2. Nicodemus

 2. Nicodemus.

“Blowing southward, then turning northward, round and round the wind swirls, ever returning on its course.” Ecclesiasties 1:6

The Holy Spirit is a mystery to me. A door-shaped mystery that invites me in and the more often I enter the less I know, but the more sure I am of who I am.  Like Stickman in the children’s story* I find myself misused and misunderstood in this world and often utterly lost, and I must remember:

“I’m Stickman, I’m Stickman, I’M STICKMAN, that’s me. And I long to be back in the family tree”

Remembering is powerful. The Spirit is inside me reminds me of who I am, and I know the family tree I have been grafted into. Even if that’s all I know, in that moment, it is everything and enough. I am new. I am grafted in. I have been reborn.

I know what happened during the birth of each of my children in great and strange detail. The rooms, the sounds, the smells, the intimate, embarrassing and most of all the weird wonder of a new and tiny human. Suddenly, they are on you. You are skin to skin with one you know deeply and who is also, in this moment, a stranger. I knew them one way when I carried them, in my body and imagination. Now they are here and breathing and they cannot go back to the baby I carried before.

I was surprised by the amount of water in birth. Water surrounding the baby, water I carried unknowing until after the birth, water as I wept. Birth and water. It makes me think about the Gospel story of Jesus’ interaction with a member of the religious elite called Nicodemus. His friends weren’t fans of this new Rabbi, but despite that some inner hunger propelled him past the judgements of his peers and he sought Jesus out in the dead of night for conversation:

 “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.”

Jesus replies with an answer that feels to me like a wink, because they admitted they had seen the signs as indication of God-with-him, the kingdom come, and yet were desperately trying to maintain their distance:

“Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.” 

Was he hinting that they were already in? Nicodemus, he searches for a piece of logic, anything so he can stay upright:

4 “How can someone be born when they are old? ….. Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”

And Jesus replies without answering the question because the question is dumb. Of course you can’t go back into the teeny tiny womb of your mum, blessed be she, even if she is still alive. But there is another womb and another birth and there is El-Shaddai, the God-with-many-breasts, who has room for the universe inside.

I love that the word mercy in Hebrew means womb, and the word picture is of gated water. We are both carried and protected in a womb of love.

“5 Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. 6 Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.7 You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’“

The words “born of water” are always accompanied in my mind by a faint whoosh and I’m back in the hospital crouched over a beanbag as the bag of water around my son explodes and he makes his appearance. Nicodemus. Born of water. He had a mum – we all did once – and we too were born of water, the same water that protected us and smoothed our passage into this beautiful world. And we are around 57% water still as we live and move. Born of water, made of water.
Jesus said to Nicodemus you need another birth, another mum. This time your mum is Spirit, and you are born of Spirit, and you are made of Spirit too. Maybe around 57%.

To enter you must see the door, to see you must leave what you know, the womb-time and the safety of who you thought you were before. Like an episode of “who do you think you are” the water that now flows is the tears as you are told that you have another lineage you knew nothing of. That the line you knew of is still there – you were once in a water-bag in the womb of your mum, but there is another line. The God of the universe has birthed you again and just as you carry the DNA of the one that birthed you in water, so you carry the DNA of the One that birthed you in Spirit.
I wont leave you as orphans Jesus said. There’s a fullness here. A Mum and a Dad in the dance of the three God, who all stick around to nurture, teach and love you. You are in our family tree now. Everything is different and you can no more go back than six foot adults can crawl back in to the belly of their five foot mum.

Like Stickman I won’t forget who I am.

As I walk I get covered in dust, but I am not just dust. I wash with water but I am not just water. I am of Spirit I am. I am like the one who birthed me. I belong to a family tree and I’ll stick where I belong. That’s me. I know that, but the three-in-one mother-father-son who birthed me a second time whispers a reminder that much of me is still a mystery. A door shaped mystery that invites me in.

 “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes as from or where it is going. So it is with everyone who is born of the spirit.” John ch3:8

So it is with us? We are like the wind that blows wherever it pleases? There is a scent of freedom here for the children of the Spirit that is way wilder than I realised. I think I need to stay on this thought for a while and let my knowing grow as large as the gifts the Father keeps trying to give me.

 “It’s alright, it’s alright, alright. She moves in mysterious ways.” (U2)

 *Stickman is a story by the author Julia Donaldson, and now a short film.