Sermon Sunday March 1, 2026
Second Sunday in Lent
Two gospel readings are offered for this particular Sunday, second Sunday of Lent. And I chose the one that’s not in your bulletin. So I apologize for that in not looking ahead. But the other gospel is the transfiguration gospel which we heard just a couple of weeks ago. So that was the primary reason for that change. The secondary reason for that change is that I am fascinated by this encounter of Nicodemus and Jesus.
And I must say I don’t stand alone here because so many people are fascinated by this particular encounter of Jesus and Nicodemus that the passage from the scriptural passage from this encounter has become the most well recognized passage in the world. I mean, you can go to soccer events and football events and all kinds of sports events and see people with t-shirts that say John 3:16. I mean, they don’t even have to say anything. Just referencing that passage, everybody knows what it means. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may live, may be saved.
John 3:16 is often seen as the miniature gospel or the entire message of Christ in miniature form. Or if you put it into AI and say AI, please tell me in one sentence what is Christianity about it would probably I guess and maybe you can check it would give you this passage for God so loved the world. But this passage comes in the midst of this mysterious encounter at night.
Nicodemus, a well-respected member of the Sanhedrin, which means the leaders of the Pharisees, the important elite of the religious Jewish people of the day. This was a well-respected, well-educated religious leader. And yet he meets with Jesus and pays him all these compliments. And Jesus tries to explain to him the essence of what faith is all about. But it’s hard for Nicodemus. It’s hard because Nicodemus knows that he is a well-educated religious man. And that is often can be a stumbling block for us.
It’s the well-educated that find new ideas and new ways of looking at things sometimes overwhelming. I was just speaking with a priest friend of mine just this morning and I was saying how interesting it is that often in our religious lives and traditions what we try to do is we simply try to come up with the final interpretation of scripture so that there is nothing more than can that can be said and all kinds of religious traditions do that all you have to do is Google what is the meaning of a particular passage and all kinds of scripture scholars and but particularly religious traditions will tell you well this is what it means the end don’t ask any more questions but if we believe that the word of God is living and active then we must understand that we cannot exhaust the full meaning of God’s message who Do we think we are if we think wecan exhaust the full meaning of God’s message of God’s word?
Ray Charles was interviewed once as a great pianist and musician and he was sitting at the piano and he was playing as he was being interviewed. It’s a lovely interview. You can look it up if you want. And the interviewer asked him once, “Do you do you ever get to the point where you’re bored playing this instrument? I mean, you know it so well. You’re a master at this instrument.” And Ray Charles smiled and he said, “You
know, you can never get bored once you realize that there is always more music in this instrument than I can ever extrapolate.” In other words, I am not a master. I am a servant. To have that kind of approach towards God is precisely what Jesus was trying to accomplish in his conversation with Nicodemus. Nicodemus who was closed in on his own ideas. He thought he had it figured out. And Jesus pushes the envelope. He pushes him outside of the margins of his own understanding and says things that
Nicodemus can’t fit into his own religious worldview. Jesus says you must be born from above if you are to have even a chance of seeing who God is. Born from above. Nicodemus doesn’t understand it. How is this possible? and he keeps going back to his understanding of birth. Rather than saying, “Jesus, tell me more. This is beyond my methods of reasoning and understanding.” Jesus says, “You must be born of water and the Holy Spirit.”
In other words, your physical birth was not enough for you to live a fully human life. We are more, in other words, more than just physical beings. Our needs are not met simply by having enough money, enough peace in the world, enough stability, a nice retirement, a car to drive, and food to eat. Jesus says, “You must not only be born physically and be satisfied physically, but you must be born from above by water and the Holy Spirit. The symbols of renewal of life, salvation of God in the Old Testament were always symbols of water and the spirit intertwined together.
In other words, what Jesus is saying is you must allow God to recreate you. You must allow God to do something in you that you cannot do on your own. You must submit to God. But how? How do I do that? The answer so beautiful, so clear by faith. By accepting God through faith, I believe. Help my unbelief. So many stories could be said about individuals who have fought against this kind of acceptance. Starting with St. Augustine of Hippo, a great theologian and early church father. North Africa is where he was from. And he was a famous rhetoric, which means a blend of philosophy and linguistics, the ability to reason and to argue and to present things. A very, very smart man by all earthly accounts. And he resisted God. He resisted faith. He resisted the scriptures at the early stages of his life. He even belittled scriptures by saying, “I’ve read them all and they do not satisfy.” Until he was ready. Until he realized that the physical material accomplishments of this world were never enough. There was always something missing.
And what did he do? He went to church and he listened to a sermon. one sermon, one good sermon by St. Ambrose and that sermon struck him. Something changed. He went out, he went into a local park, sat by a by a tree and he knew that moment that he believed in God. Something changed. He didn’t do it. He just allowed God to pierce through his stubbornness and his own sense of accomplishment. He became a great Christian. People took him by force and demanded that he would become their bishop back in those days. You know, it was the people who decided who would be the priest and who would be the bishop. It was the people who said the holiest person in our midst should be the one who preaches and teaches and administers the holy sacraments. And that’s how Augustine became the bishop of Hippo, a humble man, a great theologian who resisted God until God broke through when there was enough of an opening through humility.
CS Lewis, a great English writer, a very similar story. I’m sure you know. He recounts it beautifully in his book, Surprised by Joy. When he was in university and he resisted anything to do with God, he was an atheist. He thought it was too simplistic. It was not for the well-educated. It was not for someone of his abilities. And yet he describes it as if God continues to show up on his doorsteps at the most unexpected times until at a certain point when he was taking a ride on the side car of his brother’s motorcycle to the zoo. He said he recognized Jesus as the son of God in the most unexpected place. He finally allowed God to break through, God did something, but he needed to open up through faith to acknowledge. Jesus shares with Nicodemus the secret, the gift of the Christian faith, which is ultimately that we must be reborn by God. We must allow God to break through whatever it is we’re going through in our lives.
We must allow God to renew us and change us. That beautiful passage of Jesus about the very purpose of God coming still moves me to this day and I hope it moves you as well. Read it a new every time you see it. For God so loved the world. Imagine that God loves the world. We often see the world as this evil place filled with all kinds of opposites, nonrealities, darkness. For God so loved the world that he gave up his only son, the greatest possession he had, so that whoever believes in him, faith, whoever believes in him will not perish, will not perish, will not be destroyed, will not be overcome by whatever difficulties and struggles We have through faith. We will not be perished. We will not perish but we will have everlasting life, eternal life. I pray that this passage, this message, this gift may renew us this Lenten season and beyond.
Amen.