Gen. 12:1-4a
Jn. 3:1-17

Are you open to new life -- to the possibility of being born anew? Or--like many in our society today, have we become too good at drawing boundaries around our safe little comfortable lives--so much so that the new, the challenging, the growth producing, the new peoples that God sends our way that we might get to know and love, are successfully kept away?

A colleague recently shared about a couple in his congregation who'd gotten so fed up with the hassles of our modern world that they bought a house on an island on an isolated lake up in Maine, spent much of their spare time fixing it up and making it comfortable for themselves, and then decided just to quit their jobs and move there-- in isolation. Well, such a move may seem appealing in our busy, often hectic lives--but stop and think for moment about how trivial such an existence would be for you. Warm and comfortable yes, but your world would never grow, you'd never help improve life for others, and ultimately yourself, in this interconnected world of ours, and what would you have accomplished for God, then, in your life?

Well those folks on the island may be an extreme example of over-protective boundaries, and yet, think how much time you and I spend, making ourselves well-cushioned in our affluent nation. I-pods and Blackberries to help manage the stress of too many activities and commitments; more automobiles, or even if we have just one, a fancier car, very often, than we really need; vacations to get away from it all; the mute buttons on our TV remotes , to shut out the unpleasant or the unwanted commercials; medicines to dull any pain; an abundance of food, and possessions, so we don't even have to think about the possibility of poverty-- those who have to scrounge in the garbage dumps for little morsels of what we'd call inedible food.

Last week, as we began the Lenten series, "Boundaries and Beyond", we talked about some of the healthy boundaries we do need to set in our lives, as Christians and just as human beings--from necessary boundaries to guard our physical health, to healthy spiritual boundaries--disciplines of faith--those boundaries/disciplines that keep out unnecessary busyness, to give us time to get to know God, study our faith, and become more aware of the Spirit's presence.

Yet that same Spirit, also calls us today, to expand our boundaries: to look for, and help God bring about, ever new life in our world. Just as Jesus would take time apart for prayer, and to be closer to God, like his 40 day time in the wilderness, and at other times apart from the world, he also then returned to the world in order to love and heal and to free so many people whose lives had all kinds of restricting boundaries. And yes, as his followers, we are called to do likewise--to be a boundary expanding people for our world.

We heard that call in our scripture lessons: first God calling Abram to leave his comfortable life--and go to a whole new land God would show him. Then there was Jesus encounter with Nicodemus in John, Ch. 3. This passage of course is best known for Jesus words "God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." And in the next verse Jesus adds, "Indeed, God did not send the son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved, through him." So here again is an indication that God loves the world, and brings it new life, and by implication, then, so too should we-- rather than trying to shut out the world in a judging or condemning way.

So rather than making us part of an exclusive, "born again" club, with the new life Christ showed us, we are called to become a people who continually expand and open up our boundaries, to love the world. Yes, we're called to love the world that God has loved so much. Indeed, then, rather than seeing the born again idea, as a one time event, we ought to hear God's call to see ourselves as "new every morning." We need to see each day as a God-given opportunity to notice the new life God is bringing into the world, all the time. And we need to become, ourselves, agents of new life, out of thanks-giving for the new life and opportunities God gives us with each new day.
How do we do that? Well first of all, it begins by looking at our own lives does it not. We need to begin to ask ourselves, in what ways, in the name of safety, or comfort or "providing for our own families" have we sometimes made our own worlds too small. We need to ask ourselves, has my life become trivial, like those folks who moved to their own island--to keep the world out. And if I've done that, we need to ask ourselves, how can I reverse the process, and begin to expand my boundaries, to let the world in--and become more caring and active myself for the world beyond my own small world of selfish concerns.

Speaking of how we sometimes do try to shut the world out and draw boundaries that just keep us safe in our own little corner of the world, some of you may remember reading my column in the church newsletter last year one time when I shared a vivid memory I had of an old Playhouse 90 episode on television. Now that's really dating me, I know! If you don't remember it, Play-house 90 was a periodic drama in the early days of television that portrayed, sometimes in overly dramatic ways, some human condition, or problem-- using drama to tell a story, but also thereby to drive home it's message. Well this particular show's message really stuck in my memory because of its vivid images.

The story was a science fiction portrayal of the future. With worries about the population explosion that were common at the time, the story portrayed a family living in a modern megalopolis-- some hundred years or more in the future. As the story went, the cities of our nation had grown so much that nearly the whole country had become urbanized--one big city, from coast to coast. The story told of a marathon-like race in which the participants had to run all the way across the now extremely overcrowded island of Manhattan. By this time the city had grown so, that to house everyone, ever larger apartment buildings had been constructed, each covering what today would be many city blocks, and each family only had a couple of very small cubicles in which to live.

The prize to be won, in the particular race the story covered, was a small piece of land--one of the last remaining parcels of open space in one of the few National Parks remaining unsettled. The winning family would have that parcel of land for their lifetime, all to themselves. To win the race, the family that eventually became the winner was seen having to travel often large distances out of their way, to get around the huge skyscraper apartment buildings. When finally they beat out the other contestants, I'll never forget the last shot of the 90 minute drama. The shot at first showed the heroic family frolicking in green grass on a beautiful day near flowering gardens and towering trees, on the land they had won in the race. But then slowly the camera panned away from the family to show the tall perimeter fence that surrounded their land. What the camera showed were seemingly endless crowds of of people, as far as you could see in the distance, down the fence line, all crowded -- jam-packed-- up against the fence, looking with envy at the winning family and their small parcel of greenery.

As I say--a bit overdramatic, and yet in some ways that scene does still haunt me, because in places like India where I visited and lived for a year as a teenager, I literally viewed in person that same type of scene. I witnessed there the tremendous overcrowding in that poor country's cities, and all the poverty that goes along with it. While we may not live on a small parcel of green land surrounded by a high fence to keep the hordes of the world's poor way from our precious land, yet, it's all too easy, for those of us who are so blessed materially, to put up boundaries to our concern, as if to build a fence to shut out the rest of the world, and perhaps to enable us to forget and ignore the very real crowds of those living in abject poverty all over the world. And lo and behold, we have even begun to build fences now on our borders to keep out poor refugees fleeing to our wealthy land.

All of which asks us the question, how have we, each of us, put up boundaries in some ways, to shut out the needs of the world, to keep our own little corner the world small and safe. We are called instead by our faith, to open up our boundaries--to share our love, as much as we're able, with an ever wider group of people--for indeed, as that Playhouse 90 drama showed, trying to keep out and protect ourselves from the world is a futile effort. Wouldn't it make far more sense to put our efforts into loving the world--to make it a place we didn't want to want to shut out of our lives with all kinds of boundaries and fences?

Indeed, that is the call of our faith then, once we have looked at our own little worlds, and perhaps realized, for far too many of us, how isolated or protective they've become. We're called to be instead a people who care and who reach out to the world in ever new ways. And guess what--when we do, then we not only help the world more, but we become a new person-- yes born again, each time we reach out with love to a different person, and their world of need.

Years ago you might say I had a born again experience, though not the kind of we usually think of when we use that phrase. For me it was when my father took our whole family to India for a year while he was on sabbatical. I've shared with you a lot of that experience before. And I keep returning to it because, truly, that year-long experience made me a whole new person. Expanding the boundaries of my world in that way, meant that every day we discovered as a family a new corner of the world, so literally every day, my world changed. I became a new person. Yes, you could even say "born again!"

Before we left I had grown up in a fairly well-off suburb of Boston. I went to church regularly at the Lexington Methodist Church, and it seemed to me-- since that was a very caring church congregation--active in mission, it seemed to me that, well, we were taking care of the world, so all seemed well. My family loved, me, I had all I needed.

But then we moved to India. Suddenly, instead of a world of modern conveniences, everything seem crude and old-fashioned. Instead of living in a safe bubble of space, which we Americans seem to be sure to have around us all the time--like on a crowded elevator, taking care not to touch each other; instead in India there were often shoulder-to-shoulder crowds everywhere you went. You stood in line for well over an hour just to mail a package at the inefficient post office--annoying to us Americans, but normal to the Indian people, who are used to crowds everywhere they go. After all, their civilization, unlike ours, has been around for well over a thousand years, and the next life is taken care of, so what's the hurry? And while in this country, the poor are most often hidden away in certain sections of our cities and towns, in India there were crowds of beggars who followed us everywhere. After all, by contrast to them, we were clearly well dressed, and well fed, and white--obviously American--so we must have spent a bunch of money just to travel to their country, so to them we were rich.

And the signs of poverty were everywhere: city streets where slum areas made up of make-shift shacks lined every street; those slum dwellers bathing in the gutters; poor sanitation, often obvious from the smells; and so many other signs of poverty everywhere. So day by day in that land my whole view of the world changed. And I changed--I became a new person. I grew up by several years of maturity in just that one year abroad. I came home far more convinced of our need to be far more loving and sharing toward those beyond our own little affluent worlds.

And as we watch the news day by day, here many years later, that calling is just as strong--not just for me, but for all of us. We are called to be new persons in Christ, a far more loving people, who stretch our boundaries day by day--to love ever more groups of people, to get to know and therefore care about, and share with those most in need in our world--not just here in our own little safe havens. For it's becoming more and more obvious in our world, is it not, how much we need to get to know one another, and learn to live peacefully, and in loving ways with one another--especially with those most in need, and those beyond our own little world--our safe little boundaries. For increasingly, what happens in other lands comes back to touch our own lives in some way.

So Jesus said "God so loved the world, he gave his only Son. And then he said, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved, by him." Don't fear the world, brothers and sisters in Christ, instead, listen to our Lord. As his followers it's our calling, too, to do our part to save the world, not shut it out. What boundaries do we need to expand so we'll get to know the world, and the world will get to know our love? And behold: when we do, we and the world begin to be saved! Thanks be to God! Amen.