The Second Sunday in Lent
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church
The Rev. Brian Gregory
March 1, 2026
John 3:1–17
3:1 Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews.
3:2 He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.”
3:3 Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”
3:4 Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?”
3:5 Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.
3:6 What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit.
3:7 Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’
3:8 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.”
3:9 Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?”
3:10 Jesus answered him, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?
3:11 “Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony.
3:12 If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?
3:13 No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.
3:14 And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up,
3:15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
3:16 “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.
3:17 “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.
Source: NRSV
If you have been to a Mariners game, or a Seahawks game, or a Seahawks parade, or any large public gathering in Seattle, really, you’ve probably seen the signs. And heard the loudspeakers. The ones of the street preachers who have become a fixture around Seattle in the last few years. There have always been street preachers, but these ones are particularly loud. Shouting words of judgment and condemnation at volumes that carry above all else.
“Jesus says you must be born again” – reads one of the signs they often carry on a pole just below “Jesus saves from sin and hell.” And while I haven’t seen it on the signs of these particular street preachers, John 3:16 is perhaps the most well-known verse in all of scripture – a go-to for street preachers to reference, a regular short-hand citation for celebrities, politicians, or everyday Christians to plant their flag and attempt to share the gospel. Tim Tebow – the retired NFL quarterback – often wore eye black with reference to John 3:16 inscribed during games.
There is good reason John 3:16 has become shorthand for street preachers, celebrities, and any Christian who wants to share or communicate the gospel. The reformer, Martin Luther, once called this verse “the gospel in a nutshell.” It is a statement of immense compassion, love, and hope; one that holds the depths of the incarnation and the ultimate promise of our faith. But it is also one that has been flipped on its head to be a weapon of condemnation and exclusion. The way it is most often used at least implicitly highlights “will not perish” but in reverse. In other words, if you don’t believe you will perish.
In all of this – the street preachers, the subtle and not so subtle references to John 3:16, the worry and wonder and focus on being “born again,” in our own imaginations and theologies constructed and lived – we have become preoccupied with what happens after we die. Oftentimes, intentionally or unintentionally, implicitly or explicitly, we reduce the Christian faith to the hope of living forever in heaven rather than hell. This tendency is not without explanation. It is easy to do, especially as we read John’s gospel.
Unique among the four gospels, John is the most “spiritual.” There is no birth narrative in John, no genealogy of Jesus connecting him to human family. Jesus is presented as unequivocally divine and not of this world. Jesus is something and someone wholly other. He doesn’t concern himself with the realities and needs of human existence nearly as much in John’s gospel as the others, but rather points to the divine reality that stands outside and above earthly existence. John is full of contrasts, distinctions, and dichotomies. Light and darkness, flesh and spirit, heaven and the world. With all of this, it is quite easy to adopt a dualistic view in which it is only the spiritual reality that matters, that the goal of life and purpose of our faith is to escape the flesh and the world for spiritual existence in heaven.
But, God so loved the world. The “world” in John’s gospel is not just this floating orb we inhabit. It is not just terra firma. It is not just God’s created order, including our fleshly, human existence. The world stands opposite to heaven and the ways of God. The world is all that which is opposed to God. It is the forces of evil that seek to corrupt and destroy. It is the darkness where secrets, shame, abuse, and self-doubt fester. It is the selfish desires of humanity that seek immediate fulfillment rather than long-term wholeness, the pursuit of power and domination over human flourishing. God so loved the world – all that is opposed to God – that God chose to redeem and restore it rather than give up on it.
And while we have dualistic themes and imagery in John’s gospel, the way God chose to redeem and restore the world was to join God’s self with it – the joining of spirit and flesh. God entered the world – the Word became flesh and lived among us – as John’s prologue says. “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
Rather than the goal being escaping this earth for a different sort of existence or shedding our created, human existence for a purely spiritual one, we find in Jesus the joining of heaven with earth so that this world might be redeemed rather than condemned. We find in this life the possibility of its fulfillment in God, rather than something to be endured in hopes of a better existence in heaven. We find the promise of eternal life, not only as a future hope, but a present, possible reality.
Because the here and now, this life, God’s created order, matter. Jesus said that he has come that we may have life and have it abundantly. That is the possibility and the promise of eternal life. And what is eternal life? That we might know God and Jesus Christ whom God has sent, Jesus says in John 17:3. Not just living forever in heaven after we die, but experiencing the fullness of life here and now lived in intimate relationship with God through Jesus. Trusting, following, believing in the goodness of God and letting that permeate our entire existence. That changes everything.
So have you been “born again” or “born from above?” Not as the moment of your eternal salvation that ensures you will go to heaven, but as your life lived in relationship with God coming alive. I wonder how our faith would change – and our world would change – if we stopped being so concerned with what happens after we die and our conversion moment or that singular moment where we were “born again,” and instead, attended to the ways we are walking with Jesus for the sake of this moment and the sake of this world. Because this life and this world can be made beautiful, if we have the eyes to see it and the will to make it with God’s help.
I wonder if being “born from above” or “born again” is less like a stamped ticket to heaven than it is like the scene in Mary Poppins when Mary, Bert, and the children join hands and jump into the middle of the sidewalk painting – discovering a whole new, more colorful world emerging out of this tired one. Or The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy opens the door from the sepia tones of Kansas to the vibrant color of Oz. I wonder if being “born from above” is less a moment than it is a way of life so that we are not “born again” once and for all but, through choosing to live life in relationship with God and, through that relationship, discovering a world of divine, vibrant color around us; discovering not just life that is endured but life that is abundantly rich here and now; we are born again…and again, and again. Born anew to the life we were created for moment by moment, choice by choice, day by day.
How, though, is one born from above, changed and transformed to experience the life we were created for, we might be asking with Nicodemus. If Nicodemus – a well learned, astute religious leader – didn’t understand, didn’t get it, will we? “Believe in me,” Jesus told him…and tells us. If and when we do that, life begins to change. But – and here is where Nicodemus struggled – there is a difference between knowing about or believing Jesus, and believing in Jesus.
As one commentator put it:
“Believing IN means that you enter into relationship, that you trust with everything that you are, with everything that is your life, that you jump into it…Nicodemus wanted to understand it within the intellectual understanding of God that he had. But Jesus was telling him there was a different way. Jesus was inviting, indeed almost daring, Nicodemus to believe in this new way, to turn his life, his doubts, his heart, and even his very learned mind over to God.”
We don’t always get it right. We don’t believe – truly trust – perfectly. And so we pray with the father whose son needed healing in Mark’s gospel, “I believe, Lord…help my unbelief.”
As I reflected on all of this – being born again, discovering life and life abundantly, a “conversion moment” – I kept coming back to perhaps the most explicit example of new life I have seen: the recovery community. Those who have struggled with addictions of any sorts know deep within themselves those things that rob life, that destroy relationship, that stand opposed to God. And while the day of the last drink, the last hit, the last bet placed or whatever else is the object of addiction might be is a starting point, it is not the end.
Many – maybe even most – who enter treatment or their first 12-step meeting don’t yet fully know or understand the transformation they will experience. But as they walk through the 12 steps – admitting their need, believing – truly believing – that God can do for them what they cannot do for themselves, turning their lives over to that God, confessing their failures and asking God to change them, making amends with those harmed – they begin to discover new life.
And this is the promise written in the Big Book of AA:
“We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change…We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves. Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us-sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them.”
The thing about recovery, the thing about our faith and our relationship with God, the thing about life, is it is a journey. We have never “made it.” There may well be milestones and markers, moments of conversion, experiences of abundant life, experiences of being born from above or born again. But – and this is what the recovery community teaches us so well – living in that life abundant place, experiencing the fullness of life lived in trusting relationship with God, is a daily journey. God’s desire for you, for me, for the world is eternal life: believing in, trusting in, following the creator of life right here and right now so that we may experience abundant life in the vibrant color of heaven in us and among us. So may we be born again, and again, and again, and again. May we know and experience eternal life…right here and right now.
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