Shane Claiborne on Bringing the Kingdom down to earth – From Urbana 2009
Continuing our journey through John
1 Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish ruling council.
2 He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him.”
3 In reply Jesus declared, “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.”
4 “How can a man be born when he is old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb to be born!”
5 Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit.6 Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.7 You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’8 The wind blows wherever it pleases. 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 Spirit.”
9 “How can this be?” Nicodemus asked.
10 “You are Israel’s teacher,” said Jesus, “and do you not understand these things?
It’s interesting if you read this as a dialog rather than isolated statements. Nicodemus strikes a conversation with Jesus, though he states he is a pharisee and many of them disliked Jesus, we can’t tell by this opening what his intent is.
Nicodemus makes a statement about Jesus being from/with God, and Jesus responds with a seemingly separate statement about the ‘kingdom of god’ and a ‘born again’ type of transformation.
There’s a number of things that could be going on here – Jesus is either trying to reroute the question, or he sees deeper into the heart of what Nicodemus is asking – either way he wanted to provoke and challenge Nicodemus to come a little further.
Simply being able to acknowledge that Jesus was a teacher from God was not enough – Jesus wanted to entice him with something more wonderful – the kingdom of God.
Simply knowing that Jesus was working in partnership with God was not enough – he wanted Nicodemus to be ‘born again’ – experience transformation towards a new life.
The conversation continues with what it means to be ‘born again’ and while there’s a number of different analogies that Jesus could use here – he chooses one that goes to the very root of who a person is and one that is seemingly impossible.
Think about the strange statement Jesus makes of ‘You must be born again’. So ‘You’ that means there’s hope for ‘you’. He doesn’t say it’s utterly impossible, he doesn’t say that a person must be annihilated and God needs to just start over and make something new -but something about the essence of ‘you’ must go through a birthing process.
Jesus speaks of different materials of ‘flesh’ and ’spirit’ (note this isn’t a separation of our fleshly physical bodies – since Jesus himself was in the flesh) – but of what you’re made of within. At the core. Not simply picking up a new habit, or discipline or external change – but an internal transformation of what guides everything else in your life. With it is a process of re-learning – to see the world new, using new muscles and senses, crawling, stumbling, standing, falling, walking, running – to live life new again in many ways.
Jesus goes on about the wind and spirit and Nicodemus is obviously confused, i’d be too. And here’s the thing, when you really encounter God, something unsettling is suppose to happen. If you ever feel like you’ve got God figured out… then that’s probably not God. God always seeks to lovingly press us on. He’s trying to help us comprehend something that we did not comprehend before.
If we believe that there’s a living and infinite God who walks with us, then we ought to be a bit confused and startled when he speaks to us.
I found this video is best described what we are heading. I pray that the Holy Spirit continues to inspire and empower us to carry on His Mission.
Jason C Dukes does a great job in “Live Sent” sharing how every one of us ought to be living. We always need new ways of communicating our faith in a changing culture – and this one actually works.
From ‘the bulk mail that is humanity’, to the church gathering as a ‘post office’, to how each of us are called to ‘live sent’, all of us are letters of love from God… and those we encounter whether we know it or not are letters to us as well.
Dukes drills down being ‘missional’ as something in the fabric of our being. It’s not simply doing more ‘mission’ projects or trips (while of course that’s needed as well). Missions is not something to add to your schedule, “it is your schedule” It’s what you’re already doing, but how you convey God within all of that is what truly makes you personally a love letter from God to others.
One of the best concepts in presented in the book I felt was the idea of the church being decentralized. Not simply geographically or in our influence, but that the dreams of our church would not be whatever the leaders are cooking up, but that as leaders we’re here to cultivate YOUR god given dreams. It’s one thing to agree and follow along with a general direction of a church’s leadership, is a completely different thing to be passionately fueled and sent by the unique call God has on your life.
May we all live sent.
Continuing our journey through the Gospel of John
18 Then the Jews demanded of him, “What miraculous sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?”
19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.”
20 The Jews replied, “It has taken forty‑six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?”21 But the temple he had spoken of was his body.22 After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the Scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.
23 Now while he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many people saw the miraculous signs he was doing and believed in his name.24 But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all men.25 He did not need man’s testimony about man, for he knew what was in a man.
It’s interesting how Jesus spoke in multiple layers. He was like an artist, who’s words were dense with meaning and provocative. He was obviously trying to rattle people a bit as he loosely was referring to the destruction of Herod’s temple.
I wonder how often we fail to see the true meaning behind the words of Jesus. And how often do we dismiss how he might be trying to also provoke us?
It must have been incredibly tempting for Christ to ‘entrust’ himself to people. He had the adoration and admiration of so many even though he was unliked by many as well. Christ knows how often we’re simply putting up shallow fronts and how we present ourselves may be so far from what’s actually within our hearts.
Why is it that it takes catastrophes like these for privileged nations to take up their social responsibility to care for others? Could we have been the cause of this catastrophe? God, did you allow this to happen so that we would start caring for a forgotten nation? Are the concerns and love that we pour over Haiti right now what You want us to feel and act upon even when an unprivileged nation is not experiencing a catastrophe?
For that, I confess. May I not forget this lesson. May I commit to Love. May You continue to lead us in this movement of love.
