It was 8:30, Friday night. I had just returned to town with my family after spending a few days with friends in San Antonio. Sunday was coming fast. Saturday was already full. And I had nothing but a blank screen on my computer. After all these years, the pressure isn’t as great, because I have learned to trust the Spirit that somehow God sees to it that you get a word on Sundays, however imperfect; so I don’t think it’s all up to me. But I have also learned to open the windows of my heart and mind a little wider in those times, in order to let the Spirit blow through.

So I packed up my laptop and headed for Borders. The place was packed with people I wish I could say were not like me — but if they were losers for sitting there doing whatever it was they were doing on a Friday night instead of what they probably wish they had been doing, then what was I?  Anyway, I found the last soft chair in the place and set my satchel down in front of it. On my way back from the coffee bar — the Spirit works best on caffeine, don’t you know?! — a young woman with no fashion sense carved a path two steps ahead of me.  She sat down in MY chair, oblivious to the claim I had staked. I hovered over her with hot coffee for more than enough time for her to wake up to her transgression, but I seemed invisible and she unrepentant. So I leaned across her lap and lifted my brown leather shoulder bag, certain that this would at last cause her social embarrassment. Nothing. Not even an Oh, I’m sorry Were you sitting here?  At which I would have proved myself chivalrous and given up my seat for the lady. She took it, though, without so much as feint curtsy to her kind knight. So I retired to the children’s section, sat on the floor, and realized I had been blown there by the Spirit, who wanted me see the kingdom of God freshly, without the tired eyes of jaded adults.

Nicodemus was rerouted by that same surprising and stubborn Spirit on the night he approached Jesus. He had an agenda, but so did the Holy Spirit.  Nicodemus was no doubt used to setting the agenda, controlling the conversation, and having people give up their seats for him. He was a ruler of the Jews, a member of the Sanhedrin — 70 of the religious community’s most respected men. They kept all things kosher, so to speak. Some of the Sanhedrin were clearly closed to Jesus, viewing him as a threat, determined to do away with him. But some, like Nicodemus, could not disregard the compelling words and deeds of this man in their midst. Something about him — he had the aura of God. Nicodemus does not dismiss him; he wants to know if there is something he has missed.

Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God. All right, so far so good: he is open. But how open? We get a hint from his first- person-plural pronoun — Rabbi, WE know …. If Nicodemus were coming on behalf of the other rulers, he wouldn’t have come at night, unless he were coming only for some of them. Either way, there is a hesitancy to risk the personal experience of “I.”  He draws upon his knowledge of God that has been passed to him from generation to generation. But he hides behind it at the same time.

And isn’t this what we do in so many ways?  We don’t want to risk our own experience, so we use the royal we, the collective groupthink. It’s safe. Let a Republican challenge the tax cut and go against party chiefs, and it gets dangerous. Let a Democrat question the responsibility of government to correct all social ills through legislation, and there’s hell to pay at election time. Let a college student say he doesn’t drink or a girl with two first names say she doesn’t like country music, and well, they’ll be dropping out of the University of Texas. Let a Catholic think Baptists are part of the true church or a Baptist think Catholics might actually know the Lord personally, and all of a sudden the world’s on tilt. It takes courage to step out of the shadows and own your own questions — especially questions of faith. But just that is what makes spiritual transformation possible.

Jesus gives this random-sounding answer: Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above. Nicodemus was casting the conversation in terms of Jesus’ identity and authority. Jesus diagnoses him with hardening of the categories. Jesus doesn’t need to defend himself; he knows who he is.  He is more worried about Nicodemus knowing who God is. But only God can reveal God. If Jesus seems to be acting with the presence of God, then God is the one letting him in on the fact that Jesus and God are one.

If you want to know me, you can observe me, talk to other people about me, and if you have the gumption you can ask me about myself. But at the end of the day, you will know me by heart only if I open my heart to you. I retain the right to let you know me, and nothing you do can control my ownership of that right. If I want you know what gives me joy or causes me pain, I have to tell you. If you want to know my hopes and dreams, my fears and tears, you have to depend upon me to tell you. Just because you have categories for me, like father (Happy Father’s Day, by the way, fellow sires), or husband, or preacher, or ex-Yankee, or ex-Southern Baptist, or ex-football player, or high-minded low-handicap golfer who loves art and poetry as much as a tight spiral or a 300-yard drive, well, that doesn’t mean you know me, any more than Nicodemus knew God intimately just because he had grown up among God’s chosen people. God had to reveal God’s self to Nicodemus, just as God has to do to each of us and all of us.

You must be born from above, Jesus tells him. Anothen is the Greek word here for ‘above.’ It can also mean ‘again.’ So we get born again, or born from above. Jesus means one thing and Nicodemus takes him to mean another. Jesus means that only the one above us can teach us what is over our heads; only God can reveal God.  Nicodemus is trying to figure how he can do something impossible, like crawl back into his mother’s womb, to start life over and do it right this time.  But Jesus keeps throwing images at him, until at long last he says, The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not where it comes from or where it goes.  So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.

We ought to quit worrying about the whence and the whither and pay heed to the hence and the hither. You can’t take credit for making your own spiritual birth come to pass, any more than you can say you convinced your parents to give you birth. It happened to you. And what’s more, if you are born of the Spirit, you don’t get to decide where you are going — you ride the wind and see where it takes you. In other words, quit worrying about whether you had the right start in faith or where that faith will take you. Give yourself to the wind of God that is blowing through you even now, and let God be in control.

Isn’t this what love is all about? You thought you had a life, whether all put together or all torn up: at least it was your life. And then along comes this love that is just so hard to figure, and all of sudden you don’t think about it being your life at all — it is our life.  You can spend all you time trying to give explanations for it based upon good chemistry or bad karma, whichever. You can hold on to your heart and stay right where you are. But if you let go and let yourself get carried on the wings of love, you’ll never be able to explain where it came from or where it will take you, but you learn not to worry because you know one and only one thing for sure, and that is that your prior ordinary experience of life will just not do anymore, ever. You have been caught up in an extraordinary love that will not let you go.

We’ve talked about signs of the Holy Spirit in the life of the church over the past three weeks. The way the Spirit shows up in the mundane places of our lives to give us direction when we need it most. The way the Spirit gives us words to communicate the good news of Jesus Christ when we feel ourselves unworthy and tongue-tied witnesses. And now we see one last sign of the Spirit: the making personal of our experience of God. If there’s one thing Baptists have majored in throughout our history, it is this: We have taken Jesus at his word and believed that if God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, then God does not want Nicodemus or Aunt Gladys or Cousin Festus or you or me to perish, but to have eternal life. God wants every last one of us to give in to the love that lasts forever.

But that love has a Trinitarian shape.  Today is Trinity Sunday, along with Father’s Day. And on this day we pay homage to the God who is above us (the Father), ahead of us (the Son), and within us (the Holy Spirit). God is our source, our strength, and our destiny. God is our creator, our redeemer, and our sustainer. God is our help in ages past and our hope for years to come.

But this is not a God of our own making. We cannot, for instance, turn the Spirit of Jesus Christ into a general spirit of our choosing. Too often these days I hear people talking about how they are spiritual but not religious. They somehow think they can order spirituality à la carte, and leave behind the rest of the meal they don’t like.

Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones are adventurers that became the first duo to circumnavigate the globe in a hot- air balloon in March of 1999. They describe the achievement in their book, Around the World in 20 Days. They tell of how balloonists have to find the particular wind that will take them where they hope to go. All they can do is alter their altitude to catch the wind that will take them where they want to go. Any wind won’t do — only the wind that blows toward their destination.But when it comes to the wind that is the Spirit, Piccard speaks of his faith as being of the general mystical sort. Says he: Instead of speaking about ‘religion,’ I prefer to speak of ‘spirituality’ —  a means of admitting God to our hearts, rather than a system of ideas worked out to prove that one God is better than another. Piccard is a member of no organized church and goes through no particular practices of the spiritual life that call for obedience to the love that comes from God the Father, through the Son, Jesus Christ, by the working of the Holy Spirit.

Isn’t that a bit like being in love with love? Does it matter whom you love, or just that your heart feels love? You don’t love in general; you love a particular person or you are really only loving yourself. Likewise, the Holy Spirit is the one and only Spirit of Jesus Christ that gives eternal life.  You can’t have the Spirit without the Son, or the Son without the Father.  They are one God in three persons, blessed Trinity.

If you want an extraordinary experience with God, you need a Spirited spirituality — that is, Spirit with a capital S. If you let go and catch this wind of God, I can’t promise you a soft landing, but I can promise a thrilling ride … all the way to heaven.