Greetings on the Second Sunday in Lent, our continuing journey or reflection and self-awareness in God’s world.
Our invitation to worship recognizes that while we are prone to go astray Jesus still intercedes to help us return to relationship with God. Our first lesson from Genesis conveys God’s blessing on Abram conferring the promise of an eternal place in the minds of the world. The psalmist offers a song which states our guidance and blessing comes from God alone and God will preserve the faithful. The reading from Paul’s letter to the Romans recounts the promise that our salvation is borne from faith not from our works. The reading from Mark’s gospel introduces Nicodemus and Jesus’ attempt to invite Nicodemus to think outside the proverbial “orthodox box” humans shove God into.
Our Lenten journey continues as we hear the hopeful stories of salvation based on faith and being aware of God’s ongoing connection with humanity. It is through our relationship with God that we are changed and blessed with all we need to succeed in the things we need to do. Even as we try to bound God into an understandable entity, like Nicodemus in the gospel story, we need to hear Jesus’ invitation to be born anew, to be reformed into the people we were created to be in God’s kingdom. Even when we try to bound God so we can understand God, like Nicodemus, we are invited to ask “dumb” questions, to be exposed to God that we will never fully comprehend, and to share our vision of God with our community.
Where are we invited to be open to the possibility that God is truly bigger and different than we will ever imagine? I invite your comments,
Les+
Lessons: Genesis 12:1-4a; Psalm 121; Romans 4:1-5, 13-17; John 3:1-17
Sermon link: https://audiomack.com/fatherles-2/song/lent-2-sermon-2
