Born By the Wind

This is the message given in the Sunday night service in the Gettysburg United Methodist church on Sunday, January 24, 2021.  The Bible verses used are John 3:1-10.

One of the things about human beings is that we always try to understand things.  We want to know how things work.  We want to know why things are the way they are.  If there’s something we don’t understand, we keep asking questions until we do.

And that’s true of our faith, too.  There are a lot of things we don’t understand about our faith.  And so we ask questions.  We try to figure things out.  We want to know how our Christian faith actually works.  We want to know why things are the way they are.  And tonight, we tackle two of the biggest things about faith we struggle to understand.  The concept of being “born again”, and the concept of the Holy Spirit.

In our Bible reading, a rabbi named Nicodemus comes to Jesus.  He tells Jesus that he can tell, by listening to Jesus, that Jesus comes from God.  

I think that impressed Jesus.  I mean, obviously Jesus knew he had come from God.  But that a rabbi, one of the official Jewish leaders, would acknowledge that was something.  After all, most of the Jewish leaders were opposed to Jesus.  So Jesus responds by giving Nicodemus more information, probably more than he bargained for.  Jesus tells Nicodemus “No one can see the kingdom of God without being born again.”

            That term, “born again”, is kind of a loaded one to use these days.  It probably was not when Jesus used it.  In fact, it looks like Jesus invented the term.  It does not appear anywhere in the Bible before Jesus used it.    

Another thing that makes us think Jesus invented the term is that Nicodemus, a rabbi, did not understand it.  He took it literally, asking how a person can go back into their mother’s womb and be born a second time.

A lot of times we don’t really understand it, either.  There are some people for whom being “born again” is the most important thing about being a Christian.  They believe that being “born again” is something that has to happen in an instant.  They believe there has to be a specific time and place that one is born again, just like there’s a specific time and place that one is born on earth in the first place.  And if you don’t have that, they would say that you have not truly been born again.

            I do believe there are people for whom it does happen that way.  There are people who can tell you a specific time and place where the Holy Spirit came to them and they were born again.  Maybe that’s happened to some of you, and if it has, that’s wonderful.  That has to be an awesome thing to experience.

            But as United Methodists, we don’t believe that it has to happen that way.  We believe the Holy Spirit can come to us gradually, over a period of time.  And it can happen in a variety of ways.  But having said that, we need to not ignore being “born again” and not consider it important at all.  Jesus did say it, and he meant something by it.  There needs to be some way in which our faith in Jesus Christ makes us different.  There needs to be some way in which we do feel the Holy Spirit at work in our lives.  If our faith in Jesus never made any difference to us, if we never felt anything because of it, if we never acted any differently because of it, then our faith would be pretty meaningless.

            Jesus told Nicodemus, and he tells us, that we should not be surprised when he says we must be born again.  Jesus explains it this way:  “The wind blows wherever it pleases.  You hear it’s sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going.  So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”

            And Nicodemus basically responds, “Huh?”

            That may be how you and I respond, too.  Does it ever bother you that there seem to be so many times when Jesus does stuff like this?  I mean, seriously, it seems like there are so many times when Jesus used figures of speech and parables and things like that to make his point.  Don’t you wonder sometimes, why does Jesus not just come out and say what he means?

            Well, when you read what people have to say on the subject, you get lots of different explanations.  But think of it this way.  What was one of the titles Jesus was given by the people around him?  In fact, Nicodemus uses it in this passage.  It’s teacher, right?  Jesus was called “Teacher”.

            What does a good teacher do?  Good teachers don’t just give the students all the answers, do they?  Good teachers want to teach their students to think.  Good teachers want to teach their students how to come up with the answers themselves.  They don’t just want their students to know what the answer is.  They want their students to know why the answer is that.  They want their students to be able to think for themselves, so when they come across other problems, they’ll be able to solve them for themselves.

            I think that’s at least part of what Jesus was trying to do.  It’s what we try to do in our confirmation class. The point is not just to memorize a bunch of facts.  The point is to understand our faith.  The point is to know, not just what we believe, but why we believe it.  That way, when our faith is challenged, we’ll be less likely to fall away.  We’ll be able to meet the challenges, because we don’t just have faith, we know why we have faith.

            So let’s look at what Jesus says.  Again, “The wind blows wherever it pleases.  You hear it’s sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going.  So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”

Here, as in other places in the Bible, the Holy Spirit is compared to the wind.  Wind is something we understand around here, right?  The wind blows almost all the time.  Thinking about the Holy Spirit in terms of wind should give us some good clues about what the Holy Spirit is and how the Holy Spirit works.  

So, what are some attributes of the wind?  Well, we cannot control the wind, right?  It blows wherever and whenever it pleases.  Sometimes, it’s from the north, sometimes it’s from the south.  Sometimes it’s strong, sometimes it’s barely noticeable.  But you and I have no say over any of that.  We might wish we did sometimes, but we don’t.  God is the only one who controls the wind.  

And of course, that’s true of the Holy Spirit, too.  We have no control over what the Holy Spirit does.  God is the only one who controls the Holy Spirit, because of course the Holy Spirit is God.  The Holy Spirit is one of the persons of the trinity:  the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  And no human being can control God.

We cannot control the wind.  We cannot even see the wind.  But we can see what it does.  We can see the effects of the wind on the things around us.  We can see it blow the flag.  We can see it blow the leaves and the trees.  On a windy day, we can feel its effect on us as soon as we walk outside.  The wind can be a gentle breeze, or it can be a strong, powerful force.  When the wind blows, it changes things.

And that’s true of the Holy Spirit, too.  We cannot control the Holy Spirit.  We cannot see the Holy Spirit.  But we can see what it does.  We can see the effects of the Holy Spirit.  We can see its effects on others, when the Holy spirits act in and through them.  And we can feel its effects on us, as soon as the Holy Spirit acts in and through us.  Sometimes the Holy Spirit works gently and sometimes the Holy Spirit works powerfully.  But when the Holy Spirit works, it changes things.  And when the Holy Spirit acts in and through us, it changes us.

I think that’s at least part of what Jesus was trying to get across when he said we need to be born again.  We need to feel the Holy Spirit acting in and through us.  We need to have the Holy Spirit change us.  Sometimes that change happens suddenly and powerfully, like a strong wind.  Sometimes that change happens gradually, like a gentle breeze, nudging us along.  But if the Holy Spirit is acting in and through us, it will change us.  It will make us different from the way we were before the Holy Spirit came.

We are saved by our faith in Jesus Christ as the Savior.  But if we our faith is real, that faith has to affect us in some way.  If we truly have faith, we will ask the Holy Spirit to come into our hearts.  And the Holy Spirit will change us.  The change may come quickly or it may come slowly, but it will come.  And when it does, we will truly be born again.