2nd SUNDAY in LENT, 2026

1 st March 2026

Genesis 12:1-4a; Romans 4:1-5, 13-17; John 3:1-17

When I saw on the rota that I was set to preach today and I looked at the

readings, my heart sank a little. Romans is such a difficult letter of

Paul’s! All the same, I am persevering with the readings set for today

and see how it all relates to the theme of Lent.

The short OT reading just talks about Abram being asked to move to a

country yet to be named and Abram (later called Abraham) obeying the

call, just trusting in God who he felt was calling him.

In the Gospel reading we have the Nicodemus story: ‘being born again’

is such a difficult idea that Nicodemus was rather baffled by it - I suspect

like many of us; and Jesus was almost mocking him for being puzzled:

“Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these

things?” will be in a similar position of confusion. Although there is a

great deal that can be said about being born again, and about baptism

by water and the spirit, that is not for today.

Having looked at the stories of Abraham and Nicodemus, let us see how

the passage from Romans links in with them, as well as with the theme

of Lent. First, we remind ourselves that Paul sees himself as the Apostle

to the Gentiles – crucial to our understanding of his writings. He

contrasts this with Peter, known as the Apostle for the Jews, or even the

Apostle for the circumcised.

In the last three issues of Around Langley, we have given short

introductions to Paul’s letters to Christians in Roman cities that he visited

and established Christian communities, minority communities set within

Roman or Gentile people. If you read those articles, you might

remember that there was much argument about whether new Christians

had to be subject to Jewish law. Note that they were not talking about

the Ten Commandments, but all the rules (hundreds of them!)

expounded in the first five books of the Bible.

In passing, let us recall that Jesus himself had a pragmatic, or

enlightened, view of these laws – the disciples eating corn from the field

on Sabbath as just one example. Paul was evidently of the view that

new Christians should not be burdened with Jewish laws – most of which

were constraints on social behaviour.

So back to the first reading: we have God telling Abraham: ‘leave

country, kin and home to another country that I’ll show you’; leave! And of

course he did. But God said to him, I will make you a great nation, and in

you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. That was the promise,

or the covenant. A consequence of that is that God’s promise is to all

people, not just the physical descendants of Abraham. Otherwise there

would be no hope for people like us!

Paul expounds this – in the second paragraph: For the promise that he

would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants

through the law (which did not exist at that time) but through the

righteousness of faith. If it is the adherents of the law who are to be the

heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. For the law brings wrath; but

where there is no law, neither is there violation.

In his commentary on this week’s readings Tom Wright provides this

insight: The promise to Abraham stands outside of the law, ’opening the

wider world, before the patriarch, long before the giving of the law.’

Paul’s mind leaps over the intervening scheme of the Torah, holy land,

ethnic restrictions. Seeing instead, the glittering promise in the early

dawn of Israel’s ancestry.’

For the law brings wrath; but where there is no law, neither is there

violation. It is almost as if the consequence, if not the purpose, of the

law is to blame people, to make them feel guilty. Of course there are

parts of the church that believes in the wrath of God and the vengeance

of God as part of their theology.

I heard a sermon by a well-known preacher, a Bishop in Wales, with this

true story about some missionaries in Victorian times. They had

travelled halfway across the world to proclaim the gospel and got to an

island inhabited by its original tribe – aborigines, if you like. These

people had never worn any clothes, and were completely naked, and

unlike Adam and Eve after they ate the forbidden fruit, totally without any

shame or embarrassment about their nakedness. The missionaries

were most frustrated because they could not make the islanders feel any

guilt about going about naked. Indeed they were given clothes, but they

had no idea what to do with them.

The frustration of the missionaries in evangelisation was this: if you don’t

feel that you have sinned, how can you feel sorry and repent? If you

don’t turn from sin and repent, how can you be baptised, how can you

have salvation? The point of this story is that we often try to tie God

down, limit him, with our cultural norms - which is just wrong.

Incidentally, those of us who know a little about colonisation by

Europeans, will remember how many traditions and habits of people

were deemed to be uncivilised and un-Christian by the colonising

government and by the church that often came with them.

We also get here an inkling about how the laws of the Torah may have

come about, meeting the needs and cultural requirements of that

particular time. So what is wrong about The Law? Nothing! They are

good rules to live by - meant for a particular time and place; fine, as long

as it does not prevent people from accessing God’s love, and salvation

through faith in Jesus Christ.

One thing we should again remind ourselves is that when Paul and John

and James and other writers of the New Testament talk about the Law,

they are not talking about the summary of the law given by Jesus to love

God with whole heartedly and to love your neighbour, nor even the Ten

Commandments.

There is more you can explore about law, but for now we simply note that

Paul time and again told his audience that law brings wrath; and along

with that, an image of a vengeful God, full of wrath.

In this passage, and in many other passages in his letters to early

churches in the Roman Empire, Paul’s argument is this emphasis; that it

is not the law that brings salvation, but faith in Jesus Christ. God is a

God of mercy, a forgiving God, that is what we need to cling on to.

Today’s Gospel ends with this: And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in

the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever

believes in him may have eternal life.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone

who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world,

but in order that the world might be saved through him.