Second Sunday in Lent – March 1, 2026
Outdated Testomony: Genesis 12:1-4a
Rev. Dr. Walter Brueggemann, “The Onerous Work of Exceptionalism”
Two issues stand out on this summons. First, the overriding matter is that Abram is to obtain a land. This subject is additional clarified in Genesis 15:18-21. Israel’s historical past and future are to be on the best way to “the land of promise.” Second, land promise is within the context of different nations who’re to be blessed by and in and thru the folks of Israel. This two-fold accent delicately balances the deep dedication of God to Israel, and the insistence that Israel as chosen doesn’t and won’t exist in an historic vacuum, however should deal constructively with different neighboring peoples.
Psalm: Psalm 121
Elizabeth Berget, “The Sacred Strange: Neither Slumber Nor Sleep”
I attempted to image the scene from God’s perspective, and what I noticed regarded surprisingly like me — a mom, mendacity awake within the evening, decidedly not sleeping, however as a substitute listening for her kids’s cries, able to tiptoe down the corridor to their rooms the second she hears them. He who retains you’ll not slumber.
Gospel: John 3:1-17
Rev. Dr. Walter Brueggemann, “Wake/Woke”
Nicodemus has the grace to current himself to Jesus for instruction; he’s nonetheless bamboozled and bewildered by the instructing of Jesus that invitations him again to an elemental innocence. The standing to which Jesus invitations Nicodemus would require of him a readiness to forego the ability and leverage of his nice studying. However then, that’s precisely how the gospel comes at us. We’re required to surrender the props we’ve got acquired, to current ourselves in open-handed vulnerability for presents which can be important to our lives that we can not generate for ourselves.
To be “woke up” is to have the ability to acknowledge that our greatest certitudes are displaced and negated by the order of God’s love in and for the world. That pressure of affection requires that we relinquish the administration of our lives and yield ourselves to the practices of neighborliness that make newness amongst us attainable. In contrast, the so-called “woke” don’t count on or want newness however solely a continuing extraction of privilege and benefit. Being “woke up,” in distinction, leads us to the neighbor.
Rev. Dr. Walter Brueggemann, “Within the Face of Nihilism”
Ultimately, the threats to our widespread life are human threats. And the counter to these threats is human engagement that lives and strikes under our ideological passions and ideologies. Such an attraction to uncredentialed poets strikes me as a reiteration of the best way during which King Zedekiah got here to the prophet Jeremiah at evening (Jeremiah 37:17-21, 38:14-16) or the best way during which Nicodemus “got here to Jesus by evening” (John 3:2). Such determined consultations solely happen after it’s acknowledged that standard data shouldn’t be enough to the disaster. So it certainly is in our society. There aren’t any technological options to the deep human issues that beset us.
Narrative Lectionary: John 13:1-17
Bishop Michael Curry, “Not Simply Me, However We”
Jesus says, “I’ve given you an instance.” Wash one another’s toes, reside in equality, mutuality, and the reciprocity of God’s beloved neighborhood. And it is quickly after that that Jesus says, “A brand new commandment I provide you with, that you simply love each other as I’ve cherished you.”
That is the best way of affection. You’re to like and be cherished, to offer and to obtain, to do justice and to be justly achieved unto. It isn’t nearly me, it is about we. God made us to offer and obtain, to bless and be blessed, to like and to be cherished, to do justice, love mercy, stroll humbly with God.
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