Sermon preached on Sunday 1st March, 2nd Sunday of Lent

By Rev Petra Elsmore

 

Gospel Reading

 

John 3.1–17

 

Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus who was a member of the Jewish ruling council. 2 He came to Jesus at night and said, ‘Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.’3 Jesus replied, ‘Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.’

4 ‘How can someone be born when they are old?’ Nicodemus asked. ‘Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!’

5 Jesus answered, ‘Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. 6 Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. 7 You should not be surprised at my saying, “You must be born again.” 8 The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.’

9 ‘How can this be?’ Nicodemus asked.

10 ‘You are Israel’s teacher,’ said Jesus, ‘and do you not understand these things? 11 Very truly I tell you, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. 12 I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? 13 No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven – the Son of Man.14 Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, 15 that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.’

16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

 

THE TALK

 

I was very blessed to spend a great amount of my childhood with my grandparents. They lived in a small village surrounded by woods and so a lot of my time was spent with friends playing in these woods. One of my fondest memories was also walking with my grandfather through the woods, usually we would pick mushrooms or blueberries and pine cons. I was quite small then around 4-5 so the trees felt massive but I always loved being surrounded by trees. And if you know some forest, you learn to know the certain paths and clearings, even small ones, and you can find your way through easily enough.

 

But even if you know your way around, there might be times when you just look around and see nothing but trees, no clear direction. At first it feels disorienting, because every direction looks the same. You try to discern an opening, but there is no clarity. And then something shifts, perhaps the light changes, perhaps the terrain shows a change, and where there were only trees, you can see a path. Yet the path was always there. You simply could not see it.

 

We call it an “aha” moment — the instant when the way becomes visible. If you are lost somewhere, in a forest or in a city, such moment is a very useful one to have. We can have an aha moment in different aspects of our lives, a moment when we were not sure how to move forward with a project, with a difficult situation and suddenly something helps us to see the solution. What is good to remember is that such moment is not an end of a journey, often it’s only the beginning. You still have to walk the path that opened before you. Perhaps something like this happened to Nicodemus.

 

If you look at the reading today, most of us would almost automatically connect with the verse 16, it is probably the most well known verse from the entire Bible. But I would rather focus on Nicodemus to start with. Here Nicodemus, metaphorically speaking, sets on a journey. He seeks Jesus, he is drawn to him and he wants to find out more, he wants to learn. He says ‘Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.’ But when he entered into the conversation with Jesus,  it is as if he has entered  the forest, Jesus tells him “No one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.” Nicodemus hears the words but cannot yet see the path. “How can this be?” Nicodemus asks. He does not comprehend. Yet he does not turn away. It would be easy to imagine that what Nicodemus needed was a single clear explanation, a quick summary, a gospel in a nutshell, something that would explain everything at once. But such explanation may give us clarity we seek but not the clarity we need.

 

These days, when we use the phrase, “being born again” or indeed, when we use most of our religious language, we still assume that people understand what we mean, but most of the time that’s not the case. We talk about salvation, redemption, being born again, righteousness, mercy, grace and many people don’t know what we are talking about. So it is not surprise that Nicodemus had troubles to grasp Jesus’s meaning.

Perhaps Nicodemus experienced an “aha” moment — not full understanding, but only a glimpse. A sense that something deeper was at work. A recognition that the path forward would not give him instant answers or understanding, but that he was invited into a relationship, onto a journey, and by trusting Jesus, he would come to understand more fully. A glimpse of a path opening in front of him.

 

So we don’t see Nicodemus instantly transformed. He does not leave the conversation with Jesus overjoyed, excited, or even enlightened. He remains, in some sense, unfinished and perplexed. But later we have another mention of him in chapter 7, where he speaks up cautiously in defence of Jesus. And eventually, after the crucifixion, he comes openly to help bury his body. He started with questions and confusion, but he eventually ended with a humble and beautiful act of devotion. It was a slow progress of realisation and discovery, a deepening relationship with God through trust in Jesus.

 

And now we come to a second part of this story.

 

“For God So Loved the World…”

 

If the first part of the conversation is about seeing the path, the second is about understanding where that path leads.

 

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son…” we read in verse 16.

 

I have heard this verse quoted so many times and I am sure so have you. And there were many times I felt that verse was misrepresented, perhaps not intentionally but nevertheless it was.

 

Thinking about Nicodemus, and indeed of my own journey of faith, and I would think experience that many of you may share, we realise that that journey we experience, the path we follow is not about our own achievement, our own ability to make the right decision or our own cleverness to grasp deep theological concepts, our journey of faith is first and foremost about God’s love for us, his generosity and his grace. God does not wait for Nicodemus to fully understand before extending him love. God does not wait for us to grasp every doctrine before offering us the same, he does not wait for us to be perfect either. And God does not put limitations and boundaries around his love, and it saddens me when I see the church to do just that. The ongoing debates and arguments about who can be in, and who is out, who is acceptable and who is not. This passage, I believe, stresses out the fact that God love is there first, because God so love the world…..

 

Sometimes Christians speak of being “born again” as though it were a single dramatic event that separates insiders from outsiders and as it depended all on their own merit. And for some there is perhaps a single defining moment that they can recall, and in no way I would want to diminish such experience, however for most it’s not so straightforward. In the John’s Gospel, new birth sounds less like a one-time spiritual achievement and more like an awakening into relationship. It is not about chasing a particular emotional experience. It is about allowing oneself to be drawn, reshaped, and guided over time, just like Nicodemus, into a relationship that is rooted in trust. And it is about the love that God extends to us and which we come to accept.

 

It may be lovely to look back at a beginning of a relationship, the moments when we fall in love with someone, but I guess it is overall more satisfying to reflect on the journey you share with someone, the loving relationship experienced through daily living, as you got to know each other better.

 

And so it is similar in our life of faith, the big moment of discovery, if we had one, is part of our treasured memories, but it is the daily living of our life of following Jesus, when we truly learn to know him.

 

As we go through Lent, we can use the story of Nicodemus to reflect on what it means to us to believe in Jesus. 

 

When we reflect on the passage today, the danger is that we concentrate on believing as an intellectual expression of our faith,  after all each week we say our creed. But allow yourself to be drawn deeper, and through this Lent, see your relationship with Jesus not through just one moment, but walk the path, reflect on how the path has changed you over the years, what you have learned, whom you have met on the journey. All those experiences were the expression of God’s love for you, so that you could come to know him deeper in Jesus Christ. And reflecting on your journey, you realise that the experience of believing in Jesus, the fullness of it, is not about the special moments that we may experience ourselves, but the moments that take place within a community, moments that are shared, just as we have sung in our first hymn, Let us build a church.

And Lent invites us to keep walking. Wherever we are on that journey, the foundation remains the same: God so loved the world…. Amen