Born of Water and Spirit
John 3:1-21
“…no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and the spirit.” v. 5
This gospel reading for the third Sunday in Lent focuses on the need to be born from above or born again. The story concludes with Jesus giving a theological lecture to Nicodemus.
That lecture can sound ethereal and mysterious and poetic. But Nicodemus, like many of us, needs more concrete rather than abstract language. That’s our experience of being born from above as well. The experience Jesus is talking about doesn’t just take place in the Spirit world, not just heaven directed, but earth bound. ‘…born of water and the Spirit.”
Our experience of God is often mystical, other worldly. That experience is also very much in the middle of our human experience. Some may indeed have visions, out of body experiences, dreams, and revelations. Others of us have to squint hard to see God’s presence coming as it does in this case in the darkness of the night.
For many of us our baptism is our experience of water and the Spirit—the joining of an earthly element with a heavenly promise. The washing of water on our heads, the cross of oil on our foreheads, the laying on of hands are the assurance that something real is happening in this time. Something real that is for us a new birth, a birth from above, a connection to the great Giver who makes all things holy.
We give thanks today for the real water of baptism, for the promise of baptism, for the new birth, and for the life to which it calls us.
PRAY: O God our leader and guide, in the waters of baptism you bring us to new birth to live as your children. Send us from the waters of baptism to make holy all water and the life it sustains. Amen.
Fast: By doing large instead of small loads of laundry this week
ACT: Set aside a gallon of water for a local good pantry
OR $1 for ELCA World Hunger Appeal water projects
...the least of these... 