Have you ever been in a floatation tank? You know, one of those sensory deprivation set-ups filled with salt water that makes you float as though you were in the Dead Sea; or as though you were back in the womb. Even the pod is shaped like a womb, or an egg.
I know you weren’t expecting that, but bear with me (pun intended). As I was floating there on Friday, I thought of Nicodemus, wondering how a person might possibly be born twice. I contemplated what it might be like to use this time to ask God what new life I might be called into today, emerging from the salty waters of the pod, since God, whose Spirit first brooded over the waters of creation, is always making all things anew.
Nicodemus’ question, though not unreasonable, is the question of one who misses the metaphor that is the Word of God; a Word that represents so much more than himself. But there is merit to Nicodemus’ attempted analysis of birth and rebirth.
When we are first born, we become individuated for the first time, taking our own breath, our own nourishment, completely dependent still, but beginning to differentiate ourselves as “I”. One of the early learnings of a baby is that she is herself, and not someone else; that she has a body that is not someone else’s body, and a mind that is curious about everything that is not “I”, or “me”. She hasn’t learned grammar yet.
When we are reborn, by water and the Holy Spirit, the instruments of baptism, we are reborn into community. We are learning to remain differentiated, but also to be reintegrated into the Body of Christ. We are both “I” and “we”, “me” and “us”.
On a human level it makes so much sense. When we are born as individuals, we are placed in the arms of another: a mother, a father, a kinship carer, nurse or midwife, eager adoptive parent – someone who continues to hold us as the waters of creation cradled us in the womb. Rarely, and tragically, are we alone.
When we are reborn into community, into the Body of Christ, we remember that, for all the work one has done to become oneself, we belong to one another, and not to ourselves alone.
The Trinity, the way in which we understand God as both Three and One, if I might venture onto thin theological ice, is illustrative of this. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit are three Persons, each one an “I”, a “me”; yet they are One God. They are, you might say, the epitome of the royal “We”. They are differentiated, yet indissolubly united.
I’m going to back away quickly now. As soon as we step onto the theological ice, it begins to crack. As Jesus tells us, if we can’t even understand on a human level that dance between I and We, Me and Us, individuality and community, the ways in which we belong to one another – well then what hope is there for us to understand the heavens and their eternal dance?
And we do misunderstand so often. We set up individualism against community, when each of us was known by God before we were formed in the womb, as unique as a snowflake; and each of us is made in the same image, the image of God. We are fractals, made to fit together. Each of our stories is part of the story of the love of God for the world, for the people that God has made. Together, only together, do they become something greater than each one, a metaphor, a word that speaks beyond itself.
We have a habit, as humans, of choosing one thing over another, insisting that it must be this way or that, “I” or “we”, “us” or “me”; worse, “us” or “them”. Earthly or heavenly things, when Jesus has already shown us that he can be both, and and that through him, looking to him, even we mortals may know eternal life. When the Trinity has shown us that they can be both One and Three, “me” and “we”, without ever making it about “us” and “them”.
And it is a dance, a balancing act. If we succumb to groupthink, to being only “we”, we miss the unique gifts that God has given each one, the unique truth of each life. That is when “we” strays into the territory of “us” and “them”; and how can we love one another if we will not see one another as neighbours, as distinct people crafted in the dignity of the image of God?
But if we fall the other way, into “my way” and no other, how can we dance together?
Well, enough theological rabbit holes, thin ice, dance parties, and mixed metaphors.
The Catechism of the Book of Common Prayer describes the mission of the Church as being “to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.”
And isn’t that what we’ve just been talking about? The re-membering of that unity which honours the diversity of persons, just as the Trinity so elegantly demonstrates for us; that unity with God and with one another that makes us whole, that makes us strong, that brings such joy, that is so necessary in these divided and divisive times.
And, to Nicodemus’ question, I think that does require that we are born anew again and again in the Spirit, that we are open enough, humble enough, trusting enough to ask the question, Who is God calling me to be today, in the context of community and a changing world? To place ourselves repeatedly into the process of adoption as children of the living God, and heirs of eternal life. Not to fall into the polar traps of “us and them” or rugged individualism, nor to give up our identity – which is a gift from God – but to offer it as a gift to our neighbour, in gratitude to God, and ready, by repentance and restoration, to remain curious about the ways in which others can help us to find our place in the Body of Christ, in the fractal image of God.
Throughout our scriptures, God uses the pronouns “I” and “We” interchangeably, and we are each one made in the image of God. We are the Body of Christ. What we shall become, as the first letter of John (1John 3:2) tells us, has not yet been revealed, except that we shall be like God, in blessed unity, diversity, and love. What joy there is in that!
Thus may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with us all, evermore (2 Corinthians 13:14). Amen
Texts: Romans 8:12-1; John 3:1-17
