It can be one of those obnoxious questions, asked more with judgment than with care. I have heard it used as a sincere desire to help people be with Jesus and a far less than sincere way of telling someone they are going to Hell. Are you born again?

It comes, of course, from this central passage in John 3:3-8 -

Jesus answered, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.’ Nicodemus said to him, ‘How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?’ Jesus answered, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, “You must be born from above.” The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.’

Dylan's Lectionary Blog got me thinking earlier in the week about this phrase in a new way though. She talked about how difficult it is to change the family we are living in. How do we join a new family? How do we get a chance to start over? How do we get the ability to do something in new ways with a whole new set of eyes and life? The answer is right here in John 3.

“You must be born from above.”

The reason for this is made even more clear in the later sections of the same chapter.

John 3:16 ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

17 ‘Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

These two powerful verses underlie what this new family is about- and what it is not about:

• Love- not indifference or hatred
• Giving and sacrifice- not greed and holding back
• Salvation- not condemnation

That means acceptance and grace and hope and community. Family in Jesus' day was not the relatively miniscule idea of a nuclear family that our 21st Century idea of family values portrays. Family was more like a community. Family, in Biblical terms, was a herd of relatives, a tribe of related people, supporting and working for each other. I am sure that 1st Century families were no less dysfunctional than ours, but with the larger number of people involved there at least was help.

This new family community that Jesus is talking about, whose family values are explained in John 3: 16-17, is what we are called into. When we are born again, reborn in the grace of the Spirit, it is where we truly belong.