Worship - 1 March 2026

Summary of this week's theme

In today’s Gospel, we are told that Nicodemus went to Jesus by night — in the dark.  We might wonder why.  Was he protecting his reputation?  Avoiding suspicion from his peers or from Jesus’ followers?  Perhaps.  But darkness is not only a place of concealment; it is also a place of beginnings. As Barbara Brown Taylor has observed, new life starts in the dark: a seed in the soil, a child in the womb, Christ in the tomb.

In the darkness, Nicodemus could be vulnerable.  A respected teacher, he came with questions.  He could set aside authority and admit his lack of understanding.  The hiddenness of night gave him space to seek.  Perhaps that is part of Lent’s invitation to us: to enter wilderness, or shadowed places where we can confess what we do not know and allow the Spirit to reshape us.

After this encounter, Nicodemus seems to have faded back into private life.  Yet he appeared again at the cross, using his status to secure Jesus’ burial.  When others hid in fear, he acted.  His faith, whatever its beginnings, became public and courageous.  Transformation had taken root.

Jesus’ words to him reach beyond one cautious Pharisee.  In John 3:16, we often hear that God loved ‘the world,’ but the Greek speaks of the cosmos — all creation.  This love is vast, unsettling, expansive.  It calls us not only to private belief but to participation in God’s life-giving work.

When Jesus speaks of the wind blowing where it chooses, he uses the word pneuma — wind, breath, Spirit.  It recalls the playful poem by A. A. Milne about not knowing where the wind comes from or goes, and Christina Rossetti’s question, ‘Who has seen the wind?’  We see it by its effects: trembling leaves, bending trees.

So it is with the Spirit.  We may not trace her origins or predict her path, but we can show her movement by our lives.  Like Nicodemus, may we allow ourselves to be carried — into questions, into courage, into the costly love with which God so loves the cosmos.