When I was a child, my family would go camping with the group we fondly call “The Troops.” These are friends my parents made back in the 1960’s, when they were members of the Jaycees, during the few years we lived in Mound, Minnesota.
Our lives remain entwined with the Troops. Even when my family moved into a different school district a few miles away, many of our weekends were spent together. All of us kids grew up “together,” and, amazingly, none of us married one another.
We were, and in many ways, still are family.
For years we would get together and camp, probably at least once a month, parking our campers and setting up our tents in a reasonable U shape around the small camp kitchen and fire ring on the property owned by some of the troops near Lake Osawinamakee.
One year, after tiring of camping in a tent, my dad and mom bought a retired school bus to convert into a camper. We removed the bus seats, scraped off some of the identifying school district markings and lovingly created Hoo U 2.
We had intentions and dreams, plans and ideas to convert this vehicle into a camping paradise. But converting a school bus into a camper became a bigger project than my family wanted to take on.
We took it camping a couple times. It provided shelter and got us up off the ground. It served a purpose, but it would never become what my parents thought it might.
Soon after this experiment, they bought their first motorhome. And they continued to have motorhomes until last year.
Converting a school bus into a camper takes a special kind of expertise and desire, time, research and ability to forage and purchase and install the equipment needed to convert it from a utilitarian vehicle into something else.
In today’s Gospel, it seems like Nicodemus might be ready to make a change in his life. A conversion, if you will.
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| Church of the Holy Sepulcher Pilgrims venerate the stone tablet, where it is believed Jesus was placed and prepared for burial. Photo by D. Dehler |
I didn’t think I would talk about conversion when I began studying this passage from John. It’s just not something we Episcopalians like to think about all that much. One baptism and we belong to God, to Jesus. In my experience, when people talk about this passage and about being “born again,” I have observed many as they wince.
Maybe we look at being born again in a shameful way. That we are not good enough the way we are. That someone else is deciding whether we are worthy of God’s love. That our baptism when we were a baby isn’t our own proclamation of our desire to be a Jesus Follower, and therefore is null and void. That our polity and processes as a hierarchical church with rubrics and liturgy cannot fully recognize the individual prayer inviting Jesus into our hearts.
Most of us know that’s not true. We know that God created us and abundantly loves us, to be the unique people we are, whether baptized as an infant, child or adult, or confirmed a member of the denomination at age 12 or 40 or 65. Our relationship with our Creator begins with God’s love for us and our recognition of that love.
However, that does not mean we never adjust, change or grow in our understanding of who and what we are as God’s disciples in the world. We might define it as conversion, but more often we recognize that it as transformation as we recognize a new understanding of our role, or of our call, in our relationship with God. And we make changes, consciously or unconsciously, that redefine our purpose as one of God’s beloveds.
My parents thought we could redefine the purpose of our retired school bus. It was imperative that it keep its shell and engine, wheels and some of the windows. It was required that we remove some of the markings that might make it look like an active bus in the school’s fleet. My family might have removed most of the seats inside and the letters outside, but we could not change the container that would hold us or the engine or wheels that would move us. It could change and be re-purposed, but could not come off the manufacturer’s assembly line anew. We could convert it, transform it, change it. But it would still be a bus.
The thing about this Gospel is, it gets used to promote conversion. Of changing who someone is to become a new creation in God. And John 3:16 is often used as proof that Jesus is the only way to eternal life with God.
But neither of these things is an accurate understanding of the text.
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| The ritual bath at Korazim is an example of where the men would go to bathe. Note the water under the stones. This would be "living water" from a natural source. Photo by D. Dehler |
These are invitations into relationship with God. Remember, Jesus is a Jew, talking to Nicodemus, a Pharisee, an expert observer of Jewish law. They would practice ritual cleansing, to purify themselves on a regular basis. Living water from a fresh source would be necessary for them to be ritually clean.
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| Sign identifying the location of the ritual bath found in these ruins at Korazim National Park Photo by D. Dehler |
Jesus is reminding Nicodemus that every time he goes into the bathhouse and emerges, he is giving into being transformed, of being invited into a new or renewed, transformed or converted relationship with God.
Now, as for John 3:16: “For God so loved the world: he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”
This is one of those clobber verses that make it sound like eternal life is only for believers. However, if we place the em-PHA-sis on a different syl-La-BLE, and return the meaning of the word “so” to the way it was used in the seventeenth century, we might see it a bit differently.
First, the word “so” did not mean “very” or “to a large extent.” It meant “in this way.” Rephrasing it would sound like this: “For God loved the world in this way…” 1
Let me read it with a different emphasis: “For God loved the world in this way: he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him [in God] may not perish but may have eternal life. ”
And, even more important, let’s add the next verse to it: “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
God loved the world in this way: God sent Jesus into the world to bring the world, all those who were estranged from God, back into relationship with God. The world had begun to forget all that God had done. God could have given up on the world, but instead, God loved all of creation and did not want it to perish.
God sent Jesus to turn our attention back to God. To convert the hearts of humankind and devote them to God. Because God loves the world.
Therefore, Jesus was not sent to condemn, but instead came so that humanity could be reconciled to God. Could be saved.
For some, that reconciliation might look like ritual bathing twice a day. For others, baptism and confirmation. For most of us today, confession and absolution.
Each of these things could be considered mini conversions, reminders that our relationships with our Creator require certain ways of being, particular rules, laws and expectations that will help us display God’s redemptive, forgiving love for us and for the world.
This Lent, I invite you to consider how God has nudged you toward some kind of change, transformation or conversion. How have you come to know God in a new or different way? In what ways are you sharing that good news?
Let us pray.
Dear God, we confess that we don’t generally like to change and that we get uncomfortable when we are invited to try something new or different. But this Lent, help each of us make room for a new understanding, a sort of conversion or transformation, that helps us better recognize what it is you would have us do and be as your disciples. Make us open to growing in our desire for your will in our lives. In your holy and life-giving name we pray. Amen.
1 https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/2020/3/2/gospel-salts-lectionary-commentary-for-lent-2