A sermon for the Second Sunday in Lent
March 1, 2026, at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Hot Springs, AR
Readings: Genesis 12:1-4a; Romans 4:1-5, 13-17; John 3:1-17; Psalm 121
My friend called me one day and said, “I just don’t know how this ends.” He was, you might say, in distress. The challenges of family life were becoming overwhelming. The d-word had been spoken: divorce. He was straining to see into the darkness, around the corner. He told me, “Sometimes I think I see light at the end of the tunnel, but then I realize it’s the light of an oncoming train.” He talked. I mostly listened and asked questions. We prayed. At the end of our time together, I offered him some advice I had once received: In times like this, when we don’t know how things will end and we feel out of control, faithfulness looks like putting one foot in front of the other and just trusting in Jesus come what may. Sometimes that is all we can do.
“I just don’t know how this ends.” That’s what my friend had said. Abraham could have said the same thing. God calls him to go to a land that God will show him. No map. No timeline. Just go. So Abraham goes and starts looking. He spends his life looking for that city whose builder and maker is God. He just believes God, and St. Paul says that belief is reckoned to him as righteousness. “I just don’t know how this ends.” Faithfulness looks like putting one foot in front of the other.
“I just don’t know how this ends.” That’s what the children of Israel could have said in the wilderness for 40 years. Jesus references part of their journey today. Numbers 21 records the story. The people have sinned and gone away from God. They are bitten by deadly serpents and fall by the droves. They’ve already been in the wilderness a long time, and now they have to worry about what’s hiding in the tent. God gives them a way out of no way. Moses crafts a bronze serpent, places it on a pole, and whenever they are bitten, if they can just look up to that bronze serpent, they will live. They can keep going. That’s faithfulness.
And Nicodemus. I can almost hear the words between the lines. “I just don’t know how this ends.” Nicodemus is a Pharisee, a respected teacher of the people. He and his fellow leaders are trying to figure Jesus out. But something is stirring in Nicodemus; he wants to know more. He goes to Jesus by night, we read. By night–it’s not only a physical description, but it’s a description of his soul, of inner turmoil, of not knowing the way forward. He knows Jesus is from God, but he wants to know more–what he’s really asking is what Jesus is up to, where his ministry is going, and what might Nicodemus’s part be?
We, too, find ourselves in the wilderness, unsure of the way forward, not knowing how things will end, worrying that the little light we see is an oncoming train and not deliverance. We so often go to Jesus on those nights, when we have nowhere else to turn, when we cannot figure it out. “We know you’re from God, Jesus. How does this end?”
And it is there, in the dark night, that we hear the strangest message: You must be born from above. Trust the Spirit, who moves like the wind. Look up in your wilderness at the Son of Man lifted up for eternal life. Believe, and trust, and live.
Nicodemus thinks he has all things religious figured out, and he is befuddled. “How can anyone be born after having grown old?” Us, too. We have this belief-in-Jesus thing down–or so we think. We have said the prayer, gone to the font, the bishop’s hands laid on our heads, bread and wine received, Episcopal shield bumper sticker on our car. We hold on to the promise of eternal life. We have been born of water and the Spirit, but sometimes we still don’t understand how this ends–this dilemma that vexes our souls, the word spoken that tears a relationship. The darkness feels overwhelming. We’re just trying to feel our way forward, looking for an escape hatch or a message in a bottle from heaven that explains it all. If only we had a little more. A little more clarity. A little more certainty. A little more.
My friend kept walking, one foot in front of the other, faithful. I would see him drop by the church during the week, sneak in when no one was around. He would sit in his normal pew and pray. Week after week after week. I didn’t know for sure what he was praying for, but I could guess. I could guess it was for strength. For wisdom. For direction. For help. For healing. And as he prayed he would look up toward the altar and the crucifix. Ours was brass, not bronze, the body of Jesus affixed. He came during the day, but in his soul it was night. And like Nicodemus, he asked Jesus his questions, and he wondered if healing was possible. Have you ever been there?
One day, as he was leaving from his prayer time, I slipped him a piece of paper with a prayer by Thomas Merton, the 20th century monk and writer. He said,
My Lord God,
I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself,
and the fact that I think I am following your will
does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you
does in fact please you.
And I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road,
though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore will I trust you always though
I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for you are ever with me,
and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.
We must journey through the wilderness of isolation, of uncertainty, of pain and sorrow. We must journey through the wilderness that overtakes us out of nowhere, and the wilderness of our own making. We journey, and we do not know the way, and we wonder how this will end. Faithfulness is putting one foot in front of the other and trusting in Jesus come what may. Sometimes it’s all we can do. And it’s enough. For in your wilderness there is a cross, and on that cross Christ has shared your pain in order to heal it. In your wilderness, there is the Spirit who moves like the wind, lifting your eyes to the hills from whence cometh your help, breathing new life though you do not know the way.
Believe. Trust. Keep going. The Son of Man has given everything for you. Look to him, for with him is life, love, and grace.
Storied Grace 