these things be?” he asks Jesus.
All of us are like Nicodemus at least most of the time. When like Nicodemus we find ourselves unsettled, unsure, shaken, we may seek guidance, we may look for words that will soothe and settle us. But in fact we want to be left just as we are. We don’t want to be told that we have to start over or change our way of life or way of thinking. We just want to feel better. As William Sloane Coffin says, “we prefer the security of known misery to the misery of unfamiliar insecurity.”[1] But this is exactly what being born from above, being born again means—being exposed to the misery of unfamiliar insecurity.
To be born again means to reexamine old questions, previous beliefs, with fresh and newly uncovered eyes. It means to look again at ourselves and our neighbors to try and understand something we didn’t see before. It means that we place at the center of our lives, what is of utmost importance. As followers of Jesus Christ we are to work in the world, but we are to live in the kingdom. Our coins may belong to the rulers of this age, but our humanity belongs to God and God alone. And it is here that we must be born again—and again and again and again.
Seven years ago, we began an experiment in raising fresh produce alongside the young people of this community so that people who are hungry could eat healthy food. It began with a small patch of land. And thanks to the generosity of the members of the Tawczynski family at Taft Farm, the bounty began.
More and more people came to work in the garden and more and more people were fed as the bounty increased. Children and young people came to till and harvest and their families came to work with them. Through this gift of God’s abundant love, we have grown to know many people who work at Taft Farm–their friends and families. We have worshipped together, celebrated life’s joys together, and hoped together. But now many of our friends and neighbors face an impossible future. Many of them cannot drive because they do not have the documentation even in this great state of Massachusetts to obtain a legal driving permit. Many of them are afraid that if they go to work or go to the doctor’s office or do anything outside their home they face the possibility of being snatched away and deported.
Even those who have no reasonable need to be concerned as responsible members of our community, hear stories of others who have a knock on their door at 3:00 am in the morning and are led away to detention centers miles away from their families. What does Jesus’ call to be “born from above” mean to us in this environment? Where is God calling us to go for our neighbors? How do we hear these words in this time and place?
For any of us who try to follow Jesus, who listen faithfully to God’s word in our lives, it should come as no surprise, that God is not one who is content to leave us on the couch with the remote control and stale popcorn, untouched by the needs of those around us. We may think of God as some immoveable rock. But it is God alone who never rests. It is God “who neither slumbers nor sleeps” as we hear in our Psalm 121 this morning. It is God who says, “see I am making all things new” (Rev. 21:5) God is always calling us forward, out into the world, to open our eyes, our ears, our hearts to the new thing that God is always at work doing. What is God saying to us in this time?
It is not necessary for us to go to a new place like Abram and Sarai, to leave behind all we know and love to respond to God’s call. We can be born again in place—we can be born again right here—born of the water, a symbol of forgiveness, and of the Spirit, a symbol of power. But as Jesus tells Nicodemus, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” When we are born again we are open to look at life through the eyes of God. We are broken open so that a new light can pour through spaces that seemed established and solid. We are invited to stand with the ones who Jesus stood with. Born again, we see that in God’s kingdom all life is precious, that Jesus came to give life to everyone, that without freedom and peace for all, there can be no freedom and peace for anyone. We don’t have all the answers, but in our doubts and confusions, Jesus is our model. For Jesus models life in the kingdom, which is already within us.
On March 22 a group of interested people from different faith communities in the Berkshires are invited to gather at the Grace Church office to talk about next steps in responding to the suffering of our neighbors. We will ask more questions, evaluate our resources, and explore ways we can love each other as we have been loved.
I invite you into this journey. I do not know what we will be able to offer, but I follow the One who came to live among us so that all might be saved through him. It is not safe or easy. But it is what we must do because God so loved the world.
[1] The Collected Sermons of William Sloane Coffin: The Riverside Years, Vol. 2. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008, pp. 142-145.