Born Again?

(I posted this on my other blog, but it speaks to me so I posted here too. I will get back to the other story soon.)

What does John 3 mean when Jesus says, 'You must be born again?'

After struggling with this passage for years and still realizing that I don't fully get it, I hope to present a possibility.

"The Story ~ Nicodemus, a religious leader in Jesus' day, comes under the cover of darkness to discuss spirituality with Jesus."
Nicodemus: "Rabbi, we all know that God has sent you to teach us, Your miraculous signs are evidence that God is with You."
Immediately Jesus says: "I tell you the truth, unless you are born again, you cannot see the Kingdom of God."

Jesus has a habit of taking things to a deeper level. Most of the time, I am only scratching the surface like Nicodemus, yet, Jesus is operating at a whole other level.

What is the Kingdom of God, biblically speaking? The place, the time and the people where things are happening according to how God wants things to work. Some people might want to shut me off at this point, because I am putting God's sovereignty in question. God has created a creation outside of himself. Meaning this creation can operate either according to God's way, or in rejection of God's way. The above statement assumes that there are places where things are not happening according to God's intentions and desire/will ~ meaning that God has somehow limited his own soveriegnty. The job or work of those who connect with the Kingdom of God are to live according to God's intentions in this time, in the place where they are, among the people with whom they find themselves. (Sorry for the aside but I think it is necessary.)

Anyway, I was reading Rob Bell's book Sex God. He speaks about how radically disconnected humanity is ~ Disconnected from God, from self, from others, from creation.

I have been wondering about the Holy Spirit. What is it/he? I have been told tons of things but what is it? (I will speak more on this in a future blog).

Back to John, Jesus says to Nicodemus that he must be born again. Nicodemus naturally wonders and questions, "Say what? I can't enter in my mother's womb again."

Jesus continues to speak, "Unless you are born of spirit and of the flesh, you cannot enter the Kingdom of God." Is Jesus saying that unless Nicodemus is connected both to his spirit and his flesh he cannot connect to the Kingdom of God?

Here's what I am thinking:

Nicodemus is a Pharisee. He's part of the 'religious elite' those who want to take the law to the max in order to maximize life on earth. However, following the law doesn't fulfill the human need. It's only outward striving and tends to become legalistic and detached from personhood. Nicodemus was part of a sect who believed that if everybody would just live by the rules everything would be better. However, in believing this they inflicted their rules on others, putting people under a heavy burden of trying to work one's way to peace with God.

And Jesus says, unless you are connected with the physical and the spiritual, you cannot experience the Kingdom of God. Pharisees had disconnected the two. Pharisees were operating on the physical level. Jesus seems to be getting to the heart of Nicodemus. Nicodemus has spent so much time on the physical - looking like a religious person, that he has missed the real connection between himself and God. It's interesting some of us are like Nicodemus in this passage. We've tried to do things on the physical level but it has left us empty and disconnected. There are also some of us who focus on the spiritual and disconnect ourselves from the physical. We search for spiritual highs and think that that is what it means to be fully alive.

I think Jesus is saying that these two need to be fully connected, made one with the other, held in tension with one another. And Jesus' way fulfills this... how well it's very mysterious.

Here is an example of a time when I experienced connection. I was sick, dreadfully sick with a bronchitus or some other type of respiratory illness, coughing, sneezing, running nose, head-aches, fever, I felt horrible. And one of my students calls me up and says, "hey, ben, me and a friend need someone to talk to..." I look at my watch its about 9pm and I've already put in long day and let me remind I was sick. I mentioned that I was sick, but would 'love' to talk with them if they came knowing that I was sick and tired...

The two came over, it must have been around 9:30 pm or so... we began the discussion... they poured out their hearts to myself and my wife. And although I didn't feel like had anything left to give I gave all that I had to listen and encourage...

Something happened that night that I can't fully explain. All I know is that in those moments of honest connection with one another, that we recognized that God was among us. We felt both the spiritual and physical become one -- we were connected, we were real, and life changed. And I felt real. And though I was sick, I felt alive. But it wasn't about me. It was a time when the Kingdom of God expressed itself on earth, in my home, on my couch, with my two cats and these three other people, and we opened ourselves to be connected in authentic community.
We cried, we confessed, we shared, we laughed and were connected. And the connection wasn't with just each other, it was so much deeper, we were connected with how God intends things to be.

Did all of the circumstances disappear? No. But we had partners for the journey.
Partners who respected and honored one another.

May you be spiritually and physically connected to the realness of God in your world, where you are, among the people whom you are with, and if you are searching for a place and people to be connected seek out a group of people who love you, accept you and encourage you to be the best you that you can be.

Loving God, Loving People, Following Jesus,
Ben