Bright Thursday; The Holy Martyr Sabbas Stratelates.
Acts 2:38-43; John 3:1-15.
Read John 3:1-15
In his exchange with Nicodemus,
Jesus speaks in ways that tease us—
riddles wrapped in holy fire,
words that challenge, lift, inspire.
“You must be born again,” He said—
not a tweak, but the whole ego dead.
This call is not some mild correction;
it’s death before a resurrection.
Rebirth implies that something dies:
the self, its masks, its alibis.
The ego and its proud parade
must fall before the light is made.
After making His point about rebirth, Jesus then reaches back to the wilderness: “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent… so must the Son of Man be lifted up.” Healing by looking at a bronze snake? Absurd. Yet it is precisely in these strange reversals—birth through death, healing through gazing on the vector of disease—that God reveals Himself.
E. Stanley Jones once wisely said:
“When we say we begin with God, we begin with our idea of God, and our idea of God is not God. Instead, we ought to begin with God’s idea of God, and God’s idea of God is Christ.”
To do this we need to take head of what St. Paul tell us in his letter to the Romans: none are righteous, no one seeks God. Which means the first step to knowing God is admitting we don’t. The renewal of the mind St. Paul speaks of (Romans 12:2) begins with surrender. If you want to be born again, you must die anew. If you want to be healed, confess you are sick. If you want to know God, abandon your idea of Him—and let His idea of Himself be conceived in you.