Now that all the hype about the final Harry Potter novel is over, how many of you remember the first one? It was called Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, and my favorite scene starts when Harry, in his letter of admission to the Hogwart’s School of Witchcraft & Wizardry, is told to board the train on Platform 9¾. He arrives at Paddington Station, swarming with adults, only to find that there’s a Platform 9, and a Platform 10, but no Platform 9¾. Harry asks for help, but the conductor acts like he’s lost his marbles. Finally, he spies another child carefully aiming his luggage cart toward a solid brick wall exactly between Platforms 9 and 10, picking up speed, zooming right up to the brick wall… and then passing clear through.

This teenage wizard already knew what Nicodemus was having such trouble understanding – that at every moment, there’s a parallel universe, an alternate reality all around us; very different from the “reality” we experience in our daily lives, or on “reality” TV shows. But this isn’t some escapist world like we find in Harry Potter or The Chronicles of Narnia, or some drug-induced altered state of consciousness. As one theologian, puts it: “It’s simply the everyday world seen at a new depth, with new comprehension… a place of intense vitality... (that) doesn’t draw us away from the everyday world, so much as it plunges us deeper into a reality of which the everyday world is merely surface.”

On the surface, Nicodemus has everything. He’s rich and successful, a religious leader, and a master teacher. So why is he so up tight that he comes to Jesus in secret, at night? He’s hungry, something’s missing, and he thinks Jesus might fill that hole. But he’s all head and no heart. Even though he sees Jesus’ amazing miracles, that’s not enough – he needs to be convinced by some heady theological discussion. So when Jesus gives him this ludicrous message about being re-born, he can only stammer, “How can you be born again if you’re old? Are you supposed to crawl back into your mother’s womb?”

Jesus patiently explains that he’s not talking about being born again physically, but spiritually. Still, Nicodemus can only wonder, “How can this be so?” He reminds me so much of us, hungering for something deeper, casting about in all directions, and when we’re sure no one’s looking, we stumble upon Jesus’ invitation. In our fear, we try to make it into an intellectual proposition rather than an assent of the heart. But just like us, God never gives up on Nicodemus. It’s not clear in this passage what happens to him. After tentatively approaching Jesus, we assume he walks away because the cost of following Jesus is just too high. The next time we meet him is just before Jesus’ arrest. He’s standing with the rest of the Pharisees, tepidly suggesting that to be fair, they should maybe, probably, at least give Jesus a trial before they crucify him. But somehow God must have caught him in the end – because in his final appearance in John’s gospel, Nicodemus joins up with Joseph of Arimathia, at great personal risk, to anoint Jesus’ body with rich spices, before it’s laid in the tomb. So if there’s hope for him, there’s surely hope for us.

Today, Jesus is saying we have to be born again with water and the spirit – the water of baptism is not enough; we also have to be baptized in the spirit – to choose to let the Spirit inhabit us and direct us as we try to follow Jesus Christ in our lives.

This is very different from how some people, including some presidential candidates, proudly chronicle the exact date they were “born again,” and therefore saved. What Jesus is saying is that it’s less important when we were “born again;” what matters is whether we’re alive now, whether we’re fully open to the Spirit blowing through the life we’re actually living today.

Last weekend your vestry went on retreat, and after the business meeting, we spent our time reflecting on our spiritual journeys, and then sharing them in small groups. At the closing Eucharist, I asked each person to say a few words about their spiritual “growing edge,” their dream of where the Spirit might be taking them next. One member responded, “When I wake up in the morning, I just want to be happy.” He was saying he wanted to be alive now, in the life he’s living now, not in some future life he could waste his time fantasizing about and coveting.

This is what it means to live in Jesus’ parallel universe – all the rules are reversed from what’s erroneously called “normal life.”
-- Instead of getting ahead, we choose to be last, so others can be first;
-- Instead of being masters of our destiny, in control of our futures, we choose to surrender our ego and our will to God, and become servants to others;
-- Instead of spending time with people just like us, or people we really admire, or people who can help us advance, we spend time with other seekers, and with people who are poor or sick or hungry or in prison, and we do it without judging any of them;
--Instead of planning out our whole life, we make room to be blown about by the Spirit, toward however God wants us to grow next, toward whoever needs our help;
--And because we focus not on appearances, but on what’s going on inside, we find our lives continuously interesting, continuously interrupted by joy.

Sounds great, doesn’t it? But it’s not easy. The reason many of us only glimpse this parallel universe, rather than live in it, is because everything around us operates on opposite rules. It’s so much easier to hunker down and live with blinders on, moving faster and faster, numb to the hunger we feel, the hole that burns in our heart. We’re interested in spirituality; we’re interested in Jesus; we’re interested in the gospel; as long as none of these has too much “bite.” They’re easier to wear as accessories, rather than as the substance, the essence of our lives. As David reminded us last Sunday, that’s why it often takes a crisis to help us fall into this parallel universe, and to discover, if we truly want to live, how much we need to stay there.
C. S. Lewis once said “We are half hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition, when infinite joy is offered us; we’re like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

There’s some very good news in today’s gospel. Because Jesus never asks us to travel to this parallel universe alone. He invites us into a community where we help each other discover a new depth of joy; where we learn to “go with the flow,” to be blown about wherever the Spirit invites us; where when we fall down, as we all do, someone’s there to help pick us up; where we get to be re-born not just once, but every day; a community that understands this is the whole point of the gospel – to access the new life bubbling up from within that Jesus offers. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish, but may have eternal life.”

So this Lent, go for the gusto! Go for the big thing, not just the easy thing. Choose to be re-born into eternal life. And if anyone criticizes you or makes fun of you for behaving so strangely, don’t apologize. Just say, “I’m living in a parallel universe. Do you want to join me?”