​     “Hosanna” means “save us!” While that word has come to be celebratory in the context of worship, it can be a cry for help. In his notes on Matthew, J. Andrew Overman says that this word “Hosanna” has likely come from Psalm 118:25, “Save us, we beseech you, O Lord! O Lord, we beseech you, give us success!” It is interesting to me that the “save us” part is the only part of the line that stayed in the original language. Hosanna is a Hebrew word that carried over into Greek and Aramaic. It was carried into Latin translations of the Bible, and into modern languages like English, too. While the original language was translated for the whole rest of the line, hosanna stayed in Hebrew through the shift from a cry for help from God to an exclamation of celebration.

     A colleague of mine recently shared that a favorite question he has for people who claim to be biblical literalists is to ask them how many donkeys there are in the Palm Sunday story. You’ve probably heard me point this out before if you’ve been worshiping here for a while. Jesus’ processes into Jerusalem in every Gospel. He does not have the same number of donkeys in each story. Matthew has two donkeys. The other Gospels only have one. Matthew 21:7 says that Jesus “sat on them,” which seems... challenging. It’s not always easy to sit on one donkey, much less two.

     I am usually persuaded by one interpretation of this difference. In a commentary on this text, Dr. Wil Gafney argues that the difference in numbers of donkeys likely comes from a mistake that the author of Matthew made in reading the text that inspired this story, Zachariah 9:9: Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

     Zachariah is being poetic when describing the donkey in two ways. The author of Matthew missed the poetry, reading it as literally two separate donkeys that then Jesus would have to ride at the same time. I saw another pastor I know post a funny illustration of Jesus with a foot on each donkey, as you might see in a circus act or Wild West show. The image is both majestic and deeply silly at the same time. If we can learn only one thing from the story of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, “if you want to understand the Bible, it’s often best not to read it literally” and “even the authors of the Bible make mistakes in interpretation... you will, too” are two pretty good ones.

     Catherine Sider Hamilton offers up an additional explanation for the second donkey that I think is interesting. She isn’t as compelled by the explanation that the author of Matthew made a mistake. She argues that that because of the particular Greek words for donkey Matthew is using, one that means specifically “donkey” and the other which is more like “beast of burden,” that the author is actually referencing an additional scripture other than Zechariah. Jacob gives a blessing to Judah in Genesis 49:10–11, “The scepter [Septuagint: ruler] shall not depart from Judah,” Jacob says (49:10). Tying his foal (pōlos) to the vine and the colt (pōlos) of his donkey (onos) to the choice vine, he washes his garments in wine …” (49:11). Because this scripture would eventually become an important scripture to describe the coming Messiah, and it has two donkeys, Hamilton argues that the author of Matthew having Jesus enter into the city in way that evokes both the Zachariah story and the Genesis story. By evoking both stories, the author is saying even more clearly that Jesus is the Messiah the people have been waiting for.

     Each of the Gospels has the people making a path for Jesus. John is the only one that specifically mentions Palms. Matthew and Luke follow Mark, saying that the people celebrating the entry used cloaks and branches to make a path forward. Regardless of what they used, the people, recognizing Jesus’ power and wanting to make a clear path for him, offered up what they had at hand, even if it was only the clothes on their backs. I appreciated the part of today’s liturgy where Sharon Fennema compared the laying down of cloaks and branches to make a path into the city to laying down the burdens we carry in hearts in order to make a path for the Spirit. “Lay it down,” she said, “here, now, whatever covers your vulnerability, cloaks your openness.” Lay it down, and make a way for the Spirit to enter in. Lay in down, and help make a way forward, so we can go with Christ towards love and justice.

     It has long been said in some Christian circles, “No King but Jesus.” Today’s reading would be an interesting text to support that. Because, he’s clearly being compared to a king. The Zachariah text is about the “king who is coming to Jerusalem.” And, so is the Genesis story if Hamilton is correct that it is also being referenced here. Even the “Hosanna” that three of the four Gospels (not Luke) have the people shouting to Jesus might also be shouted to a Roman politician by desperate people who needed help. Dr. Gafney, in her commentary, invites us to remember that the desire for a monarch reflect more about the people with that desire than it describes God’s preferences for styles of governance. Gafney argues that in a world where monarchs had power, the words that describe that power might be used in other context to try to explain something about God.

     In choosing to enter into Jerusalem in this way, Jesus intentionally connects his ministry to that of biblical images of kingly power, while at the same time, showing that he would wield that power in ways that they do not expect. Dr. Gafney points out that even the people who knew Jesus best would be challenged to fully understand how he would wield the power grant to him. To understand that better, we might have to return to the donkey.

     As I’ve shared before, Roman officials came into the city on powerful war horses, accompanied by phalanxes of soldiers. That is a far cry from the “beast of burden” that carried Jesus.  According to Teresa Stricklen, there is utility and humility in showing up with a donkey rather than a fine horse. Jesus, who spent his ministry among the sick, the poor, and the outcast, would not adorn his power in the trappings of Rome. Instead, he would reach back into his own tradition, to a story of a king who will arrive with humility. Sharon Fennema also points out that he didn’t own the donkey or buy it. He borrowed it. She argues that this action is Jesus alluding to the reign of God being a place where people hold goods in common and give them to those that “have need of them” not only those rich enough to purchase them. Fennema invites us to consider the question: “What resources might Jesus be asking you to share in common today?” And, I would add to this question: who is this king who teaches sharing and humility? How can we follow him?

Recently retired UCC pastor Maren Tirabassi offered up this poem for Palm Sunday.

A detail of the story
First, untie the donkey- the one that’s standing at the gate waiting to be untied-
from some sorrow or some guilt, from somebody else’s judgment -
too young for the ride, or too old, too much tattoo ink on the skin,
parkinsons in the hands, pregnant in the belly.
First, untie the donkey, the one that’s standing at the gate waiting to be untied –
from some abusive relationship or some really intricate
self-made knots, because what binds always pretends to be a blessing.
This is just the donkey God wants for the ride -
this burro with no documents, or others not-yet-ridden
because they are - gender-queer, recovery-thin, on-the-spectrum.
So, first untie the donkey - this one- the one who needs a parade,
the one willing to carry both joy and the premonition of cross,
the one embracing a day of song and danger,
fetlock deep in palms, and a life that will echo … Hosanna.

     “Who is this” asked the crowds. “Who is this,” we ask in this moment. Let us untie the donkey and maybe we’ll find out.
​
Resources consulted while writing this sermon:
Sharon Fennema: https://www.ucc.org/worship-way/palm-sunday-march-29/
J. Andrew Overman's notes on Matthew in The New Oxford Annotated Bible: The New Revised Standard Version with Apocryphya, ed. Michael Coogan (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001)
Will Gafney's A Women's Lectionary for the Whole Church Year A (New York: Church Publishing, 2021)
Catherine Sider Hamilton: https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/sunday-of-the-passion-palm-sunday/commentary-on-matthew-2711-54-7
Teresa Lockhart Stricklen, "Sixth Sunday in Lent (Liturgy of the Palms), Preaching God's Transforming Justice: A Lectionary Commentary, Year A featuring 22 New Holy Days for Justice (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2013)
Maren Tirabassi: https://giftsinopenhands.wordpress.com/2026/03/28/a-detail-of-the-story/

After a challenging week of travel, I returned to a sermon I preached in 2023. I called it “Who Sinned” that time.

     I’m not sure if I saw it when it first aired, but there is an episode of the tv show Designing Women that has stuck with me for about 35 years. The episode originally aired in October of 1987, early enough in the AIDS crisis era where there were few treatments and many untimely deaths. Designing Women was a show about a group of women who ran a design firm in Atlanta. In this episode, a young man, who is also a designer and friendly with the women in the firm, comes to them with a sad request: he is dying of AIDS and would like them to help plan his funeral. After some hesitation, as they aren’t a church or funeral home, they agree. After all, he is their friend.

     Over the course of the episode, the young man, named Kendall, stops in the office to go over some details of the service. A few things happen that he doesn’t expect. The first thing is that the character Charlene shakes his hand. If you remember anything about how people with AIDS were treated in 1987, you might remember that people, including their nurses, were often afraid to touch them. This young man deserved care and the writer of the show wanted to be clear it was safe for Charlene, who was a deeply kind character, to offer him that measure of welcome and respect.

     The second thing that happens is less positive. There is a homophobic woman there, another client of the firm, who overhears the conversation about the funeral and decides to say something terrible to Kendall. She says that gay men like him are getting what they deserve: "As far as I'm concerned, this disease has one thing going for it: it's killing all the right people." When I was reading up on this episode, I learned that Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, the creator of the show and writer of this episode, had written that line because she heard a nurse say almost the very same thing when Bloodworth-Thomason was visiting her own mother, who was dying of AIDS, in the hospital. Imagine being a nurse and having this much disdain for your patients. Imagine thinking they deserved to suffer this way.

     Well, if you know anything about Designing Women, you would know that the women in the firm would not let that hatefulness go unaddressed. Julia scoops her up, dragging her to the door, and tells her off, saying that if God was handing out illness because of sin, “you would be at the free clinic all the time! And so would the rest of us!” And, Suzanne, Julia’s sister, corrects some of Imogene’s misinformation. And, Bernice, a character who is often portrayed as confused, but with a strong moral compass, makes it clear that the homophobe is lacking the compassion it takes to really be a Christian. Julia slams the door on the homophobe, making it clear that she is no longer welcome as a client of Sugarbaker and Associates.

     I was somewhere between 7 and 10 years old when I saw this episode for the first time. Obviously, it made an impression. I remembered it when I began to think about today’s scripture, which is the beginning of a longer story about one man who was disabled and his community’s response to his illness and his healing. Turns out that plenty of people believed he must have deserved to be disabled.... that he must have done something wrong to be suffering. But, Jesus made it clear that his blindness was not a punishment, and showed his disciples, and the broader community, that this man was in need of healing, not condemnation.
Who is to blame? That’s what the disciples are really asking when they see a man who has been born blind and wonder if the blindness is because he sinned or because his parents sinned. The disciples, like a lot of us, assume that people get what they deserve. If someone has had something bad happen to them, that person, or the people they love, must have deserved it. And, they don’t even seem to be talking to the guy.

     They are just talking about him, while he is in earshot, as though his ailment is simply an object lesson in a theological argument... as though he was an object and not a person who could be talked with or helped as he struggled. In the devotional on this text, Bruce Reye-Chow argues that, in treating this man’s ailment as a thought experiment rather than an opportunity to offer mercy and care, it leads to the disciples asking the wrong question, “who is to blame,” rather than the right question: “how can we reflect God’s love in this moment?” Thankfully, and unsurprisingly, Jesus’ knows how to respond not just to their wrong question, but to the right one as well.

      Remember, seeing is believing in John. In her book on John, Karoline Lewis argues that seeing Jesus perform a sign or miracle is a gateway into believing he is the Messiah. Being healed yourself is a gateway, too. The restoration of this man’s sight will become his gateway into a relationship with Jesus. Jesus spits on the ground and takes the mud he created and wipes it on the man's eyes. We all know that healing can be messy sometimes, can’t it? Then, he tells the man to go to a particular pool in the city and wash his face. The man made his way across the city, covered in spit and mud, and washed his face. Suddenly, he was able to see for the first time in his whole life.

     Our reading stops at this point, but the story goes into chapter 10. The short version of the rest of the story is that this man’s neighbors and leaders in his community are suspicious of his healing and of Jesus. They refuse to trust what they see because they’d rather go on believing that people get what they deserve than have to change their minds about illness and healing. The formerly blind man will call Jesus a prophet and say that he believes Jesus to be from God. The ones who don’t agree with him drive him out of the synagogue, his own religious community,

     Imagine: seeing someone you’ve known your whole life be healed from a life-limiting condition, and being so afraid and annoyed that you don’t understand how it happened that you would be willing to kick that person out of community? Imagine thinking that you should make him suffer isolation because of your own limited understanding.

     While Julia Sugarbaker welcomed her friend into community by shutting a door on a bigot, Jesus welcomed the formerly blind man into a new community by opening the door for him to become a disciple. Later in this story, upon hearing that the man was cast out, Jesus goes looking for him and welcomes him with open arms to become part of his disciples. Lewis talks about this as Jesus helping frame belief as a relational category, not an intellectual one. This man believes that Jesus is from God because he can now see because Jesus first saw him and knew he needed care. And, his belief leads him into an on-going relationship with Jesus.

     I pray that we may not mistake an opportunity for healing as a place for condemnation. I pray that we seek out the answer to the question “how can we heal and help,” rather than distract ourselves with the search for “who is to blame.” May we march bigots to the door, and welcome the ones whom Jesus has seen and loved with open arms. May we always try to see our neighbors with the eyes of Christ.

Resources consulted while writing this sermon:
A summary of the episode of Designing Women: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_All_the_Right_People
The scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VW5-IErNxuM&t=21s
Karoline Lewis, John: Fortress Biblical Preaching Commentaries (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014)
Bruce Reyes-Chow's commentary for the fourth week of Lent in Seeking: Honest Questions for a Deep Faith A Lenten Devotional from A Sanctified Art LLC (2022)

     Several years ago, I tried overwintering a rosemary plant. It did not go well. The house was warm enough, but our cat Albite’s bad habit of chewing on plants meant I couldn’t keep it near the windows with the best light. I got it through January pretty well, and even was able to take a couple small cuttings to use in an altarscape during zoom worship (remember when I’d decorate our bar like our communion table when we were worshiping at home?). I kept the little sprigs in water, thinking I’d use them for a meal later in the week. Imagine my surprise when I saw tiny roots coming off the stems. I had no idea that you could propagate rosemary in water like that.

     After a failed attempt at transferring one of them to soil, I left the remaining one in a small jar, replacing the water when it needed it. It grew more and more roots and the stem grew longer and longer. It even bloomed a little purple flower for two or three seasons. The sprig is looking a little crummy right now... it may have finally run out of space or maybe I lost track of watering it or maybe it has just come to the end of what is possible for an eight-inch twig to do in a jar in the kitchen window. But, I am glad I added that little bit of water, and kept giving it water. Something delicate and beautiful grew out of it.

     “Water changes everything.” I read that in some Church World Service materials a few years ago. Water has been a theme in our readings for weeks now... waters of baptism. Water in a miracle at a wedding. The Living Water Jesus told Nicodemus about. In the book of John, water changes everything. This interaction over the well changes things, too.

     Last week, we spent some time with the story of Nicodemus, a well-respected leader in the community who felt like he had to go see Jesus in the dark, in order to ask him questions in secret. Today’s interaction between the unnamed woman and Jesus happens in broad daylight. That’s not the only way this woman will be different than the Pharisee who needs to be braver. In fact, in her book about the Gospel of John, Karoline Lewis says that “There can be no character more opposite Nicodemus than the Samaritan woman at the well.” It is too bad we don’t know her name. She and Jesus had a remarkable encounter over the water. I can’t help but think it changed both of them.

     In today’s story, Jesus is traveling through Samaria. He left where he was because his disciples had been baptizing people, garnering the attention of leaders who were suspicious of Jesus. See, water was already changing things. We should remember that Judeans of this era and Samaritans, though they both traced their lineage back through to Abraham and upheld Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy as their holy texts, were in deep conflict, especially over where they understood the proper center of religious worship to be: Mount Gerizim or the Temple in Jerusalem.

     Judeans, descendants of the Southern Kingdom, like Jesus, and Samaritans, descendants of the Northern Kingdom, did not hang out, and, they didn’t spend a lot of time in each other’s cities, even if there were religiously significant sites, like Jacob’s Well, in those cities. And, yet, Karoline Lewis notes, here in John, where Jesus is said to be the expression of God’s love in the world, it seems appropriate that he would go right through a place and spend time with a people whom his community mistrusted. Lewis puts it this way, “There is nothing in God’s creation that God does not love, not even the least anticipated persons.”

     Wells are places where a lot of important men and women of the Bible meet. Jacob and Rachel, Moses and Zipporah, and Isaac and Rebecca all meet at wells and later marry. What was going on at wells to make them such happening places? Most people didn’t have their own well dug at home. They relied on a communal well. Carrying water for a whole family is a difficult chore, often left to the women and girls to complete. This is a job often done in a group, with multiple women and girls, sometimes from more than one household, going out together. It is interesting that this woman has gone to the well alone. I read somewhere (and I don’t remember where) that some scholars wonder if she’s there alone because she is an outsider in her own community, ostracized by other women who refuse to help her. Why else would she be out at the hottest part of the day to get water unless she didn’t want to run into some folks who didn’t like her.

     Those details aren’t in the story though. If she is intended to function as kind of counter-example to Nicodemus, a respected Jewish leader who came to see Jesus at night, of course she, a Samaritan stranger, would talk to Jesus during the day, in a casual encounter that grows into an intimate conversation about faith. Also, Jesus’ strikes up a conversation with her, not the other way around. Because he asks for her help first. He asks her for a drink.

     It can be challenging to read tone, but I’m inclined to hear her response with some humor or incredulity. “Me? You’re asking me for water?” Yes, this Judean man is asking this Samaritan woman for water. Yes, this rabbi is speaking to this woman about faith. Yes, this single man is speaking to a woman who is not in his family while they both are alone, even though they are in a public place. None of those things are supposed to happen among respectable people. She is wise to ask for some clarification, because people like them do not usually hang out, much less share drinking utensils and talk about God.

     In her commentary on this text, Jennifer Garcia Bashaw notes that this conversation at the well is the longest conversation that Jesus has with any one person in any of the Gospels. She gently ribs Jesus about not having a bucket and also reminds him of both of their ancestral connections to Jacob, who long built the well to take care of his family. Water is a necessity that connects these two to their ancestor in the faith and to each other as humans who need water in this very moment. Something else beyond water is also necessary. Jesus indicates that he has the other necessary thing the “Living Water of eternal life.”

     Because seeing is believing in John, we see Jesus do something that is a little miraculous in this interaction... out of nowhere, he knows something about this woman’s marital history that one wouldn’t necessarily know about a stranger. Given that wells in the Bible are places where people get betrothed, according to Bashaw, it makes sense that something about marriage would pop up in this story. But, Jesus turns that expectation on its head. Rather than make a hasty proposal, he asks about her husband, to which she replies that she doesn’t have one. He goes on to say, “you’re right. You’ve had five and you aren’t even married to man you’re seeing now.” There’s no way a stranger would have known that. While their conversation about water and living water laid the groundwork for her belief, it is this miraculous bit of knowledge about her history that convinces the woman that Jesus is special and holy... that he is the Messiah.

     Water changes things. Had Jesus not been thirsty, he and this woman may not have met. Had he not been brave enough to reach out to someone he had been raised to avoid, and ask for help, he would have struggled on his journey. Had the woman chosen not to share a drink with this stranger, she would have missed out on a life-changing interaction. John goes on to tell us that she becomes one of the earliest preachers, going about Samaria, telling the people about Jesus who “told her everything she had ever done.” Many Samaritans grew hopeful because of what she had said and sought him out. Then, once they saw him, they heard for themselves and began to believe he was the Messiah. Water changed the Samaritan’s life, and helped something new grow.

     In the second half of the reading, we see the disciples not quite know what to do about Jesus’ interaction with the Samaritan. Stumbling a bit, they end up asking him if he needed food. He said, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” Dr. Sharon Fennema invites us to think about this food, and the harvest Jesus says is being prepared for the disciples. She says, “Seeds of relationships and dreams had been sown there at Jacob’s well. Seeds of hostility and division had been sown there too. But Jesus invited them to look around and see what possibilities were ripening in their midst, possibilities like the truth-telling, life-changing conversation he and the woman at the well had just had.”

     This time of year, many people are turning to planning our gardens. I’m passing around a bowl of seeds. Take a seed or a few seeds. In order for these seeds to grow, they need water. They need other things, too, but first they need water. I hope you’ll take these seeds with you and remember that water changes things, be it a cutting or a dry little seed, into something larger... something that will feed people. May you find the sustenance you need to grow in this season. And, may you find your way to labor alongside those who have gone before. There is much harvest to be done. We’ll need our strength to complete it.

Resources consulted while writing this sermon:
More information about Church World Services work to help people access clean water:  https://cwsglobal.org/learn/hunger-and-poverty/water-sanitation-and-hygiene/
Karoline Lewis' John: Fortress Biblical Preaching Commentaries (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014)
Jennifer Garcia Bashaw: https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/third-sunday-in-lent/commentary-on-john-45-42-6
Sharon Fennema: https://www.ucc.org/worship-way/lent-3a-march-8/
​

​     We have mostly been reading through Matthew since Christmas, but now we’re going to switch over to the Gospel of John for a little while. If you remember from our Christmas pageant, in John, we don’t have any baby stories about Jesus. We meet Jesus for the first time in John at his baptism when he is adult. This is the first story where his mission is connected to water. The next time, it's in a miracle just one chapter later.

     The miracle is the first big one in John, where Jesus and his mom are at a wedding that has run out of wine. It was really embarrassing to run out of the most safe thing to drink at such a big gathering in a community and Jesus’ mom ordered him to help the poor bride and groom. Unlike the wedding I officiated that ran out drinks (lemonade in that case because they didn’t allow wine in the venue) where one of the friends and I ran to the store to get some more, Jesus just turned a bunch of water into wine. I mean dozens of gallons of water into dozens of gallons of wine. Jesus saved their reputation and the celebration with a tremendous, over-the-top act of generosity. And, then there’s another mention of water in today’s reading in chapter 3.

     You know how there are some stories that are in more than one Gospel? Well, this story about Nicodemus visiting Jesus is only in the Gospel of John. Does anyone remember who Nicodemus was? He was a Pharisee. And, you probably remember that Jesus and some Pharisees argue a lot because they all thought that the religious law was important but disagreed on how to follow it. What time of day did Nicodemus come talk to Jesus? He came to see him at night. According to Karoline Smith, in her book on the Gospel of John, Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night because he’s afraid that his fellow pharisees will not approve of him having friendly conversations with Jesus. So, he went out when it was dark, and hoped other people would not be awake to see him.

     While Jesus performs miracles in all of the Gospels, John is the only one where the writer of the Gospel says that Jesus performs miracles specifically to prove himself to be the Messiah. In the chapter about John in his introduction to the New Testament, scholar Bart Ehrman points out that in John chapter 20: 30-31, it says: “Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you many come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the son of God, and through believing you may have life in his name.” In John, seeing Jesus is believing him. Or, believing in him.

     One of the first things Nicodemus says to Jesus is that he saw him performing miracles, and seeing those miracles makes him believe that the power Jesus has has come from God. Because of what he has seen, Nicodemus also wants to talk to Jesus and wants to ask him some important questions about faith. Jesus reiterates that seeing is important: “No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” Nicodemus misses the whole part about seeing because he gets distracted about the “being born” part.

     He asks, “How can anyone be born after having grown old?” In a commentary on this text, Cheryl Lindsay points out that interpreting Jesus literally here is not helpful. She says, “Literalism makes the complex even more complex; symbolism enables simplicity.” When Jesus tells him not to take these words literally, then Nicodemus can get closer to understanding what Jesus is talking about. Remember, we have already seen water change and be changed. Jesus was born anew at his baptism, passing through the waters of the Jordan. His mission was made clear in the miracle of the water into wine. He said to Nicodemus, “no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.” Water is powerful. It can change things. Nicodemus needs to remember the real power of water, and understand it as a metaphor for a force, the Spirit, that can bring change within.

     In a commentary she has on this text, Carolyn Brown offers her opinion that Nicodemus is trying to figure out how to be brave. And, Jesus is offering up a little instruction. It is possible to live differently, to live more bravely, but, you have to be willing to be changed. And not just changed a little. Changed a lot. Who here has seen how water can change things? Deserts bloom. Walls crumble. Solid stone gives way to cracks, then fissures, then canyons. The Spirit will mold us that way, Jesus says.

     Jesus, himself, will be a conduit for that Spirit. He will not bring condemnation but instead, will be source of life. He will be a passageway for divine healing. It’s like he’s saying to Nicodemus, “Come on in. The water’s fine.” He seems to be hoping Nicodemus will join him, awash in God’s love, born again and reconnected to God’s promise of love and justice. It’s too bad that we never see Nicodemus again in John, or in any other Gospel. Perhaps he was never willing to take the plunge into living faithfully in full view of God and everybody. Perhaps he became one of the throngs of people who followed Jesus. Perhaps he stayed among the Pharisees, recognizing Jesus’ wisdom and goodness, but staying home to living out his faith in familiar waters.

     All of us have our own Nicodemus moments, where we can be brave but only just a little at first, with the cover of darkness for protection. I pray that from those first steps, our next steps into the Spirit will be splashy enough for everyone to see. May we find the healing and new life we need. And, may it change us in ways that help us live out our faith more boldly, so that no one may be left wondering what happened to us in the rest of the story. Jesus says that the water is fine. Let us get ready to swim.

Resources consulted while writing this sermon:
Carolyn C. Brown: https://worshipingwithchildren.blogspot.com/2014/02/year-second-sunday-in-lent-march-16-2014.html
Cheryl Lindsay: https://www.ucc.org/sermon-seeds/sermon-seeds-of-water-and-spirit/
Karoline Lewis: http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=5075
Karoline Lewis, John: Fortress Biblical Preaching Commentaries (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014).
Bart Ehrman, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction of The Early Christian Writings, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).