Church of the Redeemer | Iglesia del Redentor

Born again?

In Canada while visiting a high school
as part of the Christian-Jewish Dialogue of Toronto
together with a rabbi
we were ready to respond to questions
The young people had submitted previously.
And very weighty questions they were,
ranging from concerns about sexual morality to mysticism.
At the end, one young woman raised her hand and asked,
"If science proves that there is no God, how would you view your life work?"
Rabbi Cohen started by saying,
"Science can never prove there is no God just as science cannot prove there is a God.
It is the nature of God to transcend proof.
A God defined is no God at all.
If you prove it, you've lost it."
"Good answer," I thought. But not good enough for the girl. She was persistent.
"I think religion is a matter of psychological conditioning.
I don't think there is a God;
there's already plenty of proof that undermines religious dogma.
When all the data are in and God is proven to be a myth,
where does that leave you?"
So I decided to answer her question from a pragmatic point of view.
I said, "I love what I do.
I appreciate the shape that my religious beliefs have given to my life.
If I live according to the principles of my faith,
I will have lived a good life.
If at the end I find that God does not exist,
I will have no regrets."
I answered like good Nicodemus, meeting reason with reason.
Making religion socially useful
but that is only a cleaver answer, I wonder what help or comfort will bring to my friend Guadalupe Hernandez.

Guadalupe was a good friend of this parish for over twenty years, faithful church goer
although young she was not, she confided in me that in this church she grew
as a person, contending with issues ranging from the frequen reception of communion
to homosexuality in her own family
Today, she lies paralyzed waist down after an accident that took her husband life
in a hospital in San Antonio, Texas. She can't talk. Both were in a bus that collide with a car,
of all the passenger only her and her husband were injured.
Can we blame her for trying to be born again like Nicodemus?
Back to the safety of the uterine enclose, to turn back the clock, to be again anew?
Nicodemus speaks for all of us, paralyzed between desire for magic solutions and the cruel and cold reality of science.

"How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother's womb and be born?"

Jesus's answer is always, perplexing at best
"Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above."

The answer lies within the test of the desert that we read last week
Recapping
Jesus has come from his baptism endorsed by Heavenly Father
he came from a body of water, sign of rich and abundance,
to this spiritual quest of scarcity and marginality in the midst of the desert
for 40 days, he has lived from whatever he could find around him
just like his people the Jews did for 40 years
when they came through the Sinai desert to the Promised Land
a thousand of year prior

It is here in the periphery of life that three solutions are offered by the devil
the three solutions are self-evident, attainable and factual
within the framework of the mythological world of the first century

the first is the temptation of doing it yourself -order this stones to become loaves of bread what I have called God or Home Depot
the second temptation is to rely on the group -jump from the pinnacle of the temple- God or The Oscars
the third temptation is to rely in the factual and material - all the kingdoms of the world in their splendor God or Plasma Tv
all the answers of Jesus come from the same book of the Old Testament: Deuteronomy
and all the answers point to God
God wether living or dying, but always God
God is the eccentric source of all my meaning, both in life and death
I do not live in a quid-pro-quo relationship with him, but I frely on Him to try to find meaning in an increasingly meaningless and unreal world
I cannot live without Him, as he adopted me in the shaky, old, dusty baptismal font
in old rickety church in a working class neighborhood of Havana city, at eleven years of age and I am not saying that I have no issues, I do have them
but I know that Jesus came not condemn but to save
Going back to my conversation with rabbi Cohen
this modern day rabbi spoke like Rabbi Jesus would have.
It was he who made reference to the mysterious wind of the spirit.
He said, "I know God exists, because I have experienced it.
As a young man, I had no intentions of going into the religious life.
I didn't really believe in God.
But then I was present at the birth of my first child,
and there in the delivery room, as my child was born into this world,
I had a profound mystical experience.
In that moment, I was shaken. I knew beyond all doubt that God existed
and was being made known, was present, right there, in that hospital room.
That's the "born again" experience.
That's when one understands that life is more than quantifiable data.
Life has eternal consequences
I suspect that Guadalupe Hernandez, being the woman of faith I know she is
has prepared all her life for this test
not in the sand dunes of the desert in Palestine
but in the equally merciless confines of a white and clean bed
in a hospital room, it is there where she will have to draw meaning
in the meaningless situation she finds herself in
and I suspect that she will draw meaning from the God of Deuteronomy
just as Jesus did, she knows she can not do it herself, she knows that society in general abhors the non-glamours peripheries of life, she knows that the material world has little to offer, if she is going to pull it through, it will have to be with God.
I spoke to her, since she can't talk, and told her
that God and this community loves her very much
I told her to trust in God in whatever outcome
Irma a member of our community
has already paid to go San Antonio to be with Guadalupe
and she tells me that she says that she is going put a brave fight always trusting God
Or how Dorothy Day put it, speaking of Christian witness in the world

"To be a witness does not consist in engaging in propaganda,
or even stirring people up,
but in being a living mystery;
it means to live in such a way that one's life
would not make sense if God did not exist."

Paradoxically Guadalupe, confined to a hospital bed, is an activist of this birth from above, this being a living mystery, finding God and showing God to others
there is much she can doMany people see life as an arch of birth progressing eternally to death
people of faith, people who want to be born form above, by water and spirit
will see life as a circle that begins in God and to God returns
having God as originator and final arrival point liberates us from the slavery of self, social mores or material needs as the desert temptations prove
but specially liberates us from the fear of death
the learning process that takes places at the desert is the clue to be able to get out of the desert of life alive, truly alive.
It is in the desert of the periphery of our lives it is where we learn the most valuables lessons
faith in traditional Christian theology is not an intellectual assent nor an understanding of sorts, it nos even cleaver rhetoric, but a gift from above, and a gift that comes to us in the middle of our existential deserts, gift from above that responds to challenges below
From the eccentric source of our meaning, God, the Other par excellence, as martin Buber will have it
Nicodemus said, "We know you're from God, because you do miracles."
And immediately Jesus knew that Nicodemus didn't really know
that Jesus was not only coming to him from God.
But that Jesus himself was a sign of God's love for the world
For the one who really sees where Jesus comes from,
is not the one who says, "Wow, those miracles are impressive."
The one who really knows is
the one who looks at Jesus pouring himself out
even for those who do not appreciate him,
and in that outpouring sees God at work,
reaching out to embrace the world
– to bless everyone – not just me and mine,
not just my church and all right-thinking folks,
not just the good people, not just white people,
and Americans, but everyone

– the one who really knows that Jesus is of God,
is the one who sees Jesus pouring himself out to bless everyone,
and is moved to participate in this outpouring of love

In John 7:49 and following we read: Nicodemus, who had gone to Jesus earlier and who was one of their own number, asked, "Does our law condemn anyone without first hearing him to find out what he is doing?"

And In John 19:38 and following we read, Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for the body of Jesus. Now Joseph was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly because he feared the Jews. With Pilate's permission, he came and took the body away. 39He was accompanied by Nicodemus, the man who earlier had visited Jesus at night. Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds.[a] 40Taking Jesus' body, the two of them wrapped it, with the spices, in strips of linen. This was in accordance with Jewish burial customs.

I think he finally got it, he finally was born from above, would you?

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