Pastor’s Corner – May 26, 2024
Spiritual Rebirth
Are you born again? There was before and after. Before I was a sinner in need of redemption and after receiving Jesus as my Lord and Savior I was born again, and guaranteed a place in heaven. I remember at a revival meeting I attended as a teenager, an evangelist asked the audience to raise their hand if they knew for certain they would go to heaven if they were to die that very night. And with confidence I raised my hand, since Jesus was my Lord and I was washed in his blood and he paid the price for my sin on the cross. I mean isn’t that what faith is all about, going to a better place and not being afraid of death or the suffering of the world because there is a better place waiting for us?
Ask me the same question now and I will tell you my understanding of faith has grown into something that is radically different. Faith is not a vehicle to get you to a place in heaven, but an alignment or disposition of our heart to the reality of God and truth of who we are. Heaven is not a place above, but here and now where we are fully alive as human beings created in God’s image. And hell is what we do to each other that creates human suffering, dehumanizing people. I no longer speculate what will happen after you die, I trust a loving God will take care of that and whether we will see our loved ones again. Again,I leave that up to God’s care. The presence of loved ones who have gone before me are alive in my memory and are embodied within my body and spirit. I carry my ancestors and their witness in my life, which I also will pass down to my children and community.
To be born again of the spirit, as Jesus tried to explain to Nicodemus, is not something in our power to create. But if we surrender our life to God’s love for us and for our world, we may find ourselves transformed by the Spirit. The question we may need to ask then, as John suggests, is do we love God and love the world as God loves? Amen.
Pastor Dae