The color of ketchup is changing.  Can you believe that?  There have always been some things you could count on to stay the same no matter how quickly or radically the world changed.  Like the fact that ketchup is red.  Now, even that’s changing.  For some 141 years the company that dominated the ketchup market was the H.J. Heinz food company.  They set the standard for all other ketchups to follow.  That is until the late 1990’s when the company’s market share dropped to forty-three percent and they started rethinking the basics.  The biggest basics.  Like the color of ketchup.  After researching all their options the company is doing the unthinkable.  It’s changing the color of ketchup from red to green.  The new green stuff tastes just the same as the old red stuff.  It’s still ketchup.  It just isn’t red anymore.  As hard as it is to believe, it seems to be working.  The company’s market share has risen to fifty-one percent and its profits are up five percent.  When it came down to the bottom line, it looks like moving from red to green is going to keep the company in the black.  All because someone at H.J. Heinz was more committed to the survival of the company than to the color of ketchup. 

It’s amazing what can happen if you are willing to change.  Which is all Jesus wanted Nicodemus to see.  If he were willing to change, to start over in a different direction with a different heart, even the “kingdom of God” would not be off limits to him.  More profoundly, Jesus wanted Nicodemus to see that, only if he were willing to change, to be made new, would the “kingdom of God” be a possibility in his life.  “No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above,” Jesus said.  Older translations than The New Revised Standard Version from which we read every Sunday translate the words of Jesus to read, “no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.”  (New International Version) 

Something has to change, Jesus said, or you won’t live forever.  That is what it means to be a part of God’s kingdom.  It means to have the life of God in you.  Eternal life that, once it is yours, as Jesus later promised, is always yours.  “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish.  No one will snatch them out of my hand.”  (John 10:28)  But, the coming of that life into a person is a life changing experience.  As the apostle Paul later wrote, “the old has gone, the new has come!”  (2 Corinthians 5:17, NIV)  A life changing experience so radical that the only way it can be described in terms humans can comprehend is in terms of a second birth.  Which ought to give us a little bit of clue about what “eternal life” means. 

The most natural way to understand it is in terms of duration.  And, that certainly is a part of what it means.  To have eternal life means that, even though we will die physically, we will not die spiritually.  We will always live.  But, as the New Testament bears out over and over again, as in the 2 Corinthians passage above, to have God’s eternal life also means to have God’s kind of life in you.  A life not dominated by evil and sin but a life dominated by holiness and a passion and even the power to serve the one and only true God of whom Jesus came to bear witness. 

Which is why Jesus was even having this conversation with Nicodemus.  Jesus had been performing miracles and had gathered a crowd.  People were impressed.  So impressed, the scripture says, that “many believed in his name.”  But, then the scripture says the most puzzling thing.  Having just said that “many believed,” it then turns to say of those believers that “Jesus . . . would not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people and . . . knew what was in everyone.”  Unlike the way we tend to see people, based on what they look like or what they are wearing, Jesus sees people, always, from the inside out.  Despite what we believe, he knows our true values and commitments. 

When I was growing up I was always jealous of Superman.  You remember?  He had X-ray vision.  When a man walked into the room, Superman, even when disguised as Clark Kent, could see beneath a man’s coat to see if he was carrying a gun or not.  Even before anyone said a word or did a thing, Superman always knew the difference between the bad guys and the good guys because he could see them from the inside out.  But, even as a child I always knew that it was just that way on television.  I knew that no human could ever do what Superman did.

But, every Sunday my parents took me to church where I heard about a God who knew what was in my heart even when I was pretending to others.  He knew when I was hiding sin or when I was coming clean.  I learned early on and never forgot the words of scripture, “the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”  (2 Samuel 16:7)  In every crowd, Jesus knows who is just acting and who really trusts him.  He knows the difference between those who say they believe and those who believe to the point of trusting. 

So, when Nicodemus says, “we know that you are a teacher come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God,” Jesus, in essence says, “what you believe about me means nothing unless you are willing to trust me to the point of following me.”  Just believing that Jesus is someone special or even that he came from God is not what defines a person as Christian.  What makes a person a Christian, one of God’s new people, is when, as Jesus said, that belief becomes life-changing faith and that person is “born again.”

All of which leads to what may be the most significant question any person ever asked of God.  Nicodemus, having heard all of this but not yet understanding it, asks Jesus, “‘how can a man be born when he is old?’”  (NIV)  It makes sense that a 141-year-old ketchup company could start over by just adding some food coloring to the same old product.  But, as Nicodemus asked and we often wonder, is it really possible for a person to change no matter how far they’ve gone in life?  To start all over no matter how old you get?  Is that really possible?  What if it were?  Think of the possibilities!  Every person could start over.  Every family could start over.  Churches could start over.

Now, all of eternity for every person who ever lived hangs in the balance of how Jesus answers that question.  Because Nicodemus, like you and I, tended too quickly to judge all of reality by his own limited experience and only in terms of what he could see, he misunderstood the possibilities with God that can happen where only God can see.  “Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?”  Nicodemus wondered.  “How can a man be born again?” he wondered aloud.  And, Jesus said, only if God changes his heart. 

It sure gets old watching all those commercials on television where they advertise this piece of exercise equipment or that and promise that, no matter how old you are, you can track or torso your way to an abdominal six-pack.  I want to believe them.  Don’t we all?  Our garages are full, though, of all those pieces of equipment that advertised far more than they could deliver.  But, we buy them and keep buying them because we keep thinking of how wonderful it would be to have, say, the mind of a forty-five-year-old in the body of an eighteen year-old?  Think of the possibilities!  If nothing else, I wouldn’t have to hear stories like I did this week.  Pat and Carol Harding took their kids to Florida for vacation this summer and on the way home they stopped through Vicksburg, Mississippi, to tour the Civil War battleground there.  Carol told Hunter, their six-year-old, “You need to be sure and tell Dr. Schmucker you saw all of this when we get home.”  And, Hunter asked, “Why?  Was he in the Civil War?” 

What my forty-five year old mind knows is that, though I could do better with what I’ve got, I’ll never again have the body I did twenty-seven years ago.  It’s gone, forever.  However, what Jesus doesn’t just advertise but actually promises, is that, though our outer bodies are wasting away, we can have a brand new heart.  (2 Corinthians 4:16)  We can have new values and new passions and a new Lord.  We can be changed from the inside out.  Indeed, we must, if we want to see God.   

Just like we had a physical beginning, Jesus said, we must have a beginning with God.  We must be “born from above.”  Though there will be people in heaven from all of time and from every race and tribe that ever walked, the one thing everyone will have in common is that, to a person, just as they were once born physically, they were born, a second time, spiritually.  They were all “born again.”  That’s the only way you get to heaven.  To be born again is to be a part of the Kingdom of God.  To be a part of the Kingdom of God is to be born again.  To be a part of the Kingdom of God is to be a part of what God is up to as he constantly makes all things new. 

Some fifteen years ago, while living in the Panhandle, I looked out the kitchen window one day only to see someone’s garage door blowing by several feet in the air.  I knew the wind had been blowing ferociously that day.  The constant howling betrayed something horrendous.  But, I had no idea it was blowing that hard until I saw that garage door go by.  Then I knew.  I knew the power of the wind, not because I could see it, but because I could see the affect of its power.  “So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit,” Jesus said.  “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.  So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”  When God does his work, in the hearts of people where no one can see, the effect of his work will be evident for all to see.  When God changes a person’s heart, the way they live gives evidence of it.

Since the first day I set foot in this church two years ago I have sensed a new wind blowing.  A hunger, even a passion, for what is old to be made new has predominated nearly every single conversation I’ve had with you.  As it turns out, what we are hungry for is that for which God has hungered long before us.  Since before time as we know it began it has been God’s plan for us that we always walk where his new Kingdom is constantly being born in the minds and hearts of those for whom Christ died and rose again to new life. 

By committing ourselves to Rebirth at Cliff Temple Baptist Church we are only asking God to do what he did a couple of weeks ago in the lives of several of our children attending pre-teen camp.  At the end of the worship services the preacher invited all who wanted to be born again to say yes to Jesus.  And, those children did and they were born again.  And, we will baptize them soon.  By committing ourselves to Rebirth we’re not just asking God to change the color of our brick, like H.J. Heinz changed the color of ketchup, just what’s on the outside.  We’re asking him, by the shed and red blood of Jesus, to change us from the inside out so that, throughout this city, indeed, throughout this world, people will see the evidence of a new wind of hope blowing in this place. 

“You must be born again,” Jesus said.  By faith, may we pray, “Make us new again, Lord Jesus, and again.  Until you come.  Make us new again!”  Amen.