Born Again
By Fr. David Kendrick
Poor Nicodemus isn’t the only one who doesn’t get this “born again” thing. I first thought that I’d been born again and saved when I was baptized in the Southern Baptist church at the age of nine. But as I for older, I heard from baptized adults that they just had been born again. How was that different from baptism? Did it require going to a “revival” and accepting Jesus as my Lord and savior? What about when the emotional high wears off and the same questions, same doubts and same struggles are waiting? How can you know exactly when you were born again down to the day and time? Actually, I can pinpoint being born again into a more mature faith after a long gestation: April 3, 1999, the Easter Vigil, when I was received back into The Episcopal Church.
By 1989, Laura and I were married and living in Washington D.C. We loved the Anglo Catholic liturgy at St. James on Capitol Hill. I was settling into the role I had been destined to play since reading George Orwell as a teenager. I had taken a detour from that destiny in my college years as I mourned my mother. But I was back on track in ‘89. That role was political activist, and the dream was to make history. And as it became clear that my politics were different from many other Episcopalians in the DC area, I felt increasingly uncomfortable, and occasionally unwelcome. I wanted the truth, in politics and religion. And in those days, TEC began to seem too hazy for my taste. Down the street from where we lived in SW Washington was St. Dominic’s. There I found authority, and at the time, it was an attraction I couldn’t resist. Right after Christmas 1989, I became a Roman Catholic, without my wife joining me.
Laura was pregnant at the time, but we didn’t know it. Would I have “converted” if I had known that. Maybe not, but I doubt it. I was too selfish in my opinions at that time. In the summer of 1990, we moved to Alexandria. Blessed Sacrament Catholic Community was within walking distance. A little further away was Grace Episcopal Church on Russell Road. As a family we settled into a pattern of going to both churches for the most part. One Sunday, I had slept in while Laura and John had gone to Grace. When they came back home and John, a little more than two, had been hoisted in his high chair, Laura said, “Can you tell Daddy what you had in church today?” His eyes lit up, he smiled and said, “I had Jesus Christ!”
About a year later, we had moved around in “NoVa,” and I was attending a different RC parish, though as a family we still drove nearly a half hour on Sunday morning to Grace. One Sunday afternoon, Laura was sick, and I hadn’t been to Mass yet. So off I went with John to the last chance Mass at 5pm. When it came time for communion, I knew that John wouldn’t be able to receive. The simplest explanation I could come up with for a three-year-old was, “In this church you have to be older to have Jesus Christ.” At least two weeks later, the same set of circumstances found us back here at 5pm. It came time for communion, John looked up at me with a sad face and said, “I’m older now.”
From then on, we went to Grace as a family, and I snuck off to the other church when I could. As the years went by, I found myself seeking out Fr. Malm, the Rector at Grace, when I was in some crisis or another. All three of us came to look forward to the parish retreat at Shrine Mont every year after Labor Day. At one point, he asked me to help teach Sunday School, and I gladly did. When the church found itself dealing with some troubled neighborhood youth, I stepped in to help minister to them.
Finally, on the day after New Year’s, 1999, I was called by the person recruiting vestry nominees at Grace. “Well, uh, I think I’m still officially Roman Catholic,” I sputtered. Oh, uh, I guess that, uh, would be a problem,” she sputtered back. What made her think I was an Episcopalian, I thought after we hung up. Just because I’m there almost every Sunday, have helped teach Sunday School, have ministered to the Neighborhood youth, why would she think I’m an Episcopalian? But in truth, I am forever grateful to her. For she had presented me with the truth, not my opinion of the truth, but the truth of where God had made me a living member of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church: Grace Episcopal Church.
At the Easter Vigil in 1999, I knelt before Bishop David Jones, and laying his hands on my head, he received me into the fellowship of this communion known as The Episcopal Church, my home. That Easter Sunday, and for weeks after, I felt a peace deeper in my soul than I had ever known. I was born again from a lonely defensiveness into a peaceful belonging. I was home. I am home. And here in this fellowship of diverse opinions and love I shall remain.
That’s my story of being born again into a mature faith. If you’re here, and if you’ve been here, you have your own story of being born again to share. It doesn’t have to look like anyone else’s story or expectation. But we need to understand our stories, articulate our stories and be prepare to share our stories. That’s evangelism. “Evangelism,” “born again,” those terms are not the exclusive property of one sect of Christians, because God has given the Only Son to us too. He is here. We have met him here. Let’s figure out how to lovingly invite others to meet him here.
