Freedom in God's Family
By Sarah Dylan Breuer
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
Lectionary Reflections for the Fourth Sunday in Lent (B)
Readings for the Fourth Sunday in Lent (B), March 26, 2006- Numbers 21:4-9
- Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22
- Ephesians 2:1-10
- John 3:14-21
It's a phrase that gets used a lot in American Christianity in particular. I suspect the root of its appeal is the way in which it brings together a current that runs deep in our culture
I'm talking about our drive to re-invent ourselves. American culture has always exalted self-improvement, from Pilgrim's Progrss to Norman Vincent Peale and all the way through to the best-selling and seemingly never-ending series of books like Seven Habits for Highly Effective People and The Purpose-Driven Life.
Did you know that there's a book called The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teens? One of these days, I'm half convinced I'll see a "Purpose-Driven Cookbook," or a book on how to cultivate habits for "Highly Effective Toddlers." Our culture's embrace of ideals around opportunity has become an unhealthy addiction. It's one thing to say that we should build a society in which every child, woman, and man has a chance, and another thing
And in a postmodern era in which identity is fluid, the chance to reinvent ourselves has become nearly a constant imperative. The silly extremes are easy to identify: Take the artist formerly known variously as "The Artist," "That Guy Whose Name Is an Unpronounceable Symbol," "The Artist Formerly Known as Prince," and "Prince," who is now called Prince again. Michael Jackson, for whom the pressure for physical perfection and his nearly unlimited resources to pursue it surgically turned him into a freak who rarely appears in public without a burqua. But then there's the rest of us out there, quietly wondering whether our lives would be better if we were that much thinner, that much more "effective" or "purpose-driven," if we could just find that book, CD, or program that offers a "better you." That's because somewhere deep down is the shadow side of this culture of self-improvement:
The unshakeable conviction that you're just not good enough. And into that gap jumps the promise to be "born again."
You wanted to get somewhere so badly
You had to lose yourself along the way.
You changed your name
Well that's okay, it's necessary
And what you leave behind you don't miss anyway.
(U2, "Gone," Pop)
Our culture sucked up the idea of being "born again" and turned it into just one more way we can reinvent ourselves, lose that accusing chorus crying, "missed opportunity" and "not good enough" and finally become those good and respectable boys and girl who deserve good things.
But if that strategy really worked, I doubt we'd see so many "born-again" people frenetically projecting all that they were trying to leave behind onto anyone defined as "other." The darkness and emptiness catches up.
'Cause I'm already gone
Felt that way all along.
Closer to you every day
I didn't want it that much anyway.
(U2, "Gone")
So much for being "born again," eh?
But that's not at all what the Gospel According to John is talking about in presenting what Jesus offers to Nicodemus. Jesus isn't going to teach us how to be respectable, or even how to be "good" in the way our culture usually means the word. Following Jesus is not a program for self-improvement; it's an invitation to a community. It's dislocation from a network of relationships that perpetuates injustice, death, and alienation so that we can be knit into a network of relationships that brings healing, reconciliation, and abundant life rooted in the eternal.
Think about how many things are set by our birth in this world: We are born in a geographical location that can accustom us to unjust privilege or prevent us from access to clean water, education, the chance to live to adulthood. We are born in families that instill in us a sense that we are loved and too often a sense also that we are deeply inadequate. We are born with a skin color that will also condition our sense of who we are, what we deserve, whom we may love or fear. This world is set up in ways that try to lock us into patterns of relationship based on our birth
How might the world be different if those patterns were disrupted, if you and I could be sisters and brothers in healthy relationship?
In the ancient Mediterranean world, the relationship between sisters and brothers was the one arena in which women and men could associate freely with one another. It was where women and men came closest to being equals, since they shared a name that was equally honored or shamed by what befell them. The ancient Mediterranean world consisted of what anthropologists call 'agonistic' cultures
What would our relationships look like if we shared one birth and were raised in one loving, supportive family? What would an economy look like that took seriously that we live and work in a world that is our common inheritance, and not a set of disconnected chunks of land and resources to be conquered like a Risk game board? What would a world look like in which we saw every child as our own little sister or brother, if "family first" included them all as our own flesh and blood?
That's Jesus' invitation to us today. Being "born from above" means that Jesus offers us freedom from relationships that ensnare, and the choice to relate to one another as beloved children of one loving God. It's a choice not just for a new name:
It's a new world of new relationships, of new and abundant life.
Thanks be to God!
Sarah Dylan Breuer is editor of The Witness. In her spare time, she maintains a website with a lectionary commentary series and a blog, and works throughout the church on issues of liturgy and faith. Dylan may be reached by email at editor@thewitness.org.