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I was once step-father to a special little red dog named Cedar. She was a Nova Scotia Duck-tolling Retriever. Cedar was the smartest dog I’ve ever met, well-trained not only in basic obedience but also to do a lot of neat tricks. Cedar was the life of every party, especially if there were children. She listened without fault unless it was a hot day and there was a pond nearby. There was no calling her back from that. She was proof that dogs above all else just want to please the human they feel most bonded with. You have heard the old adage that “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks”. That’s not so. If you are your dog’s favourite human, it will be willing to learn new tricks because that’s all part of their love for their person and it gives them great joy to please their person.
Cedar lived to be fourteen. She went deaf at age twelve. We obviously couldn’t teach her something new after that. But she knew hand signals and still loved to play. Right up to a few days before she died, she still loved to fetch but it was just to throw something so she would trot out to and lay down beside it. Saying that you can’t teach an old dog a new trick, well, that’s something you should just stoop and scoop. I think the correct way to phrase it, is that an old dog will do what it loves right up until it dies.
But anyway, that old dog/new tricks adage seems to be the angle that Nicodemus is taking here with Jesus. They are discussing here whether or not you can take someone who is old and set in their ways and teach them something new. Keeping in mind that “set in your ways” thing may simply be what the old dog loves. Nicodemus came to Jesus as someone genuinely seeking what Jesus was offering – new life in the Kingdom of God. He was a member of the Sanhedrin, which was the ruling party of the Jewish people back then. Though other members of the Sanhedrin wanted Jesus dead, Nicodemus rather found himself drawn to Jesus. He wasn’t caught up in the corrupted mess that comes about when religion and political power start walking hand in hand. Rather, it seems he sincerely wants to please his God; you know, like Cedar wanted to please especially her primary person.
Well, the Holy Spirit, like a wind, was blowing Nicodemus in the direction of Jesus. So, in fear of the Sanhedrin he went seeking Jesus at night to figure things out. He started the conversation acknowledging they all could see that God was working through Jesus. Jesus told him, “It’s truth, I tell you, no one can see the Kingdom of God without being born from above.” And then, Nicodemus plays the old dog, new trick card and answers, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the womb and be born?”
I’m going to step back and again emphasize that what Nicodemus said there about someone old being born again should be interpreted in the sense of “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks”. This isn’t simply an interesting little word play on birth that in the end makes Nicodemus look thick as a brick for being too literal – How can someone pop back in their mama. I think Nicodemus knows full well what Jesus is talking about with respect to being born from above. He just sees himself and his people’s way of doing faith as too set in its ways to be able to try this new trick of following Jesus.
Part of the problem we have when we read this passage is that we want to read into it our Modern ideas of the birthing process that emphasizes the role of the female of the species. Back then, when things were more patriarchal, the role of the male in siring a child was emphasised a lot more. They had two different words that we would translate as giving birth. One was obviously for the mother giving birth. That’s not the word being used here. The one that is used here typically refers to the father’s role of begetting/generating the child. This means that all the emphasis on being born in this passage should be considered from the standpoint of conception and the role the father played. To be blunt, I don’t think they knew about eggs and sperm back then. To them the father planted a seed that grew inside the mother. It was as much agriculture as biology. I apologize if this is a little too randy of a sermon here at the moment.
This conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus should rather be translated like this. Jesus said, “It’s truth, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being begotten/sired/re-seeded from above.” The angle here is that God would regenerate or recreate or beget the person anew. And Nicodemus’s answer would be more accurate as, “How can anyone be sired/reseeded after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the womb and be seeded again?” I know by now you are confused, but this is the time to start thinking about the old adage of “You can’t teach and old dog new tricks.”
This same word for beget back in Jesus’ day was also a word they used to talk about the discipling relationship between a Rabbi and his students. Rabbis were often called “Father” by their students due to their planting the seed of the teachings of the Law and the Traditions in their students. This leads me to think that Nicodemus is really asking, “Can an old Elder of the people, so set in the ways of the faith as we know it…can…such as I be discipled anew into the Kingdom of God.” Can this old dog of the faith learn the new tricks of the Kingdom of God? To Nicodemus, that probably seemed as impossible as entering the womb a second time to be begotten anew and then rebirthed.
They are not just talking about how babies are born. They are talking about having to learn a new way of being a person of faith. Nicodemus was used to keeping the Laws of Moses and the Traditions of the Rabbis as the way of being faithful, but now Jesus was asking Nicodemus to follow the prompting of the Spirit of God that was drawing him into a living and life-giving relationship with Jesus.
It may be that many of us here can relate to Nicodemus. Most of us have “done church” all our lives – faithful attendance, helped out, given faithfully, did unto others as we would have them do unto us, raised our kids in church. We believe in God due to a personal sense of God’s love and faithfulness. We have all been through tough times and come out knowing that it was the Lord who brought us through. And, yes, we are all guilty of letting the way we “do church” take the place of a living relationship with Jesus who ever-calls us to an ever-deepening relationship with himself by the drawing of the Holy Spirit. We are old dogs at doing church whom the Holy Spirit is ever-inviting into the new trick of a renewing…a recreating…a re-begotten living and life-giving relationship with Jesus.
But now, we’re tired old dogs with hardly the energy to do even the old tricks we love even though we enjoy them so much when we do. (There’s nothing like a good potluck.) Like Cedar, it’s throw me the toy and I’ll trot after it, but I’m going to have to lay in the yard beside it for a bit before I bring it back. It is not so much that we’re just old and set in our ways like Nicodemus. That’s if we can describe Nicodemus as being set in his ways. He was a very faithful man who loved the ways of God as he knew and understood them according to law of Moses and Jewish tradition. We are old and the reality of the limitations that aging brings to the human person are a reality for us.
Previous generations of the church have had a deep bench of a younger generation to turn things over to, but not this generation. Our culture no longer “Does church” in the way it used to. Our culture, quite frankly, is no longer Christian. The mission field that used be in foreign countries is now just outside our front door…but, we’re feeling like a bunch of old hounds who can’t make it much further than a good nap on the front porch. But you know, even if we are just a bunch of old hounds and just laying on that same old familiar porch is about all we got in us, that doesn’t mean the Spirit of God can’t come blowing through us with new life, refreshing life in Christ. The new tricks we need to learn are the same old tricks we have tried and tried to learn over the years and they involve the devotional life. Here are three tricks for us to learn.
Practice the presence of God. A couple of weeks back I spoke of setting up an empty chair and letting that be were the presence of the Lord sits and then you say what you need to say. Now take that one step further and let that awareness of the presence of the Lord be with you everywhere you go.
Take up the practice of the daily reading of scripture. Read two chapters of the Old Testament, two chapters of the New, and a couple of the Psalms. Just read. Sometimes, you will get a sense that God is speaking to you. I would highly recommend a printed Bible as opposed to one on a device.
Last, pray. Make a prayer list of people you know and love and take the time to pray for them. Then try to disciple yourself to try and pray the Lord’s prayer as you go through the day. The majority of us have a conversation going on in our heads that’s usually just a bunch of ranting and worrying. Why not rein that voice in by disciplining it to pray. Amen.
