2 Lent A 2026

By The Rev. Dr. Molly Scherm

I love Nicodemus.  If some of you found the gospel lesson we just heard utterly incomprehensible, don’t worry.  Today’s gospel is a tough passage that is still the object of lively debate among scholars.  I love Nicodemus not so much because of what we hear in the interaction with Jesus that we just heard, but because of the whole arc of his story in John’s gospel.  But more about that later.

So let’s start with a word, first, about John’s gospel.  As you know, we have a three-year lectionary cycle of lessons assigned for us to use throughout the church year.  The first year, which is what we’re following now, mostly traces Matthew’s account of Jesus’ story, and then we’ll move on to years mostly focused on Mark and Luke.  Poor John doesn’t get his own year, so the arrangers of the lectionary insert passages from John into the other three years.

This is one of those passages.  And here’s what’s interesting: neither Matthew, Mark, or Luke ever mention Nicodemus, but he shows up three times in John’s gospel.  What is it about Nicodemus that seemed important enough to John that he included him?  What does John want us to learn from Nicodemus?

One thing, and I suspect we can all identify with this, is that Jesus’ encounter with Nicodemus gives us a glimpse of an individual struggling with questions of faith and it invites us to explore what the idea of spiritual rebirth means.

Nicodemus was an important person: he was quite a big cheese.  As a Pharisee, he was part of the elite – better educated than most, a member of the Sanhedrin (or ruling council at the Jerusalem Temple), he was an insider and would have been accorded lots of respect and privilege.
    
You’ve heard me say before that I think the Pharisees are given an unfairly bad rap in the gospels.  Pharisees were the most progressive of the Jewish sects that existed in Jesus’ time. Despite their rigidity in relation to applying the Law of Moses - which led to their conflicts with Jesus over his sabbath practices, for example - they believed that interpretation of the Torah, of scripture, was a matter of ongoing process, ongoing revelation.  They didn’t assume that they had all of the answers, but rather, were open to an evolving understanding of God’s intent for humankind, which may be what prompted Nicodemus to seek Jesus out to learn more about the new rabbi’s teachings.
    
It would certainly have been unusual for a member of the religious establishment to seek out Jesus, and so it’s not surprising that he did so under cover of night.  Nicodemus would not have wanted to advertise any association with this radical religious teacher about whom his community had such reservations.  It seems that he couldn’t resist the impulse to learn more, however:  he couldn’t dismiss his sense that “something is going on here….”

We never actually find out, in John’s narrative, what Nicodemus wanted from Jesus, because immediately after his initial statement acknowledging Jesus as a “teacher who has come from God,”  Jesus effectively takes over the conversation to launch into a line of instruction, with Nicodemus practically scrambling to keep up.

Jesus’ instruction addresses what one needs in order to enter the kingdom of God.  It includes a Greek term – anothen -that is difficult to translate, and that has caused consternation and controversy within Christian communities:

Jesus tells Nicodemus EITHER:

No one can see the Kingdom of God without being born from above. OR

No one can see the Kingdom of God without being born again.

Nicodemus assumes the second meaning and takes it literally; he gets stuck on and bewildered by the notion of a person having to physically re-enter the womb and experience literal rebirth.

Jesus, of course, is talking about something else, about spiritual rebirth, about making a fresh start.  He tells Nicodemus that rebirth is not a matter of the physical self, but of the spiritual self, and that it is the work of the Spirit, leading one to new life.

This verse has been understood by some Christian groups as a specific requirement.  Some believe and preach the necessity of being “born again” in a particular kind of experience, that one must have in order to be “saved”.  This isn’t the way we understand things in the Episcopal Church.

But back to our gospel passage.  
After the exchange about rebirth, Jesus’ meeting with Nicodemus transitions into a sermon. 

I already mentioned the fact that John’s gospel differs from the Matthew, Mark and Luke.  It was written anywhere from twenty to forty years after the other gospels and includes long passages of discourse – some of them very long – that are attributed to Jesus, and that represent what the young church had come to believe about the purpose of Jesus’ life.  John’s community told stories that have Jesus explaining the meaning of his life and ministry.

The brief sermon that we hear Jesus offering to Nicodemus is one of these.  It includes what may be most quoted verse in the Bible, a verse that Marin Luther described as “whole gospel in a single verse”,  John 3:15: 

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.

And the final verse of the text further reiterates and reinforces the theme of God’s expansive and inclusive love:

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.

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So what might Jesus’ words mean for us today?  Is spiritual rebirth what we should be hoping for?  Is it what the God who “so loved the world” wants for us?  Is it something that takes place as an event that we should be seeking and working toward?

Jesus tells Nicodemus that in order to see or enter the kingdom of God, a person must be born of the Spirit.  Our ancestors in faith often assumed that in speaking of the kingdom of God, Jesus was speaking of a realm that exists outside of the world we live in, one that we can hope to enter after our physical life ends.

Today we no longer understand God’s realm to be separate from our lives here and now. Today we understand Jesus to have been preaching about what former Presiding Bishop Michael Curry refers to as “God’s dream”, the community of love, justice, and peace that God intends for all of God’s creation.  This reign of God is a time of living in right relationship with ourselves, with one another and with God; it is a reality we can build in the present, and it extends into the “eternal life” that Jesus speaks to Nicodemus about.

To be “born of the Spirit”, I believe, simply means living a life that grows out of our relationship with God.  

I can best understand the idea of spiritual rebirth as being found in the gradual path of spiritual growth that we all work at over the course of our lifetimes.  We work at spiritual growth through prayer and reflection, through study, through participation in worship, and through the experience of life in community, especially through our work together in service to others and to God’s world.  Lent is the perfect time to focus on spiritual growth.

I also know that we can also experience instances of dramatic change of our spiritual awareness, times when the circumstances or events of our lives produce in us real moments of transformation, of opening and expansion, of new self-knowledge and deepening in our relationship with God.  Some of these times of change grow out of the joyful moments in life – I think of the birth of children and how profoundly that experience alters our view of what is important – but many times our spiritual development is painful, and grows out of times of loss and failure that bring us up short, requiring us to look at the truth of our lives in new ways.

Jesus’ words to Nicodemus about spiritual rebirth suggest relationship and experience rather than doctrine and dogma. They describe a kind of spiritual growth that depends on courage and trust, but that leads to new possibilities of life marked by freedom, joy, peace, and love. 

And so, once again, I return to why I love Nicodemus.  John’s gospel never tells us what impact the conversation with Jesus had on him, but the whole of John’s gospel provides quiet suggestions.

Nicodemus appears two more times in John.  

As a member of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish court, John tells us that Nicodemus spoke up in defense of offering Jesus a fair trial, at the time of his arrest.  

And finally, Nicodemus is the one who brings myrrh and aloes, along with Joseph of Arimathea, to prepare Jesus’ body for burial after his crucifixion.

Did Nicodemus turn toward rebirth, toward a life of faith in Jesus?  It certainly seems to be John’s implication.  Nicodemus’ story promises us that rebirth is possible, that change can happen. And if it can happen to Nicodemus, it can happen to us.

May we, in this season of Lent, like Nicodemus, dare to bring our questions and our uncertainties forward before God.

May we find in ourselves the will and the trust to invest in our own spiritual growth.

In these violent and disturbing and frightening times, may we keep our eyes on Jesus.

I came across a line that stayed with me, just yesterday. Quoted in the context of response to our nation’s attack on Iran, it also speaks to the work of investing in our own spiritual growth.  It comes from Etty Hillesum, a Dutch Jewish writer who was deported to and executed at Auschwitz.

She said: “Ultimately, we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and to reflect it towards others. And the more peace there is in us, the more peace there will also be in our troubled world.*


May we, through God’s grace, travel toward new life in community with our siblings in faith and live into an openness of heart, so that we, too, may be reborn of the Spirit.

Amen

*Cited in “Those Who Make Peace”, The Cottage, Diana Butler Bass, Feb 28, 2026

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