One of the cleverest forms of humor is wordplay. The word "retire," for instance, can mean both "withdraw" and "cease working." If I said, "Those who retire are more likely to find the kingdom of heaven," I could simply mean those who take time to be alone with God, to withdraw to a place apart. But a person who understood the word retire as "cease working" might think, "Are you crazy? I've got a family to feed! I can't afford to give up my job!" By "retire," I might mean nothing more radical than going on the occasional retreat, but if you're used to hearing that word in the context of your career, there's room for misunderstanding. Wordplay is all about finding the wiggle room between two (or more) meanings in one word, and then wiggling till they're giggling.

St. John the Evangelist was a master of wordplay, and in our gospel lesson this morning, he humorously exploits the wiggle room in one word in the service of God's kingdom. Unfortunately, wordplay in one language often doesn't translate well into another language. E. B. White once wrote, "Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested, and the frog dies of it." I'm willing, however, to risk killing a few frogs for the sake of the Gospel.

In the story of Nicodemus' clandestine meeting with Jesus, we have a story that I think would have had John's original readers chuckling knowingly to themselves. That's because the word that John uses in Greek for "from above," "anwqen," can also mean "again." We have no English equivalent, so translators have had to choose between the two meanings. The King James Version, long the preferred translation of American fundamentalists, rendered it "Ye must be born again." The more recent New Revised Standard Version, which is the translation we hear in church, has "You must be born from above." Therein lies a subtle joke. Problem is, it gets lost in translation.

Remember the old Abbot and Costello baseball sketch, "Who's on First?" The premise of "Who's on First?" is that baseball players nowadays have lots of silly nicknames like "Dizzy," and the nickname of the first baseman is, literally, "Who." When Costello asks Abbott "Who's on First?" Abbot says "Certainly!" The whole sketch is based on a double entendre, that is, the question, "Who's on First?" is also its own answer, because a guy nicknamed "Who" is the first baseman.

In John, we have a first-century Abbott and Costello routine, with Nicodemus playing Costello and Jesus playing Abbott. Jesus says to Nicodemus, "Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born anwqen," meaning "born from above, from heaven," but instead of understanding Jesus spiritually, he understands him literally as saying "no one can see the kingdom of God without being born again." Hence, he asks, "How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother's womb and be born?" So Jesus tries to clarify, saying, "Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit…" In other words, Jesus is telling Nicodemus, "you're looking at things from an earthly perspective; you need to start looking at things from a heavenly perspective." Jesus says, "Do not be astonished that I said to you, 'You must be born anwqen.'" In other words, don't get hung up on that word, anwqen. But Nicodemus remains stuck. He says, "How can these things be?" In exasperation, Jesus replies, "Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?"

To John's original audience, this exchange between a representative of the religious ruling elite and an itinerant rabbi must have been a real hoot. But therein lies the lesson: that even highly religious folk like Nicodemus can completely miss the point.

Ironically, because the joke is lost in translation, the point has been largely lost with it. "Born again" has become a shibboleth, a watchword, a litmus test for determining whether one is "really" a Christian or not. In the history of Christian division, this has largely come down to a tedious legalistic debate about infant baptism versus "believer's baptism." In the process, this text has been reduced to a very limited theology of salvation that misses the larger point: that it's easier to get caught up in the ways of the flesh than the ways of the Spirit, and that the Christian answer to "How do we escape the worldly traps that ensnare us?" is to accept the free and gracious gift of God in God's Son, Jesus Christ. Whether that acceptance needs to happen before or after baptism is, in my opinion, irrelevant. It's missing the point, like asking how it's possible to enter a second time into your mother's womb.

Of course, even without getting the joke in John 3:3, we can still get the point that John 3:16 makes: "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."

You may have seen John 3:16 on banners hung over the stands at football or baseball games. Growing up, my parents wrote "John 3:16" on the tag of every Christmas present, so we'd remember what Christmas was all about. John 3:16 just about says it all. But we need to be careful not to get hung up on the worldly part of that verse, like Nicodemus gets hung up over anwqen. If we put the emphasis on the second half, "so that everyone who believes in him should not perish," we're still focusing on ourselves. We need, instead, to focus on the first half of that verse, without which the second half makes no sense: that God loved the world so much that God sent Jesus. It's not ultimately about getting the right answers, after all, but about accepting the gift of eternal life freely offered to us in Christ.

This sermon is, in fact, the first in a two-part series on humor in John's gospel. Two weeks from today, I'll be talking about a passage whose jokes don't get lost in translation, but which often get lost in the delivery. I find it somewhat ironic that we are hearing these funny texts in the middle of Lent, which is arguably the most "serious" season in the church year. But for my part, I'm happy to be reminded that Jesus had a somewhat off-beat sense of humor, and that his humor was directed, ultimately, toward our salvation. Like Nicodemus, however, we need to be careful that in hearing his words, we aren't so literal and serious that we miss the joke. Otherwise, when Easter rolls around, we're likely to miss that most cosmic of punchlines: the Empty Tomb.