Mountains will be moved - On being ‘born again’
OTN Patron Revd Dr Barbara Glasson (right) with Revd Lu Skerrat-Love, the newly ordained non-binary curate of the parish where Open Table Liverpool meets.
ON SUNDAY 15th June 2025, the Open Table Liverpool community celebrated 17 years since its first meeting with a thanksgiving communion service.
Revd Dr Barbara Glasson, a Patron of the Open Table Network and former President of the Methodist Church in Britain, shared this reflection on Jesus meeting Nicodemus (John 3:1-17).
Jesus says, no one can see the kingdom unless he's born again. And this is such a riddle.
Jesus says to Nicodemus, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again. But Nicodemus has just recognized in Jesus something is going on. Nicodemus is already beginning to see the kingdom in the person of Jesus.
So is Jesus actually confirming and affirming Nicodemus rather than giving him another thing he needs to do? I wonder. I wonder. If only we could go back and ask these questions.
And how do we know what ‘born again’ means anyway? It’s a phrase so often used as a weapon of exclusion rather than into a new way of living. So let's start in a different place. Not with the 'Am I saved?' question - that sort of rhetoric that often excludes - but rather with the 'Here I am' affirmation.
‘Here I am’ is an affirmation of being alive. Because this much is clear. On one day or another in some town or country or hospital bed or in a pool of water, we have all been born for the first time around.
“Jesus says if we have enough faith we can move mountains. He didn’t say we have to move mountains all in one go. We can move mountains one stone at a time, one prayer at a time, and one small action at a time.”
And anyone who has experienced or witnessed a human birthing, or seen a lamb arrive or even a giraffe, courtesy of some YouTube video, will know that the experience of a birth, of being born, it's a precarious and miraculous and mysterious process. And unless for some reason you've been hypnotized and taken back for that experience, you probably won't remember a thing about it.
So let's imagine for a moment what it's like being born. Coming from the dark and noisy intimacy of a womb into the bright lights and commotion of a delivery room. Taking a big gulp of something called 'air'. Being rubbed and bundled into something called 'clothes'. And being picked up, turned upside down and inspected by things you later come to call 'humans'. No wonder most of us greet such an experience with an affronted bawl which affirms, 'Here I am, put me down!'.
Fortunately most days we don't have to go through this again. Waking up in the morning is hard enough. Days come and go. People don't on the whole turn us upside down to inspect us. Although at times they do rub us up the wrong way. The world is the world and we take our place in unremarkable ways, until we see the kingdom of God that is.
Because seeing the kingdom of God is a bit of a nuisance. Because it does cause the whole world to turn upside down. Suddenly we are disorientated and blinking in the light. And Jesus tells us, in an easier gospel to understand than John's, the kingdom is like yeast and like mustard seeds and like buried treasure. The kingdom is about the poorest and most disenfranchised people being the most important and the overlooked being centre stage.
This is the kingdom. The kingdom of God is a declaration of 'I am' - 'I am here' as we are here today. The kingdom is here. Right here now. At Open Table this evening with us, uncertain and ramshackle Christians blinking in the light. Blinking in the light of being loved for the first time.
Being born again, seeing the kingdom - it's not an act of religious willpower but rather a seeing and knowing the world for the first time. As T.S. Eliot distills in his poem Little Gidding,
'We will not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring is to arrive where we started and to know the place for the first time.'
That's the kingdom. And this knowing will change us. When we see this old familiar world for the first time, as if coming into the light, the world is held in a different light.
Oh yes, Nicodemus, this encounter with the kingdom has implications, and it has implications for us too. These implications are all around us.
It has caused Lu to be ordained. It has caused Kieran and Warren to start the Open Table Network. It has caused you to turn out on a Sunday night to eat a small chunk of bread with a good gulp of wine to follow.
It has disrupted and derailed many sensible expectations of what we choose to be or do, because being born again is not simply an event but an invitation to be radically different, to live differently. It is a coming out or, as the recently deceased and much loved Walter Brueggemann describes it, a move from orientation, through disorientation, to reorientation. A seismic shift in the way we view the world, the choices we make, the priorities we have, our demeanour. A turning of the tables on everything that once seemed important, a conversion of life, a pivot, a transformation, an ontological change - and at that point I run out of language.
And the reason for this disruption is life. The reason is life, not guilt, Nicodemus - Jesus is offering you life. The purpose is that we have life, not just me or you as individuals but us together. Choosing this life means resisting all that deadens, diminishes or kills life for others. That we should live seeing each other equally loved by God. That we should long for and sustain the life of others and indeed all creation. That we should be the yeast and salt that cause the ordinary stuff of life to taste good. That in all the brokenness and trauma and hubris of the world we can see people differently and choose a different way. A way of honesty and compassion and hope.
What does being ‘born again’ mean?
It means life. It means life for others and for ourselves. It means noticing the kingdom when it meets us in the vulnerability and struggles around us. And noticing when the kingdom is absent or when the wrong king is in power. Because it's not just us that needs to be born again, but the principalities and powers around us. The false assumptions, violence, inequalities and prejudices need to be upturned.
I have a dog called Grace. She's not particularly graceful. She's a big galumphing golden retriever. But I walk with her every day up the hill at the back of our house. And when we walk together, each morning I pick up a small stone. And as I pick up a stone I think of a person or a situation and I remember them prayerfully. And gradually, almost imperceptibly, day by day, Grace and I have made a cairn on the hilltop. It maybe that we're going to need planning permission for it soon!
Jesus says if we have enough faith we can move mountains. He didn't say we have to move mountains all in one go.
We can move mountains one stone at a time, one prayer at a time, and one small action at a time.
And being born again means not only feeding people that are hungry but ensuring all people have food, not just a peaceful life, but ensuring that for others, not just being assured of God's unfailing love, but giving hope. One prayer, one action, one movement, one stone at a time.
And when we feel helpless, when we see what's going on around us and we think we can make no difference and things will never be different because we're powerless, then we must do what we can do, one stone at a time. And look how that changes lives!
When we are born for the first time, we are called into life. And when we are born for the second time, we are called into fullness of life, with all its brain-melting nuance, complexity, exhilaration, trauma and struggle.
And when we enter into this life, into the life of the kingdom, we are called to make different choices, set different priorities, and live sacrificially for the kingdom's sake. And Nicodemus, puzzling though it is, it is the only way, this way, that we ramshackle and unworked-out people will discover the kingdom of God. And in discovering it, also to discover how totally, utterly, we are loved by God.
