This week our nation was once again subjected to a blood bath of students at a university. I say "subjected" because as a culture we are no longer "horrified" by such actions. Sadly, somehow we have come to grips with the reality that there are deranged and wicked people in our society and that these things will happen. It only seems to horrify us when it hits close to home.
It's interesting that we have essentially come to expect people to behave in brutal ways while at the same time we continue to hold onto the idea that most people are basically good — indeed, there are some who still insist that all people have good in them. Such views not only contradict God's plain Word that we are by nature sinful, but it negates the message of Jesus in today's Gospel lesson. While speaking to Nicodemus, a grown man and religious leader, Jesus told him that he needed to be born again. Nicodemus replied that such a thing was impossible, that a man could not reenter the womb and be born a second time.
Well, Nicodemus was right … and wrong. It is impossible for us to be born a second time by our own efforts. We can't reenter the womb and we can't be born of flesh again. We are stuck with our sinful nature and through that sinful nature we are capable of all sorts of very evil things and incapable of anything good. We need to start all over again if we are going to overcome our sinful nature. Like Nicodemus, we need to be born again but we can't do it — it is impossible for man.
Jesus' call to be born again is not a call to action on our part but a call to His power, His grace, and His Spirit. It is not our work that brings new birth, but the work of the Holy Spirit. It is a birth that comes about by God's will, not the will or decision of any man. We find this new beginning only where God has promised to be: in Word and Sacrament. Is it any wonder that Jesus tells us that we must be born of water and the Spirit? In Baptism we find the new birth that is not only a fresh start, but a new beginning in which everything is good. In the second birth we are righteous, holy, and blameless because it is a life-giving blood bath in Jesus.
