Readings for the Second Sunday in Lent (Year A)
This sermon was preached at Christ Episcopal Church Eureka on Sunday March 1, 2026.
During these Sundays in Lent, we will be reading passages from the Gospel of John that each invite us to engage with one of our five senses. John’s Gospel emphasizes the mystery of the Incarnation, proclaiming the profound truth that God chose human flesh as the primary vehicle for revealing his glory. God made your human body and said it was very good. God became incarnate in a human body and God wants us to experience his power and presence through these earthen vessels, these jars of clay. In today’s Gospel, Jesus says to Nicodemus, “If you do not believe when I talk about earthly things, how can you believe if I talk to you about heavenly things?” (John 3:12) During this Lent, I invite us to attend to some of the “earthly things” which the Gospel underscores, specifically the five bodily senses, in order to deepen our experience of God’s glory and to grow closer to Christ. Each Gospel reading from now until Easter will make an explicit reference to one of our senses. Did you catch which of the five senses Jesus references in today’s Gospel? Did you hear it?
While speaking with a teacher named Nicodemus who likely spent a lot of time in his head, Jesus invites him—and us—to be in our bodies by describing the experience of listening, specifically listening to the wind. “The wind,” he says, “blows where it pleases and you listen to the sound of it; you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” In Jesus’s words, I hear the wisdom of the Anglican poet William Wordsworth who wrote, “One impulse from a vernal wood / can teach you more of man / of moral evil and of good / than all the sages can.” When was the last time you listened to the wind? Sometimes we can’t ignore the din of the wind, especially when it shakes and rumbles along the walls and rooftop of this resilient redwood building, but often the wind is making a soft and gentle hush that remains below or beyond our audible spectrum. It is by listening to the wind that we are, in fact, being attentive to the Holy Spirit. The Hebrew word for “Spirit” is ruach, which is the same word for wind. So, may we take some time this week to simply listen to the wind. I wonder what you will hear. Perhaps there’s a question that’s troubling you. If so, ask the wind, because the answer, my friend, is blowing therein, according to Bob Dylan.
In order to listen, we first need to be silent; and by being silent we can listen to the wind even when there seems like there is no wind at all to be heard. The Hebrew word for Spirit is ruach, which means “wind” and it also means “breath.” So, if you think there is no wind to be heard at all, there is always the life-giving wind breathing through our bodies. All major faith traditions understand the divine power and presence of and within our breath. We are dust, but we are God-breathed dust, according to Jewish philosopher Abraham Joshua Heschel. In Hinduism, the Sanskrit word for faith is visvas, which means “to breathe easy; and to have trust and be free of fear.”[1] Coincidentally, Jesus talks about the ruach (the wind, the breath) in the same breath as some of the Gospel’s most memorable teachings on faith. By listening to the wind and the ruach flowing through our flesh, we are reminded of our dependence on God for every single breath we breathe; and we can deepen our faith and trust (visvas) in the One who came into our world in the form of a gift, the human flesh of Jesus Christ, so that we might breathe eternally in harmony with him. Listen to the wind this week and tell me what you hear.
Yesterday, about 20 of us gathered on this church campus to listen to the Spirit speak to us through the divine’s primary language, which is silence. (Everything else, the Mystics say, is a poor translation.) Kim Bergel ushered us into our silence with the Prayer of St. Francis: Make me a channel of your peace. Although she was aware of how much our violent world desperately needs channels of God’s peace especially today, she was likely not aware that I would be catching a plane tomorrow to spend some quality with this beloved saint of peace. Although Francis never wrote this beautiful prayer (which was written in the early 20th century), it has roots in the famous saying of Francis’s close companion and disciple, Blessed Giles of Assisi who said, “Blessed is the one who loves and does not therefore desire to be loved; blessed is the one who serves and does not therefore desire to be served; and blessed is the one who listens and does not therefore desire to be listened to.”[2] In the Prayer of St. Francis, we pray, “O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love, to be listened to as to listen.” St. Francis and St. Giles understood what Jesus was teaching Nicodemus about the spiritual power of listening: it is by listening to the wind and to the silence that we train ourselves to listen more fully to others, especially to those voices that are so often silenced, including the voices of all victims of violence and abuse. The name Nicodemus means the “victory of the people” or perhaps more aptly, the “power of the people.” Jesus inspired Nicodemus to live up to his name by urging him to listen and to empower others through his listening; and throughout the rest of the Gospel, we see Nicodemus doing just this, calling for the people in power to give a fair hearing to those whom they are trying to shut up and condemn. Nicodemus learns the ironic truth that it is by listening prayerfully to the silence that we learn to give voice to those who are being silenced and that we learn how to empower the people who are being oppressed by the people in power. This Lent, may we become like Nicodemus; and may we listen to the wind and to the silence so that we may learn to become channels of God’s peace, deep listeners to those who are hurting and tangible expressions of salvation for our world which God loves so much. Amen.
[1] Diana Butler Bass, Grounded: Finding God in the World: A Spiritual Revolution (HarperCollins: New York, 2017), 110.
[2] Giles of Assisi, The Golden Sayings of Blessed Brother Giles, translated by Paschal Robinson (Dolphin Press, 1907), 5.
DANIEL DeFOREST LONDON 