A couple of weeks ago, I got a text from our minister — she had a nasty cold and couldn’t talk. So she asked if I would cover the service the next day.  This is that “quick and dirty” sermon. Sometimes, those are the ones that force me to think the most about the topics that are the hardest for me.

Born again is just one of those phrases that makes me squirm. It used to factor so, so heavily into my lexicon, into my whole world, that once I left that world behind, it became a phrase that just made me feel icky.

So much so that, when we were signing up for Sundays in our worship associates meeting a few months ago, I took one look at this Sunday’s topic and literally said, out loud in the meeting, “EESH. NOT WITH A TEN FOOT POLE. That one’s a big ole NOPE for me.”

And yet…..here we are….

Oh the irony.

So let’s have a chat about that phrase, because, chances are, it makes at least some of you as uncomfortable as it makes me.

I’ve thought more about these two words in the last 24 hours or so than I have in going on a decade.

It isn’t like I don’t HEAR these words, or at least see them. My mother lives in the south. The DEEP south. Just getting to her house means passing at least 5 billboards asking if I’m born again, and reminding me that I’m going to hell if I’m not.

I don’t find those billboards particularly helpful.

For people living outside the realm of Christianity, we can find ourselves asking “What does that even mean???” It just sounds so WEIRD.

I mean, UUs don’t generally ask other people if they’re born again, right? That just isn’t generally in our thought process.

On the surface, Born Again feels like a distinctly Christian phrase. After all, the root of the Christian narrative is instant transformation – that sudden, sweeping change brought about by belief in Jesus.

Their core belief is that, In an instant, the power of God can remake a person completely. When a person kneels in prayer and is “born again” in Christ, Grace comes in and blows away all the old obstacles.

 

We don’t have that sort of instant transformation narrative in our faith tradition as UU’s. In contrast to instant transformation, we tell the story of evolution, where transformation is incremental and takes place over time. It can take hundreds of years, dozens of generations, to mutate one little gene, so that over thousands or millions of years those tiny changes might add up to something.

 

Our lives, and our way of living out our faith reflect that belief that a thousand little things can add up to a change: You know, things like writing our politicians, showing up to rallies, recycling, eating less meat, register people to vote, host the homeless shelter, have lots of committee meetings, and on and on and on.

Honestly, It can be overwhelming to think about, especially when we think of some of the insurmountable challenges we are facing right now in our world, and in our personal lives too.

If we’re really being honest with ourselves, I think that, in those moments where we wonder when everything we’re doing even makes a dent, much less a difference, the idea of the instant transformation of being born again can be pretty appealing.

When Rev. Aija called me and asked me to preach today about the idea of being born again, I started thinking back to all the transformation narratives I used to preach about, years ago, that I used to use as examples of the instant transformation that god could perform – You probably are at least a little familiar with them –

One is when The Lord appears to Moses in a burning bush and calls him to save his people. Another is after the resurrection of Jesus, on the road to Damascus, when the voice of the risen Jesus speaks to Saul, the persecutor of Christians, and he becomes Paul, the most prominent of the apostles.  Another story I used to tell is the one behind the song “Amazing Grace, the song that claims that any sinner can go from lost to found, from blindness to sight in an instant, in “the hour I first believed”.

I was thinking of these stories that were so familiar to me, stories I’d grown up hearing, and spent years preaching, and  this time, I noticed something…. different. Something I had never picked up on before. I realized, when I looked at them in detail, that the changes didn’t happen as instantaneously as I had previously believed.

Moses didn’t come face to face with the burning bush at breakfast and then rain down plagues upon Pharaoh by dinner. It was a process. There was some in between there. First of all, he flat out argued with God about not wanting to do it, then he met with Aaron, then he traveled to get his father-in-law’s approval, then he made the 300-mile trek to meet with Jewish leaders in Egypt WITHOUT A CAR, mind you, and only THEN did he end up standing up to Pharaoh and leading the people out of Egypt. The Bible doesn’t tell us how long that took, but it couldn’t have been that quick!

And then we think of Paul, with his experience on the road to Damascus. After Jesus wrapped up their conversation, Paul had to wait at least three days before he was healed of his Jesus-induced blindness. Then he spent time studying with the Christian community in Damascus, then he went to Jerusalem for another unspecified period, and then FINALLY, he set out on the missionary voyages that eventually made him famous. He didn’t just hop up and start preaching. He was many years removed from his supposedly instantaneous transformation.

 

Now we can believe what we will about the historical accuracy or truth of the bible,  but the story that really brought this idea home for me is about a real person, John Newton, who wrote “Amazing Grace”.  We all know that song right?  Well, John’s life did actually transform radically. He started out as a wild, crude, mean as a snake sailor on slave ships, and somehow, he got from there to being a tea-totaling abolitionist Anglican priest.

 

Eventually.

 

The best part about Newton’s story is that we have his own writings to learn from. According to his diary, he was “born again” in 1748, after his ship survived a storm that almost killed everyone on board. But he didn’t hang up his compass right away. No. He continued captaining slave ships until 1754, when he had a stroke. It was only Then he began studying for the priesthood and was finally ordained in 1764. “Amazing Grace” was published in 1779, and he wrote his first abolitionist tract in 1788, four decades after his conversion. So his transformation did not happen “the hour I first believed”, but played over the course of his lifetime.
I love that.

 

John Newton made a choice to believe. To be different. To change. To take his life in a different direction – one that had meaning and purpose. And then, presumably every day, he woke up with the resolve to live in to that transformation. To, every day, work on the thought patterns and take those little, evolutionary actions that would eventually alter the trajectory of his life.

 

THAT is a straight up miracle, y’all.

 

The miracle of being born again.

 

You know, It doesn’t have to be a phrase that makes us feel icky. When we move from viewing it as an unlikely to happen instant transformation, to a moment of resolve that we then have the opportunity to live in to each day, we can experience a transformation, incremental as it may be, in our own lives.

We have the same opportunity as Moses, as Paul, as John Newton – as anyone – to be born again each and every morning. Not in the context of having our lives transformed by Jesus, but the re-birth of all that is real and true within us, to live into the fullness of our authentic self. Every day, we have the opportunity to claim our sense of the higher purpose in our lives, to achieve a clear, balanced view of who we really are, to claim, or reclaim, the sense of freedom, joy, and unfettered creativity in our everyday lives. We have the opportunity to live each day as though we’ve been born anew, born again.

Spirit of Life, known by many names yet by no name fully known—we gather today with hopes and dreams and also with fears and wounds…

May we be reminded that all things come and go; that today’s joys and today’s sorrows will in time give way to those of tomorrow and that those of us who have strength to share today ought do so while we can, and that those who are in need ought allow ourselves to receive, for tomorrow those roles might well be reversed. Spirit of Life, mother and father of us all, help us to remember those who are not here with us today, those who need what we have found here and those who have what we here need. May we always be open to growth and change, to movement, to grace.

May it be so. Amen.