Born for community

 

John 3: 1-17
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
March 1, 2026

"Nicodemus Visiting Jesus" - Henry Ossawa Tanner, 1899
Two men with brown skin wearing long robes and head coverings sit on a rooftop by moonlight. A light glows from Jesus' chest and illuminates his face
as he speaks with Nicodemus.

Almost 63 years ago, Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley were killed in a bomb blast at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. This act of domestic terrorism was carried out by members of the Ku Klux Klan, whose motto “America First” is back in use by the current administration and some Republican members of Congress.



Yesterday we awoke to the news that the United States and Israel launched a joint airstrike that hit a girls’ elementary school in Minab, Iran, killing over 160 students and injuring many more. And there is a bright thread that connects one to the other.



A thread called racism. A thread called misogyny. A thread called patriarchy. A thread called child abuse. A thread called White supremacy. A thread called Christian nationalism.



There are many ways to create cohesion among people but among the most powerful are hate and fear. Telling people what to be afraid of and who’s to blame for it. It hurts so much to live in this world right now, but then it always has. And yet it is never an excuse for hate, violence, genocide, and war.



So let me tell you something good today by sharing my experience this past Wednesday in Washington, DC as part of the United Methodist Church’s Faithful Resistance event. How the Church is coming together to support immigrants, to denounce violence, to affirm the worth and dignity of every human being, to cry out for justice for the land which has no borders and no owners because the earth is the Lord’s, to reject the lie that our safety comes at other people’s expense, to proclaim that everyone deserves to flourish without fear. How the Church is being born anew, born again, born from above. How the Church is finally coming to grips with its role in how we got to where we are now as a nation, how the Church has aided and abetted power, how we have sold our birthright for some pottage, our soul for institutional advantage.



How we allowed Jesus’ words like “born again” to be twisted into individualized salvation, a relationship with him to be personal, and sin into something private. When salvation is individual, we disconnect ourselves from the suffering of our neighbor. When a relationship with Jesus is personal, we run the risk of worshipping our ego. When sin is private, predators can move in plain sight and there is no collective repair of the harm done by one group to another. When Jesus says to Nicodemus, “You must be born from above”, the Greek word for “you” is plural. Plural, as in “God so loved the world”. Plural, as in “that the world might be saved through him”.



To be born anew, to be born again, to be born from above is to be born into community, to be born into the kin-dom, to be born into interconnectedness. If Christians were truly born again, it wouldn’t be possible to support violent regime change in a sovereign nation while our own government is responsible for the deaths of American citizens and the denigration of transgender people to second class citizenry. If this truly was a Christian nation, no child would go hungry, no warehouses would be built and purchased to imprison human beings, no one would go without healthcare, this nation would not lift up a sword against another nation, and billionaires would not exist.



To be born anew, to be born again, to be born from above is what happens when we repent, when we turn away from self-interest and turn toward God and God’s interest in the stranger, the poor, the widow, and the orphan. But to be born again we must first die to ourselves. Not just individually but collectively. Not just as Christians but as Church. And this Table is where we are called to die to ourselves: to commune not only with the life of Jesus but also with his death. To turn toward God is to turn to the pain and suffering of others and know we are connected to the fate of all beings.



To commune with Jesus’ death means we join in community with Iranian girls going to school, with our Muslim friends and neighbors during the holy month of Ramadan, with all Black and brown nations that have been bombed by the United States, with immigrants and refugees, because Love knows no borders. We join together in painful community that this day, this day, this day that the Lord has made, humanity might begin to heal, that justice might come, and human community might become whole and life-giving and be born anew. May it be so. Amen.

Benediction – enfleshed.com (adapted)


Beloveds, when we turn away from self-interest
and turn toward God—
what is good, holy, and true—
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!