Hey, Check Out My Ebenezer!

A Reflection on John 3:5-15

by Aeryn Johnson

Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” Jesus answered him, “Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things? Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know, and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life."

We had been together eighteen months before my first boyfriend introduced me to his dad, a crackpot preacher who lived out near Bakersfield.   At this first and only meeting, his dad gave me his memoir to read in looseleaf pages.  It was typed in Courier and titled "The Wind Blows Where It Wills."  

I hadn't yet read much of the Bible, so this phrase seemed unfamiliar to me, as well as grammatically unlikely. The memoir's credibility was not furthered by the title of the opening chapter, "Here I Raise My Ebenezer."  Was this guy kidding? I didn't know what an ebenezer might be, but this declaration was altogether too vigorous for the circumstances, and I fervently wished its author would put his ebenezer away.

I never saw the man again.  The spirit is funny, though: the wind blows where it wills, and these days, I tend to wave my own ebenezer around with joyous abandon. (In case you're wondering, an ebenezer refers to the stone Samuel raises to remind everyone that God has helped them so far.) 

Like Nicodemus, I came slinking back around after everyone else had gone home to see if maybe I could catch Jesus alone.  He pretended he was just passing by on his way to do some cool rabbi thing, when really his heart was in his throat hoping he'd run into Jesus, and he could it was an accident, and then he could find out: Are you God?

Also, How do I get in?

Jesus doesn't give Nicodemus the answer he's looking for (do this, then this, then this other thing will happen, and then -- you're in!).  He tells Nicodemus: This isn't something you can control, buddy.

And then he takes pity on him and says, Look.  When you're snake-bit, you look up at that bronze snake, and be healed.  When you're life-bit, sin-bit, look at my body raised up, and be healed.  Look at this testimony, raised up in the desert.  

Recently a Pentecostal friend told me I didn't have the holy spirit because I didn't speak in tongues.  At first, I wondered if I really had missed something.  Then I remembered the snake on the stick, the corpse on the tree, and I remembered that what was done for me, was done without any prerequisites -- without requirements.  So I kept my eyes hard on that and kept on looking.  

I can hardly blame my friend for wanting the spirit to adhere to some kind of guideline, some kind of definition.  Each of us would like this whole thing to be a little tidier, to make a little more sense.

But thanks be to God that the spirit isn't like that.  Thanks be to God that it blows where it wills.  

My buddy Nicodemus and I will both raise an ebenezer to that.

Tomorrow's reading: 1 Corinthians 2:1-13