Genesis 12.1-4a
Psalm 121
Romans 4.1-5, 13-17
John 3.1-17
Sunday 1 March 2026
©Suzanne Grimmett
Although violent conflict is ever present around the globe and Jesus said there would be wars and rumours of wars, the news of the strikes on Iran are a confronting counterpoint to our focus on peace this Lent. Such events draw us to lament and even deeper into prayer- and perhaps make more urgent the need to understand this seeming inability of humanity to escape violence as a solution.
In the first week of our Lent study, “Practicing Peace”, we were reminded that God is Christlike. Indeed, this likeness goes so much further than a passing resemblance, with Michael Ramsay, former Archbishop of Canterbury stating that “God is Christlike and in him there is no un-Christlikeness at all.” Sometimes I think we have a lurking idea that behind loving, gentle, humble Jesus is a bigger God the Father: an all-powerful, more distant being who frequently reverts to dominant and controlling power. This is not orthodox Christianity, even though it can be detected in much of the way God is projected in popular religious expression. Jesus is the revelation of God, the one God in relational Trinity, coming into the world to show us who God is- self-giving, humble love.
Our second week of the Lent study has taken us into that very difficult territory of sin, exposing our own capacity for rivalry and violence. Yes, sin is seen by some as an irrelevant or outdated word, but perhaps is the only word we have for understanding what this thing is we are enmeshed in, where we seem incapable of stopping our patterns of harm and violence. And while it may not seem to be in today’s Gospel reading, it is right at the heart of this idea of being born again. For your see, being ‘born from above’ is not a once off response of conversion that fixes our problem of Adam and Eve eating the apple back in the day. In that way of telling the story, sin entered the world in the past and God sent Jesus into the world to pay the penalty for this sin. In this story, God is most definitely an object, a powerful being who needs to be appeased in some sacrificial way. But the thing is, ‘being born from above’ is not about a transaction for sin, but more like a revealing, a seeing of the way things really are, the games we play, and the attachments that take us away from love and freedom.
This is consistent with the God who self-identifies not as he or she or any one name but “I am who I am” or perhaps “I will be who I will be”. God is not just a bigger, stronger being amongst other beings, but the source of all being. God is the way all life is sustained, relationships restored and in whom we find our shame covered in merciful forgiving love, making of us a new creation. This work of the Spirit may be a sudden epiphany or a slow dawning of the truth, or a combination of these, but enables us to look back at the way we used to see and to be in the world and go “Ohh..is that what we have all been caught up in?”
This new creation is not brought into being by an effort of our own will but by an experience of the One who is always moving towards us not as a ‘he’ or an ‘it’ but as a whole new way of seeing and being. In other words, this God who is the great “I Am” is the source of all seeing, not just an object within our sight. We can’t define exactly what “I Am” is and where “I Am” is from and where “I Am” goes, nor can we trace a beginning and an end – all of our usual categorising tools will fail us here. This is the God who was revealed from the very beginning, sending Moses on his journey of liberation in the Exodus and leading the people of Israel into a deeper understanding through the prophets. Perhaps this is why Jesus seems so surprised at the lack of understanding of the Pharisee, Nicodemus, saying ‘Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?’
A contemporary fictional example of this God who reveals a whole new way of seeing what is real and true can be found in the movie The Matrix. The Matrix seems initially to be set in the everyday real world, but the viewer quickly learns this is really a computer-generated simulation, impossible to escape because the participants don’t know they are in it. The hero, Neo, is given the option to take the blue pill and remain oblivious, going about what he thinks is his normal life or to wake up by taking the red pill, revealing the life-changing truth. Michael Wood notes;
The illusions, lies, deceptions and life-limiting forces of the matrix are a metaphor for what, in theological language, is called sin….St Paul talks about sin as a kind of milieu characterised by powerful forces that are frequently invisible to us but that orient us toward violence and death.[1]
It is what St Paul is trying to say in so many of his letters because of the epiphany that led him down an utterly transformed path. Instead of the ordered religious world he knew, Paul encounters not a God he could describe and systemise but the great “I Am” rushing towards him unexpectedly and turning everything he thought he knew on its head. It is not without meaning that Paul’s encounter with the risen Christ initially robbed Paul of sight before his vision was restored when ‘something like scales fell from his eyes’ as the disciple, Ananias, prayed for him. (Acts 9:18). Paul had been born from above with a whole new way of seeing, recognising the violence and rivalries in which he had been trapped. We hear in the reading from Romans the way he continues to teach his Jewish faith, but in a way that sees Jesus as the fulfilment of God’s liberation. Paul points over and again to the good news that we can escape from the matrix of sin to the life that is real; a life where we are forgiven and set free from shame and the compulsive nature of our rivalries.
But this becoming real is no instant, painless process. God labours in the Spirit to lead us into the way and by being ‘lifted up’ on the cross, reveals the ignorant hatred, pride and violence of the human condition and the lengths God will go to draw us into the life that is real and the love that is eternal. But we, too, have a part to play. It is oh so easy, even when we our eyes have been opened, to continue down the less demanding path of pursuing dominance and control, power and status. When I use such language you might think of big evil actions- like those we see resulting in the wars erupting across the globe. But in our own lives there are plenty of small choices on our part each day that keep us from the liberation and love for which we were created. In John’s Gospel faith is never a noun. Believing in Jesus and being born from above has so much more to do with who we are and what we do than what we think. It is why I wonder whether any of us can claim to be ‘Christians’, with its sense of completion. Maybe we all need to say we are ‘becoming Christian’ because this process of being born from above is messy and complex and involves every part of ourselves, every moment of our lives and the Spirit’s deep committed presence with us and in us. I sometimes take hope in the fact that I am noticing problematic patterns, recognising my disordered affections and catching myself a bit sooner in my rivalries than in the past. But it is an uneven road with many obstacles and potholes.
Here is where we should remind ourselves that God is not a stern being in the sky, waiting to catch us out when we fail, as we will. God is always and wholly gentle, self-giving love, utterly free of the fears and rivalries which lead us into violence in all its forms. To pick ourselves up again each day when we fail, and begin again without shame, is possible when we know not only the love but the humility of God. It is when we allow ourselves to be held in this humble self-giving love that we can be vulnerable, inviting the Spirit to do this difficult work of destructuring and restructuring, helping us to see what is real and bringing to birth in us a life that is free. Through the slow birthing of such lives, the Spirit breathes peace into the world- even and, especially as it seems today, in a world that knows no peace.
May we be part of this slow labour of love.
+Amen
[1] Michael Wood, Practicing Peace: Theology, Contemplation and Action, Wipf and Stock, Oregon:2022, 34