“Busy Being Born”

Dr. D. Jay Losher

Center Hill Mission  ~  Evening Service  ~  25 July 2010

Jesus answered Nicodemus, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”  [John 3:3 (NRSV)]

“He not busy being born, is busy dying.”  [Bob Dylan]

ob Dylan led me to Jesus.  I am quite sure he never intended to, but nevertheless Bob Dylan showed me the light. 

Like so many in my generation, Dylan that folk poet and secular prophet, gave me a voice for the longing which led to God.  But Dylan never presented himself as a religious leader at all.  That said, Dylan understands unexpectedly well what Jesus was about here in John 3:3.  From his 1965 album Bring It All Back Home, in his song “It’s Alright, Ma,” one line in the second stanza says: 

“wasted words / [prove] to warn / That he not busy being born / Is busy dying.”

Dylan gets it, though Nicodemus clearly does not, this “born again” passage.  Jesus explained it quite plainly, but Nicodemus for a leader of Israel must have been pretty dull because he simply could not comprehend it.

Nicodemus made the same mistake the King James translators made when he came to Jesus ominously “by night” and Jesus in John 3:3 says that memorable phrase routinely misunderstood as “born again.”

Jesus here used a term in Greek which could mean “born again” but more faithfully should be translated “born from above.”  Nicodemus, with his very literal mind, missed the double meaning completely.  So Jesus corrects him.

Here the conversation borders on the absurd.  “Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb?”  Even when Jesus patiently explains that he did not mean at all “born a second time,” but rather that the truth is that “no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born from above” that is, reborn spiritually.

Nicodemus is still stuck.  “How can these things be?”

icodemus isn’t the only one to misunderstand this.  Many sincere, devoted believers make the same mistake as Nicodemus.  Brian Stoffregen, a Lutheran pastor with an online commentary says it this way:

This….indicates that being born from above is not something we do.  It is something done to us (by God). 

In a similar way, being born the first time was not something we did.  Our physical births were caused by powers far beyond our infantile abilities and understanding.  Being born is something that happens to us from powers outside of ourselves. 

We have to take that image seriously….Both the grammar and the imagery of birth indicate that it is something God (the one “from above”) does to or for us.

Indeed, being “born from above” is not something we choose, but God chooses; not something we do, but God does – thus the gift!!

Nicodemus just does not get it.  Let’s admit the language itself has breed confusion, but Jesus still explains it clearly.

Dylan does get it!  He summarizes Jesus’ thought well.  Dylan is right:

“If you are not busy being born, you’re dying.”

u Ngahingsi was our cook and a good one when we worked with the small Christian community in Indonesia.  We called her affectionately Bu Nih, or “Mother Nih.”. 

Bu Nih was a Muslim, a second wife to an abusive husband with four wives and mistresses to boot.  Four wives who supported him, but he never helped his wives financially or otherwise.  Bu Nih cared for her aged mother and a son Dahma, my son’s age.  They just barely made it, what with her husband’s demands to support his gambling and carousing. 

Bu Nih became a Christian.  The day she was baptized with Dahma was a truly transcendent experience.  I would love to take credit for her conversion, but it was the indigenous Christians who deserve all the credit.

Her conversion came about slowly, deliberately through the neighborhood outreach of the local Javanese church.  They offered neighborhood based classes in Christianity and support groups and prayer groups.  Bu Nih attended, was attracted by what she saw and eventually converted.

 wondered why she became a disciple.  It was certainly not for prestige in the community’s eye for she lost what little she had when she converted.  Why would she leave her tradition and majority status to join a minority, and a persecuted minority at that?

I learned an important truth about the faith.  For in the Christian fellowship her gifts were celebrated, her personhood respected. 

She was no longer the second wife of an abusive husband.  She was no longer viewed as an uneducated, urban peasant woman with no prospects.  She was no longer just a cook.  Bu Nih was now a child of God, a person with dignity, respected and loved.  How did she know she was loved?

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

She was no longer viewed from a human perspective but she was viewed “from above.” 

Who would not gladly make the same exchange?!!

u Nih was busy being born!!  Nicodemus, we suspect, was not.  All the baggage of being a person of status and success in this world had to hold him back from being “born from above” for the very first time.

What of us?  Are we busy being born?  If we aren’t we are slowly dying – so slowly, the death to our souls is imperceptible, but it is still really real soul death.

Or are we busy being born from above.  Approaching God in prayer and obedience.  Seeking first God’s kingdom and its righteousness.  And so being born again for the very first time.