3/1/2026_Lent 2_Waking Up
There are these books and a show out there about gay hockey players, and there’s this moment in the last episode of the show where Shane must confront a reality about himself, with his parents. He lost the ability to do it on his own time, to control if or when it would happen.
He cries out, “This is my nightmare.”
His lover responds, “Then, maybe it is time to wake up.”
Over the last year, as bombings, attacks on trans rights and their lives, ICE…
In the last few days, the bombings in Iran and watching my beloved friends in Kansas being asked to give up their driver's licenses… my body is crying out, “This is my nightmare.”
And I know I am feeling afraid to wake up…
For me, in our readings this morning it is impossible to not hear God calling people into something they cannot control, cannot fully understand, and cannot yet see—
To wake up in a world unknown and trust anyway.
In our gospel, Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night. Night matters. In John’s Gospel, night is not just a time of day—it’s a spiritual condition. Nicodemus is a leader, a teacher, a Pharisee. He knows the law. He has language for God. And yet, he comes in the dark—uncertain, searching, a little afraid of what stepping into the light might cost him.
And Jesus meets him there, but does not give him easy answers.
“Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”
John uses—anōthen—for again, which is layered. It means “again” and “from above.” Nicodemus hears it as “again,” which is why he responds so literally: How can anyone be born after having grown old? He is trying to understand transformation in terms he can control, explain, or manage.
But Jesus is pointing somewhere else entirely.
This is not about starting over by your own effort. This is about being remade by God.
“What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit.”
And then Jesus says something even more unsettling:
“The wind blows where it chooses… you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.”
The word for wind here also means Spirit. The Spirit is like the wind: uncontrollable, unpredictable, untamed. You cannot manufacture it. You cannot contain it. You can only receive it.
Nicodemus wants clarity. Jesus offers mystery.
Nicodemus wants a method. Jesus offers surrender.
And if I’m honest, I tend to stand right there with Nicodemus.
I want faith to be something I can map out, a clean journey I can take in a really messy world. Something I can measure. Something I can succeed at. And, Jesus says the deepest truth of the spiritual life is this: you cannot give birth to yourself.
New life—real life—comes from God.
That is exactly the journey God is about to take Abram on.
“Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.’”
God does not say a lot here.
God does not give Abram a destination.
God does not give Abram a timeline.
God does not give Abram a plan.
Just a promise:
“I will make of you a great nation… and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
And Abram goes.
The Hebrew phrase lekh lekha is more than just “go.” It carries a sense of go for yourself, go into yourself, go toward the self you are meant to become. This is not just geographic relocation; it is identity transformation.
Abram leaves behind everything that defined him—land, kinship, security—and steps into a future that exists only in God’s promise.
He cannot control it.
He cannot fully understand it.
He cannot yet see it.
And still—he goes.
So there is a deep truth that binds these two stories together:
God calls us into a transformation that we cannot control, toward a future we cannot fully see, for the sake of a world God deeply loves.
Nicodemus is invited into it.
Abram steps into it.
And we are standing somewhere in between.
Because the life of faith is always a kind of leaving and a kind of becoming.
In Falling Upwards, Richard Rohr writes about transformation, acknowledging that it almost never happens by adding something new.
It happens by losing something we thought we needed.
A certainty.
An identity.
A sense of control.
This is what he calls this falling upward—
the strange truth that we grow not through success alone,
but through the moments when our old ways stop working.
One of the things I love about theology is how theologians go toward similar places but on different paths—much like the authors of our gospels—the complicatedness adds beauty and power of it.
And I think Thomas Merton does just that if read alongside Rohr. He gently interrupts us—because if lekh lekha means “go to yourself,” then Abram is not becoming someone else. He is uncovering a self that could only be found on the other side of letting go.
Because even that language—becoming—can mislead us.
Merton writes:
“We are already one. But we imagine that we are not. And what we have to recover is our original unity. What we have to be is what we are”
So perhaps the journey is not about becoming someone else at all.
Perhaps it is about waking up
to who we already are in God.
Nicodemus stands at that threshold, still holding tightly to what he knows.
Abram crosses it, stepping into a life he cannot yet name.
And we are invited to do the same.
Because the life of faith is not linear. It is not a steady climb upward. It is, as Rohr says, a kind of falling upward—losing what we thought defined us so that we can receive what is truer, deeper, and more aligned with God.
It is leaving behind the illusion that we are in control.
Leaving behind the need to have everything figured out before we begin.
And it is becoming—
becoming people shaped by the Spirit,
becoming people who trust promise over proof,
becoming people through whom blessing can flow outward.
But let’s be honest: this kind of faith is uncomfortable.
We would much rather have a map than a promise.
We would much rather have clarity than mystery.
We would much rather stay where we are known than step into the unknown.
Nicodemus comes at night because the light is risky.
Abram leaves everything because staying would cost him his future.
And the same is true for us.
There are moments—personally, as a church, as a community—when God begins to stir something new. And I know for myself, the time in which we are living is doing just that.
But it’s not always this loud. Sometimes it’s as subtle as the wind. A nudge. A question. A holy restlessness that won’t quite let you settle.
You can feel it, but you can’t control it.
You can sense it, but you can’t fully explain it.
And in those moments, the question is not: Do I understand this?
The question is: Will I trust the One who is calling me?
Because in both of these texts, the burden is not on the human being to generate transformation.
Nicodemus is not told to reinvent himself—he is told to be born from above. Trust the becoming.
Abram is not told to secure his future—he is told to go, and God will do the rest. Trust the journey.
The initiative belongs to God.
and the invitation is to us.
And the purpose is always larger than us.
“For God so loved the world…”
“In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed…”
This is not transformation for its own sake.
This is transformation for the healing of the world.
We are not called to preserve ourselves as we have been.
We are called to be born again—again and again—by the Spirit.
To become more fully who we already are in God’s heart:
a people rooted in love,
a community shaped by justice,
a body through which God’s mercy takes on flesh in the world.
And that kind of identity cannot be managed into existence.
It must be received. It must be lived. It must be risked.
It may mean leaving behind ways of being church that have felt safe in order to meet the world.
It may mean trusting that the Spirit is leading us beyond what we can plan or predict.
It will certainly mean allowing God to stretch our hearts wider—toward those who are hurting, excluded, or unseen.
But it is, in truth, a falling upward—into the life of God.
Because to be born of the Spirit is to be caught up in the movement of God’s love for the world.
And that love always bends toward justice.
Always moves outward.
Always makes room.
So when God calls us into something new—whether in our own lives or as a community—it is never just about us.
It is about who will be blessed because we said yes.
It is about who will encounter love because we stepped forward.
It is about what new life might be born—not by our control, but by God’s Spirit moving through us.
So maybe the invitation today is not to have it all figured out.
Maybe the invitation is simpler, and harder:
To loosen our grip on certainty.
To trust that even our falling may be grace.
To listen for the Spirit moving where we cannot control it.
And to take the next faithful step—to wake up—even if it feels small, even if it feels unclear.
Because the wind is already blowing.
The call has already gone out.
The promise is already being spoken.
The question is whether we will stay in the night, trying to make sense of it all—
or whether, like Abram, we will take the first step.
Amen.
