Sunday Stretch: Vol. 24

Start off your week with a grounded take on Bible, prayer, the world, and your life ...

A person I knew in college, when talking about some of the Evangelical groups on campus, used to refer to them as the “born-agains,” with a slight Southern accent.

Having grown up in Minnesota and knowing mostly Lutherans and Catholics and a few people from the Covenant church, it was a phrase that kind of made me laugh. People didn’t talk a lot about being “born again” where I grew up, where most kids from churchgoing families I knew were still baptized as infants.

I would say that’s changed significantly in the past few decades. With the ongoing decline of Mainline Protestantism and Catholicism, fewer and fewer of my kids’ friends were baptized as infants, and if people do think of Christianity now, they often think of the popular Evangelicalism they see on TV or read about in the newspaper.

It’s a different world. And into that context and history comes this Sunday’s Gospel text from John 3, where Jesus tells Nicodemus he must be born again. Actually, the NRSV translates it as “from above” which is a possible translation of the Greek ἄνωθεν - and probably makes more sense than “again” in the context, where Jesus is talking about being born from God.

But either way, this text points to an additional role of this season of Lent, which is the opportunity for spiritual renewal. I actually think that maybe some of this long decline in Mainline Protestantism could be from a collective inability or fear of talking about spiritual growth and renewal. Church just became rote: something people did or belonged to, like a social club or community organization. Spiritual renewal is the lifeblood of the local church, though, and from it flows activism, justice ministry, prayer, healing, hope, and new life.

I’m praying you (and I!) get to experience some of that spiritual renewal this Lent. And I’m hoping this weekly study of the text is just a little help for you in that process.

Genesis 12:1-4

Gen. 12:1   Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.  ² I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.  ³ I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

Gen. 12:4   So Abram went, as the LORD had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran.

God’s promise to Abram seems almost a matter of course reading it now, when we know the history of Abram’s family and how they became the patriarchs of the nation of Israel, God’s chosen people. But what strikes me today is the timing of God’s promise to Abram. Abram was already an old man. He had to act, to move, to go to a new land, before God had fulfilled God’s promise. The timing wasn’t great. But it was God’s. Can you relate to that? I know I can.

Questions to Ponder