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The central promise of Christianity is new life. Not a comfortable life, or a safe life, or a happy life, or a long life, or a spiritually gratifying life. Not a kind of fixed-up life, either, like the old life with a new coat of paint. Though all those good-life things might happen, they are not the main thing and are collateral advances.

We are born as creatures—in the flesh as Paul so often says. When we are born as creatures, we are born as children of God. It happens because we are part of God’s good creation. That part—children of God—has nothing to do with baptism or Christianity. The Spirit, says Paul, bears witness—that is, testifies that it is true, like a witness in a court—that we are God’s children. One of the things Jesus said by his words and actions is that it is so. It is odd that we find it so hard to remember this, in regard to ourselves and to everybody else.

The new life of Christianity is like a flavor, or a color. It permeates everything in our faith. It is obvious in baptism, where we enter a new life, and in resurrection, where death is overcome by new life. But it is also part of forgiveness, and of compassion, and of gospel, which is just a word that means “good news.” Something new which is good. Salvation means saving from something; that is, rescue, which is new life. Amazing grace, the song goes, how sweet the sound. I once was lost, but now am found. Was blind, but now I see. New life.

When Nicodemus comes to Jesus, he does not ask for a lecture, but he gets one anyway. He praises Jesus and says that anyone with eyes can see that Jesus comes from God. But Jesus evidently detects a question underneath this important man’s statement. He says that no one can see the kingdom of God without being born again.

What Jesus says in the Bible is famously ambiguous. The word he uses in Greek means two different things: born again is one meaning, born from above is the other meaning. This is not so strange. In English we sometimes say, “let’s take it from the top,” using “from the top”—above—to mean again. But this ambiguity has not been helpful to the Christian church, which reads it two different ways, corresponding to two different camps. Camp A tends to say “born again,” and interprets the text to mean that a specific, radical, sudden, sometimes vehement experience is necessary to be saved. A conversion event like the one that the apostle Paul experienced on the road to Damascus. Camp B tends to say “born from above,” and interprets the text to mean that one must live a spirit-filled life of faith.

Both camps see Jesus words as defining either a gate or a signal by which someone might be judged to be authentic. Though there is nothing in this passage that says anything like that. It is clear that Jesus meant these words to be a metaphor of some sort. He does not mean that people have to be shrunk down to tiny embryos to emerge again from the womb. Nicodemus asks Jesus, Is that what you mean? And Jesus says No, I meant being born of water and the spirit. Not that Nicodemus finds that any more helpful.

Being born is kind of a singular event. It is an event, even though preparing for it in humans takes nine months and even though the process of birth sometimes takes longer than any mother imagines. It is a thing that happens. But once born, a creature lives its life. And life is not a singular event; it is an ongoing experience. A journey, we like to say in religious circles, or a path, or a story. Something that flows and changes.

What happens when you are born is that you have life. What happens when you are born of the Spirit is that you have new life.

Imagine you were born somewhere else than where you were. Imagine you were not born where you were but born in, say, France. (If you were born in France, imagine you were born in Tibet.) What a different life you might be living. You might be wearing different clothes, have different habits, eat different food. For sure you would be speaking a different language. Being born again is more like that than it is going back to being a little baby again. Being born anew (which is another meaning to the word Jesus uses), is being born into a new kind of life. Not totally different—you still have to eat, have to go to work, get headaches, and so forth—but life with a new flavor. Maybe we should translate Jesus’ words as “Being born into a foreign land.”

What kind of land is that? Can we imagine it? Jesus says that in this land “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 who is born of the Spirit.” That’s what he calls it in this reading (though he calls it other things at other times). So let’s call this land “the land where the winds blow where it chooses,” or, since that is a little wordy, how about “wind-Spirit” land for short.

There are three things we notice right off when we visit this “wind-Spirit” land.

The first thing we notice in this land is that they speak another language. They speak a language which mentions life a lot more than death. It mentions, for example, peace more than war. It mentions loving not only your family and your buddies but your enemies. Not only that, but people who actively dislike you and are out to get you. Not only that, but people you can’t stand either. It mentions giving to people more than they ask for just because they ask for it. It mentions helping those who need help even if they don’t deserve it.

And it mentions forgiveness a lot. In our land—that land of the flesh as Paul says—forgiveness is not rare but not easy to come by, either. When that little girl who was shot forgave the shooter, that was front page news. And some readers thought she was crazy or stupid or misguided or little-girl naïve. “Revenge,” and “regret,” and “get what he deserves,” and “teach them a lesson” are all words of the land of the flesh.

But in “wind-Spirit” land people speak more about reconciliation. About tearing down walls between people, or leaping over them, instead of shoring up old ones or building new ones. It is not that in this land everyone is really good or that people don’t hurt people or scare them or act stupid. It is, if I read my travel guide correctly, that people act as if other people were actually children of God and therefore get the same benefit of the doubt as one’s own brothers or sisters. Not that they necessarily like them—you might not like your brother or sister—or approve of them or what they do. But that forgiveness is the first choice.

The second thing we notice in this land is that the people are not afraid to take risks. In the land of the flesh, we are really into controlling things. We like to know where we stand and where everyone else stands. Who stands with us, for example, and who stands against us. Who is outstanding. We like to know what is going to happen before it does. We like to make sure that we do everything we can to be safe. We put a lot of value in knowledge.

But people born into “wind-Spirit” land know that they live in uncertainty. They know that the Spirit blows where it chooses. And they trust the Spirit. It is inevitable that things will be different than they can imagine, both good things and things not so good. Trusting in the Spirit, they are able to do things that we might find too scary, or too hazardous, or too foolish. Risking their own lives to help others, or to avoid harming others (which it seems to me is much of the same sort of thing). Not only do they accept risk, they embrace it. They expect that the Spirit will guide them into adventures of uncertainty, surprise, and joy.

And the third thing we notice about this land is that the people seem full of gratitude. That is, they act like they feel that they have been given a lot of presents. Life itself, for starters, and friends, and the ability to get pleasure in things and see beauty, and little things like having a refrigerator or a tree nearby or to hear someone in happy conversation or to know someone so well that they are missed when they move away. Another way to say this is that life for them seems not to be a life of scarcity but a life of abundance. Abundant life. Which happens to be the words John uses when he says “eternal life.”

When Nicodemus comes to Jesus he wants to know what Jesus means. That is, what Jesus means to the world. What is going to happen to things now that Jesus—who it is clear to Nicodemus is a man come from God—what is going to happen now that Jesus has appeared. Jesus answers that people are perishing. They are full of condemnation, fear, and yearning. Jesus says it need not be so. They may instead have eternal life. That’s why Jesus has come.

Camp A is not right. Camp B is not right. Being born again is neither a ticket to salvation nor a sign of it. It is instead a vision of a different land. A promise. Not that we need to be reborn, but that we will be. A mission. A new way for the world to be. A “wind-Spirit” world.