The
Spirit Blows
“The
wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know
where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with anyone who is born of the
Spirit.”
Jesus
of Nazareth (John 3:8)
Jesus
was speaking with Nicodemus about being born again. It is one of the best know
pieces of scripture in the New Testament. It was almost a test that Jesus was
giving Nicodemus, a Pharisee, and one of the rulers of Israel. He comes to
Jesus at night because he is afraid to be seen consulting him. He says to Jesus,
we know that you are a teacher sent from God, because no one else could do the
things you do, but we don’t understand your teaching about being born again. “How
can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s
womb and be born?” Jesus tries his best to explain that the birth he speaks
of is a spiritual birth, not one of the flesh. Nicodemus still does not
understand and so Jesus shames him a little bit. “Are you a teacher of Israel,
and yet you do not understand these things?” Nicodemus has the good sense to be
quiet then, and let Jesus go on with his teaching.
Jesus’s
teaching was mostly meant to bring Nicodemus down a peg or two as a leader of
the Synagogue, by telling him, just because you have credentials does not mean
you understand one thing about how Spirit works. Spirit comes to whom it will
and shows its works through the most unusual people. Spirit does not care about
your degrees or your social status or, in our modern terminology, your ordination.
It is like the wind that blows where it blows and is not subject to the will of
human beings. Spirit is just as likely to speak through a woman (God forbid) or
a child as through one of the “teachers of Israel.”
Let’s keep in mind,
before we start bashing the faith of Nicodemus, that Jesus was also a Jew. And
he had benefitted from the synagogue education he received in Nazareth. He memorized
the scriptures because of teachers like Nicodemus—he just understood them at a
different level. Nicodemus had a legitimate question, and he wanted to
understand, but he just could not. He didn’t understand because he, like many
of us today, was a literalist—a letter of the law, rules and traditions, say
the right words, enact the prescribed rituals, do it like it’s supposed to be
done literalist. And Jesus was a mystic.
It’s one of the raw edges
even today in everything we do. Some of us are literalists, and some of us are
mystics, and there exists a chasm between the two. Would you believe that here
in Alabama, a law had to be passed by the legislature to allow teachers and
coaches to use yoga and meditation with students—because it has been disallowed
here for more than thirty years. The fear was that it would teach Christian
boys and girls an eastern religion and lure them away from their parents’ form
of Christianity. At one point, it was even outlawed to say to a group of school
kids, “close your eyes and imagine this…” That is how literal and bound-up
people had become because of fear of other religions. Those who say you must
believe these things in the most literal sense, or you cannot call yourself a Christian—the
virgin birth, the walking on water, the resurrection of the body and on and on—are
the modern-day equivalents of Nicodemus. The spirit blows where it will, it
animates whom it chooses, and it speaks through the strangest of mouths. It is
not ours to govern, or to own, or to legislate. The very best we can do is to
follow Nicodemus’s lead—ask questions and then sit quietly and listen.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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