Sunday 1 March 2026 | The Rev’d Clare Barrie
Sermon based on:
Genesis 12:1-4a
Romans 4:1-5
John 3:1-17
May I speak in the name of God, +creating, redeeming, sanctifying.
+ + +
“Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. . . and he came to Jesus by night.”
I admire Nicodemus… He’s an intelligent, well-educated, seeking man, a rabbi and a leader amongst his people. He’s clearly deeply faithful and searching for God, for answers, for a difference, a hope for the future.
I wonder why he came to Jesus by night? Was he afraid of being seen with Jesus? Jesus was a rabbi like him, but one who taught differently, one who changed things. . . who upset things….
So Nicodemus is taking a risk in coming to this renegade rabbi – a risk to his reputation, but also to his own faith, his identity, his sense of self. Because he didn’t get intellectual and spiritual inspiration – instead, Jesus pushed back at him, over and over, with images of birth – being born again, being born from above, being born of the water and the Spirit. Being born.
I know I’ve told this story before – it’s a powerful memory for me. In the month before our daughter Elizabeth was born, some of you will remember that I was unwell, with pre-ecclampsia. I was able to stay at home, mostly, rather than stay in the hospital, but I had to go up to a clinic at the National Women’s every second day for monitoring.
They were checking both my health and our as-yet-unknown baby’s health, too, as pre-ecclampsia is a condition that can deteriorate very quickly. The midwives there were a great team, and we often chatted as I sat there waiting for the monitor to gather its half hour of data – my heartbeat, my blood pressure, my baby’s heartbeat. And I’ve never forgotten what one of them said about birth. She was quite matter-of-fact and said, “Oh, it’s the most dangerous day of both your lives.”
“…The most dangerous day of both your lives.” Whatever our medical and scientific advances since Jesus’ day, that is still true. The body and whole being of both mother and baby go through the most wrenching and profound and risky changes through both pregnancy and birth, and Jesus knew all these things. In his time, many women and their babies would have simply died in childbirth.
So what was Jesus saying to Nicodemus? This man of God – what was he trying to have him understand? “…be born again, be born from above, be born of the water and the Spirit…” 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.” Whatever Nicodemus was seeking from Jesus, about faith and about God, Jesus was telling him that entering the life of faith he offered was as profound and transformative and all-encompassing as birth itself.
I think that we in the church today are all like Nicodemus, to some degree. And perhaps when I say, ‘the church today,’ I need to be less abstract – what I mean is all of us gathered here at St Luke’s, including myself, as well as our wider diocese.
Like Nicodemus, we are used to our faith, our practice of it. It’s familiar and comfortable, and we understand it, and we love it. We come to church, and we know what to do and where we fit. We are cushioned inside an institution that can feel safe, but which can have the effect of soothing and straitjacketing us. We also have an intellectually informed faith – for many of us, the primary way we’ve been taught to understand faith is that it’s about right belief – ‘ortho – doxy.’ I think Nicodemus’ faith was like this, too.
But – “you must be born of water and the Spirit….” – what on earth? Nicodemus is lost, and all he can say, in the end, is ‘How can these things be?’
As I pondered Nicodemus’ story this week and what it might be inviting into life within us, I was reminded of a story from the Desert Fathers and Mothers, a story I’ve loved for many years – and I know I’ve shared it here before, but it is worth sharing again.
It is a story that gives me an image for that excitement, that risk-taking, that sense of the transforming power of the gospel that is good news for me, and good news for each of you, and good news for everyone out beyond these four walls who desperately needs to hear good news.
It is a story from the earliest, earliest centuries of Christianity, when people were driven by faith to live in the desert with very little material comfort but with huge spiritual riches. The Desert Fathers and Mothers were the ancestors of the monastic movement; they were a protest movement, in a time, not unlike today, when the place of the Christian Church in society was in flux and was struggling to find a way of being….
‘One day a young monk came to Abba Joseph and asked him what more he could do, since he was already doing some fasting, and some praying, and some work, mostly weaving baskets. The holy man responded, the story goes, by raising up his hands, and fire shot out from his ten fingers as he responded to the young man with this immense challenge: “Why not become all flame?”
“Why not become all flame?” Something in this, for me, resonates with the invitation that Jesus was offering Nicodemus. Nicodemus had all the right ideas, all the right information about faith – but Jesus called him to be born anew, born of water and the Spirit. Jesus called him to something as profound and transformative and all-encompassing as birth itself. He was calling Nicodemus to go beyond understanding his faith and start living it.
Like Nicodemus, we often come to Christ looking for a piece of wisdom, some comfort, some strength – and all of that is good and necessary, and Christ will provide.
But above and beyond, the call on all of us is be born again. . . let the life of Christian faith be as risky and life-changing and messy and profound as childbirth. And I believe that’s the call not just on us as individuals but also on the life of the church, in this time – be born again.
What does it mean, for instance, to be a faith community in the face of the climate crisis? Over the last month or so, across much of NZ, it’s meant checking in with neighbours and friends, loaning torches, sandbags, generators, spare beds, sharing prayers and tears and cups of coffee, pitching in with shovels and skip bins, cooking for people, donating funds, holding hands when there are no words. In Minneapolis, it means being ready to video ICE agents, warning neighbours when they’re around, taking groceries to those afraid to leave home, and protesting in the streets with signs and songs. It’s meant being in the midst of the struggle of getting through.
But what more? Being a faith community, people of faith, means we look to the horizon, and we understand that we live in a creation that belongs to God most holy – that is of God most holy – and we are its stewards. So it’s our calling to work and pray and vote and argue and spend and relax in ways that benefit God’s creation rather than only ourselves. It is our calling to treat the creation as a holy gift rather than a commodity to be used up, which is the relentless, destructive logic of our consumer society.
To be born again is perhaps to re-enter the world and breathe its air and be overwhelmed – astonished – by its glorious and beautiful holiness, its power, and its fragility, and live each new moment in response to this astonishment. This kind of awareness is a gift of the Holy Spirit. And it might be the most dangerous day of your life.
To be open to this gift, we have to go to Christ together, like Nicodemus if necessary, in the middle of the night, and say, we are ready.
We are ready to know what it means to be born again – to change – to be astonished – to become all flame! – to find new life and new ways of being people of faith.
Amen.