Sermons for the Month
"New Birth"
DATE: April 7, 2002
TEXT: 1 Peter 1:3-9"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By His great mercy He has given us a new birth into a living hope…"
My older son, the one who was born to me, was delivered via emergency C-section down on the other side of a lot of sterile drapes and whisked off to the neonatal ICU immediately; so, the one and only birth I have observed was during nursing school clinicals. What I remember most was a surprising sense of how -- well, how surprising it was. I had done my reading the night before; I knew what was supposed to happen; I knew what was inside that woman and how it was going to get out. Yet nothing quite prepares for the moment a brand-new human appears right in front of your eyes. It's like magic! "Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat…" "Watch me pull a person out of another person!" In an instant -- though admittedly it may have seemed longer to the laboring mother -- where there had been one person, suddenly there were two people! I can't imagine that even the most seasoned and experienced obstetrician, midwife, or nurse ever loses the sense of amazement and wonder at the process. And there's something else, too. At least in that moment, the external circumstances fade away before the possibilities, the hope that this new birth represents. Whether the child's parents are wealthy and educated, or poor and barely literate, whether he is the firstborn or one of many, whether the news of her impending arrival brought great joy or worried apprehension to her mother and father, in the moment of birth, each child arrives new to the world, howling at the shock of it all, eyes blinking in the light, fingers and toes and cheeks and backside soft and smooth and untouched, and anything is possible; for this one, there is hope! In many places, including this morning's reading from the first letter of Peter, Scripture describes the experience of coming to faith in Christ as new birth, and particularly uses that imagery to talk about baptism. Truth is, we are none of us as pure and innocent and untouched as we might appear in the moment we are fresh to the world. Each of us is born into a web of circumstances and relationships that were distorted and spoiled by sin and its consequences long before we arrived on the scene, and on our own, we're helpless to pull free. Every one of us is born with the predisposition to cooperate with some enthusiasm in the perpetuation of that web, and even to add our own embellishments. Every suicidal or homicidal terrorist was somebody's precious newborn child, after all; and we really don't have to look that far away but just into our own hearts and lives, at the things we hear ourselves saying that we vowed we never would, and the things we find ourselves doing to our own sorrow, regret, and shame. Out of that person whom we were born, God needs to work His magic and pull someone brand new. And that's just what He does! Peter says God does this "through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead," which is really a shorthand way of saying, "through everything-that-Jesus-said-and-did-on-this-earth-up-to-and-including-and-especially-his-death-on-the-cross-for-our-sake, AND by virtue of everything-the-Risen-Christ-has-done-and-is-doing-right-now-and-will-do-in-the-future-up-to-and-including-the-moment-He-comes-again-in-glory-to-bring-to-its-fulness-God's-New-and-perfect-Creation." (You can see why Peter needs a shorthand way to say it, can't you?) Specifically, God accomplishes this new birth for each one of us in the fact of our baptism, whether that comes after a process of conversion and faith-formation, as with an adult; or whether baptism comes at the beginning of that lifelong process, as with the smallest infant. Just as our Creator God could have designed it so that new human beings grew in a cabbage patch, or were dropped off to their parents by big long-legged birds, so He could have decided that He would give us new birth in any one of a number of ways, in the course of a roller coaster ride, for example, or by walking across a designated sacred bridge. Baptism -- washing with water in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit -- is the method He chose, and by His promise, He makes it work. In that once-in-a-lifetime moment, God has promised to fuse together the life of an individual with the resurrected life of Christ, so that -- hey! -- where there used to be one person, now there are two! In addition to me, there is Jesus walking beside me forever, His protective and encouraging and Almighty and Eternal arm around me; AND as if that weren't blessing enough, the Holy Spirit in baptism has planted the life of Christ within me, brand-new life to grow and develop and make its presence evident, to change me, to open up new possibilities, to give new hope in every situation and circumstance even when earthly logic would say, "who are you kidding… it's no use, it's too late; oh come on, that's not even possible…" Never say "not possible" to God! Nor to one of those to whom He has "given new birth into a living hope." It needs to be said, too, that birth is a scary and dangerous business. Think what it must be like for the little one who has been floating safely and securely in his own dimly-lit personal hot tub to be suddenly and inexplicably squeezed through incredibly tight places to burst into a huge alien universe of sights and sounds and sensations! No wonder they howl! And that's only the beginning. We parents know that we are birthing our children into a world in which every day holds the risk of danger, sorrow, and suffering, everything from the boo-boo's of learning to walk to the sudden and unexpected onset of a life-threatening illness; from the pain of playground name-calling to the desolation of a first love rejected; from the risk that lifelong consequences could follow a single moment of youthful carelessness to the near-certainty that our children will carry scars as a result of our own parental incompetence. The new birth of Christian conversion and baptism is scary, too. For one thing, it unleashes the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives, and there's no telling what a wild and wonderful ride that will be or where it might lead. And then, as Peter's letter cautions, there are trials, there is suffering that comes with the territory of being joined with Christ in a world which crucified Him. So don't be surprised when it happens; and don't be discouraged! We have been born into a "living hope," or as the King James translation of the Bible says, "A 'lively' hope," a hope that keeps moving, and keeps us moving along with it. It's "hope" based on the certainty that we are under the protection of the power of God in all our trials, in good times and in hard times and in sad and scary times. It's hope that finds joy in being in the company of our brothers and sisters in this great big family called "the Church." It's hope that prompts us to want to be a part of God's great birthing mission in this world. It's hope that is our "inheritance," writes Peter, and nothing can ever take it away from us or depreciate its value. It's hope that looks back at all that the Lord has done for us, looks around us at the grace of God in the present moment, and looks forward to the wonderful surprises He yet has in store, the wondrous things He can do in us and through us. "…new birth into a living hope…" What a surprise! Who'd have thought it?!? Blessed be God our Father, who conceived the plan, and labored to bring it to fulfillment! Blessed be God Lord Jesus Christ who gives us new life through His pain, His shed blood, and His death. Blessed be God the Spirit, who breathes that new life of Christ into each of us, and sends us wide-eyed and hope-filled into the world. AMEN