Those Born of the Spirit

The texts today, from the Roman Catholic Lectionary, present the response of the rulers and authorities to the evidence of Divine Presence. The rejection of Jesus, in his time, recalls the rejection of the ‘anointed’ of the Lord proclaimed by the psalmist. The Will of God in both cases is not thwarted by the actions of humans to reject it. The kingdom of David becomes the evidence of the Promise of God to ‘set my king on Zion’.(Psalm 2:6) The Kingdom of Heaven is presented to Nicode’mus by Jesus as the relationship which God desires to establish through the Spirit with humanity. The resonance of the indwelling Spirit with the Spirit of God requires and creates a “new man”. The ritual of baptism uses water to extinguish the old life and ignite the Life in the Spirit. The Spirit brings the strength, as celebrated by the Apostles in the passage from Acts, to live in communion with Life that “blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes”.(John 3:8)