Whose Labor?--March 6, 2023

Whose Labor?--March 6, 2023

[Jesus said to Nicodemus:] "Do not be astonished that I said to you, 'You must be born from above.' The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit." [John 3:7-8]

Quick reminder:  you didn't earn your own birth.  It was given to you.

So when Jesus uses the language of being "born from above" or "born of the Spirit" to describe how we come to participate in God's "kingdom" or "reign," guess what?  That's a gift, too.  Sharing life with God isn't something you apply for, achieve, or earn your way into.  It's not a reward, a graduation, or an accomplishment.  It's a gift from beginning to end, just like our lives are.  You can't earn your own birth--you are given it, primarily from a mother who does the labor, maybe with partial supporting credit for the doctors, nurses, or midwives on the scene, and the intangible support of everybody else who isn't pushing but is pacing, waiting, or squeezing hands in the delivery room.  But you know as well as I do that the one being born doesn't "work" to accomplish the birth--only to receive it.  And to hear Jesus tell it, even our coming to faith is a gift of the God who births us into that kind of trust.

That's a big deal to take seriously, because it completely reframes the way we are used to thinking about the start of our lives of faith.  So much of American religious-speak makes it sound like our accomplishment: "Have you been born again?" becomes a question loaded with ominous accusation, probing into whether we've done enough, or prayed the right prayer, said the right words, or believed the correct list of theological propositions to earn a certain status.  So much of Respectable Religion in our culture takes the phrase "born again" and completely misses the point of how being born actually works: it's a gift made possible by someone else's labor, and initiated by someone else's choice to love you into being.  In other words, it's not something you can brag about--only something you can be grateful for.

Whether it was Nicodemus in the first century or the official faces of Respectable Religion in the twenty-first, we still keep trying to make our relationships with God into something we can brag about or puff ourselves up over.  If I've been "born again" and it's my accomplishment, then I can look down on all the people who haven't checked the same boxes I have, and I can use that checklist as a gate to keep out others who don't measure up.  If being "born of the Spirit" is something I made happen, then I have grounds to justify my arrogance and treat everybody else like they're unworthy, unlovable, and unacceptable to God.  But if--as the metaphor of birth itself certainly implies--this whole notion of being "born from above" is a gift of a gracious God, then all of a sudden the playing field is leveled, and I don't get to look down on anybody. I'm just a recipient of new life by grace, the same as the rest of us.  And there's no earning on my part--it's all been God's labor and the Spirit's movement.

How will it affect the way we see other people with that in mind?  How might it help us to love people without looking down on them or puffing ourselves up?  And how might we be moved simply to gratitude to the Spirit for having birthed us, rather than comparing ourselves or our spiritual status to someone else?  It seems to me that all of that comparison and judgment ends up being just an obstacle that gets in the way of genuine love--think of how much more freely we can move without those hindrances today.

O Spirit of God, we give you thanks for having born us into faith--enable us to see that as your gift rather than our accomplishment, so that we can love like you.