The sounds of the birds chirping and the warmth of the sun upon my shoulders is undeniably a part of how I mentally move through the seasons of the year. I am a big hiker but can be a bit of a fair weather one at that, so I don’t often venture out across snow and ice with frosty temperatures. But when Spring comes – even if it is a false Spring – I’m out on the trail. The pale blue sky is marked only by the tall trees, whose branches are still mostly bare, but if you pay close attention, the earliest leaves have already burst through. Any time I return to a trail after being away for a while, it reminds me of all the prayers I’ve prayed while walking in the woods, as it has been the landscape of the interior of my faith. The trail is where I can be my whole self, it is I came back to faith after a long season of doubt, it is where I discerned my call, and it is as I put one foot in front of another that I learned that none of us know where the Spirit might lead us. Because when we follow God’s call upon our lives, we rarely know where we will go.
In our gospel passage today, Nicodemus, a leader in the Jewish community, comes to Jesus at night and commends him for all the ways in which his work points toward God. Jesus and Nicodemus go back and forth about the crucial role, or not, that Jesus plays in salvation. Jesus names that one must be born again and that for those reborn of the Spirit, like the wind cannot be fully known where it comes from or where it goes. Jesus, unphased by Nicodemus’ confusion, goes on to name that he himself is a sign that points to God and that his incarnational presence is not to condemn the world, but rather for salvation, for God so loved the world, Christ tells him.
I have always wondered if Nicodemus’ response was a confused and overwhelmed, “OKAY. . .SO. . .What you are saying is. . .” but we don’t hear Nicodemus’ response in today’s lectionary. I do wonder, however, if Jesus knew the seeds he was planting in this back and forth conversation, which is happening in the cloak of darkness, let’s not forget. Nicodemus, we know is not someone who was impacted by a conversation with our Saviour and then moved on with his life, he reappears in just 16 chapters of John’s gospel assisting in Christ’s burial.
As we take a deep dive into the Gospel according to John over the next few Sundays, it is important to name the way in which John’s gospel has been used to promote anti-Semitic thoughts and actions throughout the course of Christianity. We cannot wrestle with the truth laid out here in John’s gospel, without also wrestling with the way in which the Jewish leaders were often interpreted as foolish by some of the significant Christian theologians throughout history. In our passage today, Nicodemus has oft been painted as a foolish person who can’t understand Jesus, but the bedrock of that interpretation is anti-Semitic and is wrong. Because like for us, Nicodemus’ faith was not an event or a mark on his story, but is a continual and unfolding process.
For Nicodemus, the crux of the confusion lies is how can one enter into the womb after having grown old? And we may hear this, and think, it’s symbolic, it’s so easy to see that. But we must get curious about any assumptions and why we are able to make significant leaps of thought; is it because we’ve heard this story many times before? Is it because Born Again is a classification of Christian that we know? But even symbolically, I think that for Nicodemus, the physicality of being born again is just as confusing as an ideological concept.
Because for Nicodemus and the society in which he was a leader, wisdom, kinship, and family were significant parts of your identity. All the things that one accumulated throughout his life and would go toward increasing honor and status. Nicodemus’ doubt about why one would give up what they accrued over a lifetime to be born again is to ask, why would I give up the stability and security I have to take on something new? When I allow Niccodemus’ curiosity to cultivate my own, I am able to admit that being born again is incredibly challenging. There is pain and risk in new birth, and once born, there is a dependence upon those around you.
At the time that John is writing this gospel account, the news about Jesus’ death and resurrection has begun to spread. For John to paint this exchange between Nicodemus and Jesus for those who are hearing John’s words likely hear it as an affirmation that to be born again leads to the cross. It is not a new birth into an easier life, but into a life of struggle, into a life of seeing the marginalized, of dedicating our lives to go against the common messages of the world and to continually choose hope, even as the cross looms large. And when I’m honest, Nicodemus’ confusion strikes me as the right reaction when I try to contemplate what it might mean to be born again into God’s brokenness; to be born again into a life characterized by new births that continually help us to find and to be found by God.
During this Lenten season, I invite you to ponder what this would mean. What would it mean if you embraced your faith, knowing that to be born again, is to begin again, because to begin again is very often where God is found and where we are found by God. Perhaps the pain and difficulty of new birth is where you find yourself today, or perhaps you remember, or maybe you can even feel it coming in your soul. My prayer is that this season we can embrace new birth like Nicodemus, with a questioning spirit and a willingness to let God’s Spirit move him where he couldn’t have predicted. Because I wonder in the midst of this exchange if Nicodemus could even imagine a glimpse of himself bringing over 75 pounds of myrrh and aloe for the ritual burial of Jesus’ crucified body. I wonder if in the darkness, as he curiously asked about being born again if he could imagine that he would be one of the few to tenderly take care of our crucified Messiah before he was resurrected? The truth of being born again is that we don’t know where the Spirit is leading us, so get comfortable with being uncomfortable, because God is found when we begin again—this we see in Nicodemus’ story, and the same is true for us. Thanks be to God.
A sermon delivered on March 1, 2026 to the people of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Middlesboro, Kentucky for Lent 2A on John 3: 1-17.
Becca Kello 