Born for belonging

 

John 3: 1-17
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
May 26, 2024 – Trinity Sunday

Photo of a large lighted kiosk sign with these words: "Surround yourself with people who fight for you in rooms you aren't in." Sign is on a wide walking area with shops on either side and street lamps.

Earlier this month the Metropolitan Museum of Art held its annual gala with the theme “The Garden of Time”, inspired from a short story by science fiction author J.G. Ballard. The dystopian story is about Count Axel and his wife, referred to only as “his wife” or as “the Countess”, who live in a grand villa with a garden of time flowers: crystal flowers that when picked and crushed, stave off the passage of time. As sunset and evening approach, Count Axel looks off into the distance and sees an advancing horde of people—soldiers in ragged uniforms, people carrying their belongings in large packs, some pulling wooden carts—as though they were fleeing from a great catastrophe or upheaval. He picks one of the few larger flowers remaining, crushes it, and for three days the horde of people is held at bay.

The time garden is dying. Now there are only small buds left, each one picked and used in their turn. Eventually the multitude swarms over the last crest of a hill like a tidal wave, the Count and his wife on the terrace holding the last time flower. When the mob finally reaches the villa, they find it in ruins, the terrace overrun with thornbushes. In the center of the thornbushes stand two stone statues of a man and a woman, with a single rosebud in her hand.



Though I can appreciate the artistry and industry of high fashion, at $75,000 a ticket, there seemed to be no sense of irony of the story chosen against a backdrop of economic uncertainty and the ever-increasing divide between those who hold onto wealth and those who cannot escape poverty. Count Axel and his wife believed themselves to be separate, removed from that teeming humanity in need and yet knew it was inevitable that one day they could no longer hold them off. I wondered if any of the attendees understood that in this story they were the Count and his wife in the flesh and if that mattered to them in any meaningful way.



This whole notion of believing oneself to be separate from the troubles of others reminds me of a song by Eden Brent, Ain’t Got No Troubles.


I ain't got no money
I ain't got a dime
No nickels I can rub
No pennies I can find
I don't want for nothin'
My tastes ain't too refined
No I ain't got no troubles on my mind


The song is about a person having no troubles because they are disconnected from everything that might give us trouble. They got no job, no worries, no religion, no community, no plans, just possibilities.


I ain't got no buddies
Ain't got no friends
I got no man
I got no house to keep him in
I got no one to call me
If they ain’t gettin’ by
No I ain't got no troubles on my mind


Nicodemus, on the other hand, is troubled. He’s troubled by who might see him, so he comes to Jesus at night. He’s troubled by what Jesus is saying and teaching because Nicodemus believes Jesus to be sent by God. He’s troubled because as a Pharisee and a rabbi he knows there is no disconnect, no separate life apart from God, from all that’s good and holy and true. Why would anyone need to be born a second time?



What’s really messing things up here is some Hellenistic or Greek influence on John’s community of Jesus followers. Here we have more of that binary thinking: above vs. below, Spirit vs. flesh, heavenly things vs. earthly things. As if these things are separate from each other. As if one is better than the other.



It’s from this line of thinking that we have what author and humanist chaplain Jim Palmer calls “separation theology”: the idea that we are separate and separated from God, that we are lesser than God is, and that God’s love is transactional and conditional depending on our faithfulness to God.



Not only that but theology based on separation also means human beings are separate and separated from each other and from the natural world. Yes, we are individuals with our own thoughts, feelings, boundaries, limitations, but we are also interdependent. We do not live in a hierarchy of human beings as the pinnacle of creation but in an ecosystem in which we are part of a whole. When Jesus says, “For God so loved the world”, the Greek word used for ‘world’ is kosmos: God so loved the universe, all that is, the whole thing.



Or as my brother would say, we are all facets of Oneness, each of us having our own experience of what it means to be human. Because he believed in the Oneness of all things, he also believed in the power of Love to heal and to forgive, that it is possible to live without judgment or fear, and that each of us is different, all are needed, none of us are better or worse, all of us have purpose, and we are to be Light to one another.



God is in all and all is in God, what is called panentheism. When we were born the first time, we were born into a world that dictates that life is a competition, a zero-sum game, that we are separate from each other, that some of us are lesser than others based on random qualities and thus can be treated that way. This world is dependent on our love to be transactional and conditional. This world requires that we are separate from the divine and we need a mediator to intervene for us—in the Christian tradition our mediator is Jesus who must atone for our sins and a priest or pastor who is granted authority over others. This world takes what it wants from the earth, declares that land can be owned, resources can be pillaged and creatures destroyed without thought to future generations.



Think about it. When we are separate and separated, we are easier to mislead, control, manipulate, instill fear of the other. It’s what makes it possible for a little over 1% of the global population to hoard almost 50% of the world's total wealth and for 50% to hold only 1.3% of the world's total wealth. It’s how we can create forever chemicals, exist with an estimated 466 million firearms in the U.S., and how the former president got elected. It’s why we have racism, patriarchy, homophobia, transphobia, all the things that keep us separate and right where we are.



But if God is in all and all is in God—what is good, holy, and true—that means we were born for belonging, for solidarity, for oneness. And so, we need to be born anew into that reality, what younger generations might call “woke”. (Yup, you heard it here: to be born again means to be woke. There are some Evangelical Christians who will be rolling in the aisles.) When we experience suffering or loss of any kind, it doesn’t feel like oneness; it feels awful, despairing, hopeless. Losing this separation theology can feel like loss: loss of certainty, loss of truth, loss of place in the world—no more hierarchy, no more lesser or better. And yet loss is built into the world; everything has a lifespan.



What Easter teaches us is, as Dr. Monica Coleman puts it, adventure is the ideal response to loss. And what an adventure it is to be awake, to be born anew. Scary, risky adventure but one that says we all belong in the kin-dom of God. Amen.

Benediction – enfleshed.com


Beloveds, we will born again

into the Ways of Life—
practicing hope,
building community,
emboldened for the work of solidarity.
The kin-dom of God awaits!