March 1: “Born Into Belonging”

Sermon for Lent 2 - by Rev. Sandra Nixon

Scripture: John 3: 1-21

Every three years, this passage comes around.
Including the infamous John 3:16 — the one people hold up on signs at football games as if it can stand alone.

Three years ago I was on sabbatical, so I didn’t preach it. Three years before that? It was the first chaotic week or two of pandemic shutdown, so perhaps there were other things to talk about as were all just trying to figure out how to worship online. So apparently I’ve not interacted with Nicodemus and this passage for a while.

But this year - head on. Nicodemus and John 3:16.

Last week, to start our Lenten journey, we stood with Jesus in the wilderness. That story was about identity and loyalty. Whose voice will Jesus trust? Who claims him? To whom does he belong?

In the ancient Mediterranean world, that question was enormous. Family wasn’t just emotional support — it was your identity, your economic security, your religious world. Your father’s name was your name. Your trade was your family’s trade. Your honour and shame were shared. To step outside that structure meant risking everything.

And Jesus, once he begins his ministry, does something radical. He relocates family.

When told that his mother and brothers are outside, he gestures to his disciples and says, “Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother” (Mark 3; also Matthew 12; Luke 8). Not anti-family, but de-centering it.

He says things like, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me…” (Matthew 10). In Luke, the language is even more jarring: “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother…” Semitic hyperbole, likely yes — but the point is unmistakable. Allegiance to God’s reign relativizes every other bond.

And when Peter says, “We have left everything,” Jesus responds: those who leave family “for my sake” will receive a hundredfold — houses, brothers, sisters, mothers, children (Mark 10; parallels in Matthew 19 and Luke 18). Notice: not isolation. Expansion. A new household.

That’s the backdrop for Nicodemus.

Nicodemus is not a villain. He is a Pharisee — a respected religious leader. He belongs to a tight-knit, elite interpretive community devoted to holiness and Torah. His identity is deeply rooted. He knows who he is.

And he comes to Jesus at night.

Maybe out of curiosity. Maybe genuine spiritual hunger. Certainly, it would seem, with extreme caution. Jesus is already making waves with the authorities, religious and otherwise.

“Rabbi,” he says, “we know you are a teacher from God…”

And before Nicodemus even finishes settling into the conversation, Jesus says, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”

Born from above. Born anew. The Greek carries both meanings.

Nicodemus hears it literally. “How can anyone be born after having grown old?”

Jesus presses further: “No one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit… The wind blows where it chooses.”

Spirit. Wind. Breath. Same word.

In John’s Gospel, this isn’t about a new political kingdom arriving on earth. It’s about the formation of an alternative society — a community animated by God’s own life and spirit.

And here’s where we need to slow down around John 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.”

In our modern ears, “believe” sounds like intellectual agreement. But in the ancient world, belief was inherently relational. To “believe in” someone meant to trust, to bond with, to entrust yourself to them.

In this context, salvation is not a reward for correct/orthodox beliefs. It is restored relationship. It is being rebonded into true kinship with the way of Jesus - the way of love and justice.

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It’s also important to remember here, too, that in that relationship and in the way, God’s love comes first. Always. Because God’s love is not coercive, it’s invitational. 

And when we trust that love, John says, we are born into it. Born into belonging.

For Nicodemus, this is destabilizing. Because to follow Jesus doesn’t just mean adding a new idea to his theology. It means re-location. A shift of primary allegiance.

And we see how difficult that relocation is by watching what happens next in his story.

Nicodemus appears only two more times in John’s Gospel.

In John ch.7, when the religious leaders are trying to arrest Jesus, Nicodemus speaks up cautiously: “Our law does not judge people without first giving them a hearing, does it?” It’s a small intervention. Careful. Measured. He’s still inside the system. Still somewhat in the shadows.

(I can think of some spiritual - and political leaders in our day / country who sometimes profess a strong commitment to the values of love and justice, but who, when the rubber hits the road, stay silent or offer minimal action or intervention. Their primary allegiance is still to the system and their identity in it.)

We don’t see Nicodemus again after that until near the very end of John’s gospel.

After Jesus is crucified, when the worst that could have happened has happened - it is Nicodemus who arrives — bringing a lavish mixture of myrrh and aloes — to help prepare Jesus’ body for burial. This time, he steps forward publicly. The one who came by night now comes into the light of a broken afternoon, risking public association with a condemned man.

It’s a slow arc. Not a dramatic conversion moment. More like a gradual dawning.

And maybe that’s important for us to see, because despite what the “accept JC as your personal Lord & Saviour in a dramatic moment in worship” folks encourage you to think, spiritual rebirth is rarely instant emotional fireworks. Often it is gradual relocation. A shifting of loyalties. A slow re-centering. 

This story isn’t just about a verse. It’s about belonging. It’s about what it means to be born into a new center of gravity.

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Imagine someone raised in a tightly knit social or political community where certain assumptions are simply “how we see the world.” Those assumptions shape family gatherings, friendships, news sources, even faith language. And then that person begins to encounter Jesus in a way that challenges those assumptions — particularly around who belongs, who is loved, who is “inside.”

They begin to realize that following Jesus might mean disagreeing at the dinner table. It might mean losing social capital. It might mean rethinking long-held narratives.

They don’t stop loving their family. But their center of gravity shifts.

Their primary belonging moves.

That’s what Jesus is inviting Nicodemus into. Not rejection of his heritage. But re-centering it in a deeper loyalty.

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I want to spend a moment also on what Jesus says about this rebirth or spiritual reentering needing to happen “by water and the Spirit.”

If there is baptismal imagery here — and most scholars think there is — then spiritual rebirth is also communal. To be born of water and Spirit - to be baptized - is to enter a new household. A new kinship network.

In baptism, we are claimed. We are given new siblings. We are welcomed into the household of followers, through which we experience and are nourished in the fullness of God’s redeeming love.

In the first century, making that transition to a new primary community could cost you your inheritance, your livelihood, your social standing.

In our century, it may cost comfort. Certainty. Unquestioned loyalties.

And - honestly - it could still cost you more than that. Social standing - these days, yes - as Christianity as a whole continues to decline as a movement in western society and depending on whether or not you subscribe to the right kind of “Christianity”.

It could make family of origin relationships more complicated. Jesus does not abolish biological family / family of origin. But he does de-center it, insisting that the new primary bond for “believers” is participation in God’s reign.

So when we hear, “For God so loved the world…” we are not hearing a transaction. We are hearing an adoption story.

This is how much God loves the world: that God would send the word in human form - in the person of Jesus, not to point an accusing finger and condemn, but to heal. Not to reward correct beliefs, but to form a new community animated by trusting relationship.

Nicodemus begins the story in the dark, confident in who he is.
He leaves unsettled.

And by the end of the Gospel, we find him cradling the broken body of the one who invited him into new birth.

Born into belonging.

That is Lent’s ongoing invitation to us.

To renew our re-location in Christ. To re-center our lives not around nation, tribe, ideology, success, or even family — but around the love revealed in Christ.

To ground all our relationships in a deeper bond — the redeeming love of God.

So here are the questions I want to leave with you:

Where is your primary belonging located right now?

And if the Spirit — like wind — is nudging you toward a deeper relocation in Christ, what might that require of you?

THE MESSAGE TRANSLATION:

 1 There was a man of the Pharisee sect, Nicodemus, a prominent leader among the Jewish religious elite. 2 Late one night he visited Jesus and said, "Rabbi, we all know you're a teacher straight from God. No one could do all the God-pointing, God-revealing acts you do if God weren't in on it." 

   3 Jesus said, "You're absolutely right. Take it from me: Unless a person is born from above, it's not possible to see what I'm pointing to—to God's kingdom." 

   4 "How can anyone," said Nicodemus, "be born who has already been born and grown up? You can't re-enter your mother's womb and be born again. What are you saying with this 'born-from-above' talk?" 

   5 Jesus said, "You're not listening. Let me say it again. Unless a person submits to this original creation—the 'wind hovering over the water' creation, the invisible moving the visible, a baptism into a new life—it's not possible to enter God's kingdom. 6 When you look at a baby, it's just that: a body you can look at and touch. But the person who takes shape within is formed by something you can't see and touch—the Spirit—and becomes a living spirit. 

   7 "So don't be so surprised when I tell you that you have to be 'born from above'—out of this world, so to speak. 8 You know well enough how the wind blows this way and that. 

You hear it rustling through the trees, but you have no idea where it comes from or where it's headed next. That's the way it is with everyone 'born from above' by the wind of God, the Spirit of God." 

   9 Nicodemus asked, "What do you mean by this? How does this happen?" 

   10 Jesus said,   13 "No one has ever gone up into the presence of God except the One who came down from that Presence, the Son of Man. 14 In the same way that Moses lifted the serpent in the desert so people could have something to see and then believe, it is necessary for the Son of Man to be lifted up — 15 and everyone who looks up to him, trusting and expectant, will gain a real life, eternal life. 

   16 "This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that…by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. 17 God didn't go to all the trouble of sending the Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again.

PRAYER

Spirit of the Living God,

As we hear again the story of Nicodemus,
open our ears to more than words.

Where we are confused, bring clarity.
Where we are guarded, bring trust.
Where we are hesitant, bring courage.

Let this ancient conversation
become a living word for us today—
calling us into deeper belonging and truer life.

Amen.