Not Above Being Born

Readings for the second Sunday in Lent:

Genesis 12:1-4a
Romans 4:1-5, 13-17
John 3:1-17
Psalm 121 

For this reason it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his descendants, not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham (for he is the father of all of us, as it is written, "I have made you the father of many nations") -- in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. --Romans 4: 16,17

Jesus answered him, "Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above." John 3:3

I wonder whether God has been born again.

It sometimes seems like God changes between the Old and New Testaments, like there's been a kind of transformation, in which God gives up on a lot of the smiting and just settles in to being all about love. I wonder whether God could make a dead God alive again, or whether God could create Godself from nothing. I was really struck this week by the phrase in the Romans passage that says that God "gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist."

Nice work if you can get it. But it's kind of a weird thing to think about. For one thing, I, personally, have never seen a dead thing come to life. I can imagine some ways to interpret this that would make it feel true, but I wonder whether Paul was speaking in metaphorical terms. Like maybe about how Abram was old enough to be on his way out (or maybe in his delicacy, Paul is referencing fertility), but God brought him back to life. I suppose, if you want to be very direct, you could say that the "things that do not exist" could be referring to Abram's offspring.

But what I like thinking about more, was whether God could call Godself into existence.  I wonder whether, in Jesus, God was born again.

I've read the John passage many times, but the translation on The Lectionary Page is the New Revised Standard Version, in which Jesus says, "no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above." It makes me wonder whether God has had an eye-opening experience in becoming incarnate. I wonder whether Jesus is referring to himself, effectively saying, "I thought I understood my creation before, but until I became one of you, I just didn't get the kingdom of God."

For a long time I've been uncomfortable with the idea that it was Jesus' suffering that redeemed us. It's so often framed in punitive terms that seem designed to keep people in line and feeling guilty. Plenty of Sunday school teachers and youth group leaders have told kids that every time they lie, they're pounding the nails into Jesus' hands. I'm just not that sure that such gruesome imagery is the best way to raise Kingdom people who are shining their lights for the world to see by.

Also, I'm very uncomfortable with a theology that romanticizes suffering. Plenty of women have been told to endure abusive marriages, because they should embrace their suffering as Jesus embraced his. It's the kind of thing that has me conceding a lot of points to my atheist friends who call the God of Christianity a sadist.

But what if we've gotten it a little bit wrong? What if Jesus needed to suffer, not to even out some cosmic teeter-totter onto which Sin and Eternal Life had plopped themselves down? What if there is a different reason that suffering is redemptive?

I think God could not enter the Kingdom of God without being born again as Jesus.  There are many stories in the Old Testament that make God seem like a very moral psychopath--someone who will be merciful and just, but more from a place of principal than from a place of empathy. God speaks to people, overpowers them with insight, but mostly comes off as remote and somewhat detached.

I wonder whether Jesus needed to come to earth in order to know what it's like to feel powerless and vulnerable. What if suffering is important, not for the sake of suffering, but for the empathy it brings along with it? What if Jesus needed to be born from above, not to teach us what it's like to be human, but to learn what it's like to be human?

We have all had the experience of seeing tragedy happen to a friend. A child dies, or someone gets cancer, and you try to put yourself in your friend's place, but, for the most part, you just can't. For a lot of what happens in life, you can't know what it's like until you've been through it yourself. This is why we have ritualized things that we do for people--take them meals or write cards--because we want to do something, but we can't always use empathy to figure out what's best.

It's times like this when we find ourselves saying, "I just can't imagine..." And it's true, we can't imagine it. When the unthinkable happens, it's hard to put yourself in the position of the person it happened to. So people seek out others like them. A mother who has lost a child to cancer meets with another mother who has lost her child to cancer. A wife whose husband never comes home from deployment seeks solace with other military widows. No matter how much I love someone, I can't put myself in her situation until I've been someplace similar myself.

Maybe that's why Jesus existed--to help God to understand why we have so much trouble behaving ourselves. Maybe Jesus' life and death was necessary and redemptive not because it was a freely given sacrifice that fulfilled some kind of cosmic debt. Maybe Jesus' suffering is redemptive because, to get all Buddhist for a second, human existence is suffering. There was no way for Jesus to understand being human without experiencing suffering. Maybe God needed to be born again as a human in order to enter the Kingdom of God.

I like keeping that perspective in my head--Jesus chose suffering because it was necessary for empathy--because it helps me to understand suffering as holy in a new way. I'm still going to try to avoid the bad stuff as much as possible. But I'm also going to try to look at suffering differently, as holy. Not because suffering is holy in and of itself, but because it's a natural consequence of being engaged in the world.

After all, those who care the most are also those who suffer the most. And when we lose what we care the most about, we suffer so much more than when we lose something we were never that attached to in the first place.

When you avoid loving people, you don't suffer when you lose them.  If you don't engage in the world, don't develop affection for people, don't hope for a better future for everyone, it's easier to avoid suffering. But when we, like Jesus, throw ourselves into our lives, getting involved with the world, rather than staying aloof and above it all, we will suffer a thousand small deaths. But from each of those deaths, God brings forth a new life in us. A life that connects us to the rest of humanity and helps us to see the kingdom of God.