As I sat down this morning to write on the texts for Lent 2, I was surprised to hear my sump pump kick in! I’ve lived in this 100+ year old farmhouse for 46 years, and early February is not when its ancient stone foundation leaks water from melting snow. I almost feel like an alien in a strange land as climate change continues to disrupt normal weather patterns. My mind wants to recoil from the reality of the interconnectedness of so many justice issues, and instead just snuggle into the safe familiar spaces of my rural farmhouse.  But the sump pump this morning would not let me! Thanks be to God that our texts for Lent 2 offer us strong words of encouragement to trust God’s promises and risk different choices.

Genesis 12:1-4

After the initial four stories in Genesis 1-11, along with a series of genealogies, we are confronted with an insurmountable crisis. The world God created is a mess! What God intended for God’s creation has been turned on its head. People are last pictured in linguistic chaos after attempting to storm heaven by building a huge ziggurat. One might liken that to our consistent belief that technology will fix all our climate-related problems, rather than looking at our behaviors and changing them, so that we don’t continue to cause those problems.

I’m fascinated by God’s approach to putting the whole messed up creation back together again. God could have repeated the flood experiment. Instead, God chose to build a community that would model what it would look like if people lived in harmony with each other and with the creation. And that community starts with a couple of immigrants, Abram and Sarai.

Following God’s call isn’t for the faint of heart. Notice the repeated phrases that precede God’s five-fold promises in verses 2 & 3. Abram and Sarai are told to go “from your land, from your kindred, and from the house of your father” to an unknown destination. Everything that has shaped them and given them their identity is being left behind. The Genesis narrative repeatedly describes them as resident aliens (12:10, 17:8, 20:1, 21:23, 21:34, 23:4). I’ll use the term immigrants since it is familiar to your auditors. Despite the fact that they are wealthy immigrants, their wealth does not protect them from risk. Famine forces them to make a detour to Egypt, and subsequent “wife as sister” stories graphically underscore their vulnerability. (Genesis 12:10-20 and 20:1-18)

But God’s call for Abram and Sarai to become immigrants in a strange land comes with a five-fold blessing. “I will make of you a great nation, I will bless you, I will magnify your name, I will bless those who bless you and I will curse those who curse you.” It ends with yet one more promise of blessing – “and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

It is critical to hold these promises together. The purpose of the call to Abram and Sarai isn’t solely (or even primarily) that they will be blessed, but more importantly, that they will be the means God will use to bless all the families of the earth. Dr. Terry Fretheim wrote: “We do not know why this story begins with Abraham (and his family). But we do know from the context that God chose Abraham for a comprehensive creational purpose, namely, that the human (and nonhuman) creation might be restored and be able to live in harmony with God’s original intention for the world. God’s choice of Abraham is an initially exclusive move for the sake of the future of the entire world.”

Psalm 121:

The Psalm appointed for Lent 2 offers an important promise to all of us who are leaving behind our old patterns of “consumer lifestyles” and risking being part of the Genesis 12 vision for this world. I find this Psalm’s connection to the Yahwist creation account in Genesis 2 very helpful. Your auditors might recall that in the second creation account, the “earthling” is lonely. (Adam is created from Adamah - Earthling from Earth) He is busy tilling and keeping (stewarding) God’s garden. God creates all of the animals, but none are found that will serve as a partner for the Earthling. So God created Eve as Adam’s “helper.” (Genesis 2:18)

Back to our Psalm. It uses the same word (ezer) for God as Genesis 2:18 uses for Eve. We translate it as helper. Just as God is our helper, so Eve was Adam’s helper. And together they are pictured as partnering in the task of tending the garden. Faced with a resurgence of male chauvinism, this Psalm not only provides us promised help by God as we face the looming crises of climate change, racism and a host of other interconnected justice issues. It also reminds us that all God’s children are equally called to participate.

Romans 4:1-5;13-17:

In our NT lesson we once again meet Abraham. Paul uses Abraham’s belief/trust in God’s promises as his prime example as he continues his ministry-long debate with the branch of Christianity we know as the Judaizers. They regularly appear in Acts, often showing up after Paul has formed a small core of Jesus followers in a Greco-Roman city. At stake is the gospel itself. Either we are saved by God’s grace, shown us in the death and resurrection of Jesus, or we are doomed to live in constant fear that we have not done enough to merit God’s gift of eternal life. Either we live and by faith, moving like Abraham and Sarah beyond familiar values and patterns for the sake of God’s promise, or we continue participating in the forces that are dooming us and God’s world.

Paul reminds his Roman auditors that Abraham could not have been justified by following the law, since it wasn’t given until about 700 years after he lived! He could only trust in God’s promises of land, offspring and blessing and live accordingly.  Luther’s famous dichotomy builds on this core belief. “God doesn’t need your good works, but your neighbor does!”

John 3:1-17:

Our gospel text overflows with possibility for preaching. I’ll focus on only a few.

Nicodemus appears three times in John’s gospel, but nowhere else in the New Testament. His first appearance comes on the heels of the cleansing of the temple during the first of three Passovers in John’s gospel, noted at the end of chapter 2. Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night (for the writer of John’s gospel night = unbelief) and ends up befuddled at best, despite hearing for the first time the most well-known verse of the entire New Testament! (John 3:16)

We next meet Nicodemus in John 7:45-52. He risks losing his position if they determine he is allied with Jesus, so he simply asks a procedural question. “Our law does not judge people without first giving them a hearing to find out what they are doing, does it?” Your auditors might wonder if Nicodemus’ question then should be our question today, as ICE continues to snatch people off our streets and confine them in detention centers.

Nicodemus’ final appearance is at Jesus’ tomb, when he assists a secret disciple of Jesus, Joseph of Arimathea, by hauling an exorbitant amount of burial spices (100 lbs.) with which to embalm Jesus. (John 19:38-42) Has Nicodemus finally come to faith? Maybe. Not everyone in John’s Gospel takes this long to come to faith. Some believe right away, such as the Samaritan woman in John 4. I find myself much more like Nicodemus. Faith is a journey. We come to believe based on experiences, and more importantly lived examples of others who have shaped our lives. If it is your practice to invite your auditors to turn to their neighbor and share a response to a question, try this one: “Whose life of faith has most influenced yours?” The Holy Spirit continues to nudge us, often through those closest to us, as we live into our baptismal identity as children of God. A second question might be: “Whose faith are you serving as an example for?”

Might John’s portrayal of Nicodemus be good news as we face resistance in our efforts to change public perception of the severity of the climate crisis? Like those who rejected Nicodemus’ challenge in John 7, many today simply refuse to believe that the climate crisis is real or that there is any urgency in addressing it. Nicodemus didn’t give up – and he showed up in a big way by the end of the Gospel. Since “believing” is always a verb in John’s gospel (98 times and always a verb/never a noun) then walking with our neighbors as they grow into their own awareness of the reality of the damage we continue to inflict on God’s creation will take time. Why not encourage your auditors to join with others at the EcoFaith Summit of the Upper Midwest this April 18. It matters not where you live, since it is a hybrid experience. You can find details here: https://www.ecofaithnetwork.org/ecofaith-summit-2026

One way to get the attention of your auditors might be to rephrase the famous John 3:16 text this way: “For God so loved the God-hating world that he gave his only son…!” In John’s gospel, the Greek word for world is kosmos, which normally refers to everything that stands in opposition to what God intends for the creation. (John 16:33; 17:9-19) God chooses to love the entire kosmos, whether we/the world/the entire kosmos likes it or not. God loved the kosmos enough to die that the world might have life. What we choose to do with that gift of life, is the question of the day!

Wendell Berry writes: “I take literally the statement in the Gospel of John that God loves the world. I believe that the world was created and approved by love, that it subsists, coheres, and endures by love, and that, insofar as it is redeemable, it can be redeemed only by love. I believe that divine love, incarnate and indwelling in the world, summons the world always toward wholeness, which ultimately is reconciliation and atonement with God.” Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays (Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 2002), 235.

Often preachers are warned by their councils not to get political. Be wary of that warning. To say that Jesus’ words in our gospel today are political is a gross understatement. One only has to recall that Rome proclaimed on stone billboards and documents that it was Roma Aeterna = Eternal Rome. Caesars were called Soter/Savior after winning a victory.

The Priene Calendar Inscription is a stone “billboard” recovered at Priene (an ancient Greek city located in Western Turkey) dating from 9BCE. It reads: “Providence, that orders everything in our lives, has displayed extraordinary concern and compassion and crowned our life with perfection itself. It has brought into the world Augustus, and filled him with a hero’s soul for the benefit of mankind. A Savior for us and our descendants, he will make wars to cease and order all things well. The Epiphany of Augustus has brought into fulfillment past hopes and dreams. Not only will he put into the shade the benefactors who have gone before him, but he will leave for posterity no hope of surpassing him. The birthday of this god is for the world the beginning of the Gospel.”

In our current political climate, we can follow John’s example and remind our auditors, by both our preached word and our lived word, that God invites us into a radical life of love for the entire cosmos. While the current administration attempts to erase even the title “climate change” much less any efforts to alleviate the damage already done to God’s creation by humans, people are emboldened to live into Jesus’ invitation in John 3:21 “Those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.”

In Craig Nessan’s forthcoming book, Earthy Faith, Fortress Press, 2026, he writes: “We need an earthy faith that loves this world that God created good.” Our texts for Lent 2 provide you with the good news you need to give hope to your auditors and ignite in them a passion to live out their baptismal promise to “strive for justice and peace in all the earth.”

Suggested hymns for Lent 2:

ELW 879 –“For the Beauty of the Earth” (note verse 5 in relation to John 3)ELW 321 – “Eternal Lord of Love, Behold Your Church”ELW 323 -  “God Loved the World”

ACS 1065 – “Can You Feel the Seasons Turning”ACS 927 – “Christ is the Life” (note connection to fire theme in this year’s EcoFaith Summit)ACS 1069 – “God Bestows on Every Sense” (note verse 5 in relation to John 3)

A Prayer of Pope Francis found in ACS page 48 could serve as Prayer of the Day for Lent 2.