"The Answer Is Blowin' In the Wind." John 3:4-8

Have you ever talked to someone and it felt like you might as well be speaking a foreign language because what you said and what was heard was, apparently, totally different?  Those of you who have teens (or remember being a teen) have certainly had this experience.

THAT'S what's going on in John 3.

Jesus sounds like he is just a little frustrated with Nicodemus when he says, in verse 10: "You are Israel's teacher and do you not understand these things?"  He goes on to vent his frustration with Nic's denseness in the verses that follow.

The last post spoke about Jesus talking about being born "anoden", "from above."  But Nic hears the other interpretation, born "again" and he is stuck in "duh" mode.  "How can a man enter his mother's womb when he is an adult?"

The next two level word Jesus uses in trying to get through to Nic is "pneuma."  You probably know this word, pneumatic tire, pneumonia.  The Greek word means "wind" and "spirit." 

Nic asks how a man can be physically born again.  Jesus replies that it is a spiritual thing.  John records Jesus speaking this two level word and Nic, seeemingly, hearing it on one level.  I suggest you have your Bible open to  vss 5-8 so you can see how Jesus bounces between the two uses of this word in that section -- as I've written it below.

"I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the pneuma/wind/spirit.  Flesh gives birth to flesh [Editor's Note: anoden as being born again] but the pneuma/wind/spirit gives birth to pneuma/wind/spirit. [Ed. Note: "but if this is a spiritual matter -- being born from above -- God does it."]

"Flesh give birth to flesh, but the pneuma/wind/spirit  gives birth to pneuma/wind/spirit.  You should not be surprised at my saying, 'You must be born anoden/from above.'  The wind/spirit blows wherever it please.  You hear its sound but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going.  So it is with everyone born of the wind/spirit."

I think this is a much more provocative statement than we give it credit.  By this time in history Judaism is a stable, doctrinal system of laws and practices.  It does NOT "blow wherever it pleases" and, contrary to what Jesus says, the Jews could tell "where it [God's presence and command] comes from and where it is going."

Jesus confronts the whole belief system in these statements.  He is saying that God can do what God well pleases in spite of the system the Jews believed God had handed them centuries and millennia  previous.  No wonder Nicodemus is confused!

NOW, before we get all smug about how foolish Nic is as opposed to US, who know Jesus is the Son of God and Savior of the world think about what Jesus is saying.  God's Spirit -- the Wind of God among us -- will blow where ever the Spirit chooses.  WE do not know where it comes from or where it is going but we can hear its sound -- we can perceive the presence, the effect of the wind blowing around/through us.

These two sections (born and Spirit blowing) of this Scriptural episode pick up the theme John sets out in the prologue to the Gospel -- Chapter 1.

"...his own did not recognize [receive] him.  But to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God -- children born not of natural descent, NOR OF HUMAN DECISION or a husband's will, but born of God."  Jn 1:11b-13  [Born again/from above -- my notation.]

This "receiving him . . . believing in [him] his name" goes far beyond ascribing to a set of doctrinal beliefs or systematic theological assertions about God.  It is no less than staking our lives on Jesus being the revelation of God in that moment of history; that Jesus is what God wants us to know about God and us.

I will go the next step and say that Christianity should be careful it doesn't fall into the same trap Nic and the Jewish religious leaders of Jesus' day did and assume, because we have such a clear revelation and covenant from God that it is the only revelation God can give and that we, alone, have the only real truth about how God comes to God's creation.  I hasten to say that Jesus IS the Good News of God, Jesus does bring forgiveness of sins, life with God, and healing for our hearts in his life, death, and resurrection.  Of these things I have no doubt.  But I do not believe it is the only way God has revealed God's self to the world, the only way God's breathe has been breathed/blown on God's creation.

I know this borders on Christian heresy, sort of in the same way what Jesus said to Nicodemus bordered on Jewish heresy.  But I don't think I can back away from it.  "The Spirit blows where ever it pleases."  We are certainly people who have been graced to perceive the presence and effect of this Spirit blowing around and through us.  Praise God for that!  Where we have to be careful is to avoid becoming smug, to avoid beginning to think that we are the only keepers of the Wind of God.  Having received this astounding revelation of God in the work of Jesus the Savior we dare never think that we can lock up the totality of God's presence in our own Christian wind-tunnel.

Isn't that religious smugness and conviction that only WE have the true/complete revelation of God the source of great suffering and death in the world?  Is that sort of behavior by religions consistent with the work of God's Word become Flesh to which we cling as Savior?

Nicodemus will mull over Jesus' conversation with him as Nic comes to Jesus in the dark.  It will change him.  His comfortable assumptions will be sufficiently challenged to the point that he steps out of his comfortable doctrinal Judaism, which he has been teaching, to let the Spirit move him through the work of Jesus to a new level of relationship with God . . . and through that change to a new relationship with a world that had been closed to him before God blows through his life.

Should we not expect God to do the same with us when God blows gently in our ear, or knocks us off our feet with a hurricane force?  It's a little scary to think about, isn't it?  Maybe it's the same fear Nicodemus experienced as he came to Jesus in the dark and began moving into the light . . . where the spirit was blowing him.