Sermon for the Second Sunday in Lent (March 1, 2026)
Transcript
This transcript was generated by YouTube AI and edited for clarity.
May only truth be spoken here and only truth be heard. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Nicodemus says to Jesus, “How can anyone be born after having grown old?”
I can hear the weariness in his question.
I remember our presiding bishop—one presiding bishop ago—Michael Curry, preaching at the royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. He said, “Imagine this tired old world when love is the way.”
I hear that in Nicodemus’ question.
How does a world that seems so tired and broken and so set in its ways—
how can such a world be renewed?
How can it be born when it has grown old?
I have heaviness in me, and maybe you do too. When I woke up yesterday—and I did what we do when we wake up, we get out our phone, you know—and I saw that there is a war, I felt sick and so sad.
I can relate to Nicodemus, coming to Jesus in the dark and tired and asking:
When we are old and set in our ways, how can we be born? How can we be made new?
In Lent, we really sit with admitting to ourselves, as the old confession goes, that we have erred and strayed like lost sheep. The world is tired. The world is tired of our ways. And we ourselves are tired.
And in Lent, I think there is a moment—there ought to at least be a moment—where we sit and realize we don’t know a way to be new again. We don’t know a way to change.
Gosh, if we knew a way to change, wouldn’t we stop bombing each other?
Jesus says to Nicodemus, “I’ll tell you how. The wind blows where it chooses. You hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it is going.”
It is not in your control. You can’t make it stop or start.
And the wind he’s speaking of is the renewing wind of the Spirit.
If in Lent we sit with and acknowledge—alongside Jesus, who looked out over the kingdoms of the world and saw that they were the devil’s to offer because they are under the power of the devil—and captive, as all we are, to evil and sin, not knowing a way out… but there is One who is not captive, who comes to set us free.
That is Jesus.
The way and the truth and the life. His being is what sets us free. His life is our pattern. His death and resurrection show that there is a power beyond the power of the evil that holds us captive.
That has come, as Jesus says to Nicodemus, not to judge the world but to rescue it. Not to condemn it but to set it free. Not to condemn you or me or the nations or the leaders of the nations—but to set us all free.
Even now, the wind is blowing through this world, through our lives. The Spirit of God—which is free—calls us, reminds us, and gives us the power to love one another.
Even now, as I know Nicodemus must have felt it while Jesus spoke to him, we can feel that wind on our faces and we can breathe it into our bodies.
We can be made new. We are, in fact, being made new.
God so loved the world. Not these ones or that ones only, but the whole world. That means God loves you and God loves me. God loves the Iranian people, the Israeli people, the people of the United States of America. God loves the people who lead these nations.
God loves us all.
And God so loved the world that God gave everything—and will keep doing so—to set us free.
The archbishop of the Anglican Diocese of Jerusalem and the Middle East, Hosam Naoum, wrote a beautiful letter to his people yesterday morning—and to us. And I think that if we believe and are willing to feel on our faces and in our breath the renewing power of the Spirit at work, then it is helpful to have some things to do with the power that is flowing into us. And I think the archbishop gave us some good ones.
First, he says: prayer. Urgent and unceasing prayer for the whole world. Everybody can do that.
Second: be beacons of comfort to one another. Just remember—most of us are walking around with heavy hearts. Someone put their arm around me this morning. It makes such a difference. In the parish hall, as the cooks were preparing breakfast, we held hands at the Lord’s Prayer. That is the power of the Spirit, uniting and renewing the people of God.
Be beacons of comfort to one another.
And do not cease, the archbishop says, to be builders of bridges. He says, “We refuse to see our neighbors as enemies.” This is a commitment. It is a very difficult commitment. It is a commitment that Christians are called to make even if nobody else is keeping it.
Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you. Build a bridge even if you’re the only one building it. Even if we’re the only ones building it.
Not because you have hope that you will succeed. That’s the rub, right? Loving might not change a ding dang thing—at least not in this life.
But if no one’s trying to build a bridge—if no one tried, if no one kept that commitment—nothing would be built.
And I’ll tell you: things are still being built. Comfort is still being shared. Prayer is still holding up this world.
Urgent and unceasing prayer.
Beacons of comfort to one another.
And insistent, committed builders of bridges, seeking to reconcile all people to God and to one another.
This is what it looks like to have the Spirit’s breath on your face, and the power of the life of God in your body, and the love of God—who so loves the world—in your heart.
Amen.