Lectionary Commentaries for March 1, 2026
Second Sunday in Lent

“The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

Context, conflict, conversation

This is a story about a conversation between two Jewish teachers in the first century. One community leader (Nicodemus) approaches the main protagonist of the story (Jesus) at “night,” which may suggest the privacy of the conversation—with only readers as witnesses—or it may indicate a more intentionally covert occasion. Following the public activity in the temple area (see John 2:13–25), the timing of this meeting needs to be calculated accordingly. In the fourth Gospel, Nicodemus is a leading voice within one of the dominant sectarian groups of the day, the Pharisees.

Within the fourth Gospel, the Pharisees are depicted as monitors of Jewish society, determining what is allowable in public life (see also 11:45–48). Historically, the fourth Gospel overstates their influence. Public baptizing activity troubles them—whether from John the Baptist (1:24) or Jesus’s group (4:1). By chapter 7, hearing of Jesus’s positive impact on the crowds, they seek to arrest him (7:32). They remain antagonistic when their “temple police” fail to do so, implying that none of the leaders have been convinced (7:45–48). When Jesus restores a man’s sight, the Pharisees momentarily divide (9:16) but soon reunite in opposition: “Surely, we are not blind, are we?” (9:40). 

Even so, their concerns—shared with the chief priests—extend beyond jealousy: “If we let him go on like this … the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation” (11:48). Their logic is evident: Jesus’s healings inspire the crowd’s trust, which, in turn, could draw Roman attention and trigger violence against Israel’s people and sacred spaces. If this is the case, the Pharisees’ concerns seem understandable. Authoritarian powers often shape local religious debates about proper public expressions of faith. By the end of chapter 11, the Pharisees have authorized a full search to arrest Jesus (11:57).

Nicodemus is an exception, even if the lectionary selection does not allow listeners to witness his full character development. Despite the Pharisees’ claim that none of them have believed the things Jesus taught (7:48), Nicodemus—who came “at night”—was seemingly moved by Jesus’s earlier teaching and indirectly defended him in daylight (7:50). The fourth Gospel’s final depiction of Nicodemus is as one who shows up one more time—in a tag-team effort with Joseph of Arimathea—to prepare Jesus’s body properly for burial (19:39). 

A Spirit-infused story

The purpose of this story is not to explain Jesus’s tension with the Pharisees, although that conflict is central to the narrative’s arc. Nor is it to explore the origins of Jesus’s authority to deliver “signs” (see 3:2), although that is implicitly addressed here. Rather, it is a story on how individuals are able to understand the signs that Jesus performs. This is an account on the nature of God’s Spirit (Greek pneuma). 

The pneuma’s mysterious movement—blowing “where it chooses”—balances the idea that believing activity all falls on human decision-making. Rather, there is both divine and human action merging in a confluence of activity so that Christ-followers can witness anew God’s activities through Jesus. Those actions—or “signs” in Johannine parlance—are activities not unto themselves (although physical bodies may be restored successfully) but deeds that point to God’s intervention into the world, a world God created and loved so much that God decided to intervene most significantly by sending God’s own Son (3:16). 

If nothing else, the narrative trajectory of Nicodemus’s story indirectly attests to how a Spirit-infused Nicodemus—although not explicitly labeled as such—will speak more boldly (John 7) and act more justly (John 19) in light of God’s active Spirit within his life.  

If readers take into account the full narrative arc of Nicodemus’s story, although it is absent from the lectionary’s isolated selection, this carefully crafted storyline exposes a reality for others (through the Greek plural pronouns [“you all”] of 3:11–12), that ancient readers can experience this journey with Jesus: from an initial interaction with probing questions (John 3), to a stance of advocating for fair treatment for the accused (John 7), to a final positive acceptance of the movement, even with its accompanying risks (John 19).  

While the fourth Gospel’s language of the pneuma speaks to God’s uninhibited activity in the world, the language of belief (pisteuō)—prominently featured throughout the fourth Gospel—speaks to human agency in relationship to God’s luring Spirit. Indeed, belief is the human way to witness clearly and participate fully in this divine story: “So must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life” (John 3:14–15). 

Implications for preaching

So what? What are the implications of this passage for preachers?

Reading this account during Lent serves as a reminder of the nature of discipleship and the desire for transformation, even for those longing to “see the kingdom of God” anew. In present-day society in which respectful dialogues across political and theological divides are difficult, minimal conversations are sometimes necessary if only so that family members may join one another at large family gatherings during holiday seasons. University students yearn to discover how to develop and manage nonthreatening, high-level dialogues with one another across divides for the success of a future civic society. Equally important, the creation of spaces within ecclesial communities is also necessary so that churchgoers can speak to each other across the pews in spaces in which they share from the common cup or hold to a common confession. 

In this Johannine biblical dialogue, however, Jesus’s conversation with Nicodemus confronts us. Jesus calls for a transformation of the self, not of the world. Perhaps our political debates should be carefully calibrated to think about how they might shape us as human beings and not only to develop strategies for how to win arguments.

May God’s Spirit blow upon all who enter into those contested spaces with humility, curiosity, and longing for true relationships and more robust communities. May we—with Nicodemus—sense God’s presence so that we may see and testify to God’s activities in the world!

Like many who preach the lectionary calendar, I’ve encountered the beginning story of the ancestral Israelite peoples many times. I’ve used this text to speak to seminarians as they leave their familiar thinking and surroundings to embark on a journey to an unknown country—the world they will inhabit as they study with people they don’t know, and accept (or reject) theological concepts they have never considered. It is a call to go. This Second Sunday in Lent expects us to enter the unknown journey in obedience to God, who is known and unknown in many ways. By inference, we are being called out of our familiar surroundings to a place of God’s own choosing.

How odd is the promise to Abram. He and Sarai will become a great nation when Sarai is already beyond childbearing age, and they have no child of their own. In fact, when the question comes up years after the promise in Genesis 12, Sarai (now Sarah) laughs (Genesis 18:10–15). They are “advanced in age” and Sarah has “ceased to be after the manner of women” (18:11). Who among us wouldn’t laugh? It is incredulous. I imagine preachers could play with the notion of feeling compelled or called by God beyond the time when one believes they are able. People often lean into the inadequacies of feeling ill-equipped, or too old, or some other marker of their being (race, gender, ability) that seems limiting to them as they look at themselves and experience a call beyond human ability.

But the pericope is marked with God’s “I” in verses 2–3: “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” The last phrase, “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed,” may rightly be translated “by you all the families of the earth shall bless themselves.”¹ Does it make a difference to those preaching as to whether the nations are passively blessed because Abram obeys God? Or are encounters with “families of the earth” an exchange in which those whom Abram encounters are empowered and encouraged and, thus, bless themselves?

What would it mean in this Lenten season if migratory encounters enabled every group to be empowered, and not just some people? As Frank Yamada noted, this promise is in the style of a common ancient Near East (Afro-Asiatic) land grant from a deity to a favored king or nation. Per Yamada, “[These types of treaties] were unilateral, meaning that the blessing flowed in one direction from the giver to the recipient. They were also unconditional. That is, such grants were based primarily in the benevolence of the deity and were not dependent on the previous actions of the subject.”²

Abram and Sarai did not see the promise of Genesis 12 for themselves, but the narrative says that their descendants did (see also Romans 11:8–12). The ancient Israelite saying “My father was a wandering Aramean” (Deuteronomy 26:4–6) apparently became a testimony, the ongoing story of a people who claimed their migrant status.

Abram and Sarai left land, family, and stability to become “strangers and aliens” in other lands. Their life away from their homeland was precarious at times. Remember that, in Egypt, Abram told Sarai to identify herself as his sister (which was true, but not the whole truth; Genesis 12:10–20 and 20:1–18). They are wealthy, with resources, and still vulnerable. Can the preacher imagine the deeper level of vulnerability if the migrant is poor and put that imagination in conversation with this pericope?

We know from our times that migration often happens for reasons such as economic distress, famine, environmental degradation, violence, or political instability. In fact, according to the story, Abram and Sarai were waylaid by famine, which is why they ended up in Egypt (Genesis 12 and 20). Imagine what pushes people away from their homeland that is not the voice of God. As British-Somali poet Warsan Shire writes in the opening stanza of her poem “Home”:³

No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark. You only
run for the border when you see the whole city running as well. The
boy you went to school with, who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin
factory, is holding a gun bigger than his body. You only leave home
when home won’t let you stay.

And from the final stanza:

I don’t know where I’m going. Where I came from is disappearing. I am
unwelcome. My beauty is not beauty here. My body is burning with the
shame of not belonging, my body is longing. I am the sin of memory and the absence of memory.

In telling this story in Genesis 12, Abram is not motivated by any such displacing matters. He responds to an inner urging, a voice, and maybe a God he is meeting for the first time. As a firstborn son, Abram’s leaving would be notable. As Wilma Ann Bailey reminds us, “In ancient times, it was unusual for the firstborn to leave. The pattern was for a younger son (Jacob, Joseph) to go while the firstborn son stayed home, charged with care of aging parents and unmarried younger siblings. That is why the reader is told that Abram’s father died, a brother died, and another brother is married and therefore an adult. Abram can leave with his integrity intact.”⁴ There is nothing in the text that indicates he talked with Sarai about leaving their home and their connections. I wonder what she thought or how she felt when she found herself packing up possessions and slave-servants to embark on a treacherous journey to an unknown land. God has spoken, Abram must have said. “Which God?” “Where are we going?” “How will we know when we have arrived?” “Do we know anyone who is already there who can welcome us?” “Why are we leaving our family?”

And they were leaving family, except for Abram’s nephew Lot. Are we missing some of the instructions from God? Why take Lot, Abram’s brother Haran’s son (Genesis 11:31)? Were Abram and Sarai now his guardians? Where was Lot’s mother after his father’s death? The plot line to the story of the ancestors is filled with gaps and questions, and a preacher might let her “holy imagination” wander off into the storyline to see where it takes her.

I hope those reading this offering experience several ways to enter a preaching moment that calls forth the sojourn that Lent expects. Perhaps we are being called to new spiritual disciplines, new thinking, new ways of praying, new environs, new compassion. As Bailey says, “Perhaps a new perspective will emerge only if he is exposed to a new environment in which old patterns no longer work.”⁵ Perhaps.

Notes

1. This translation is reflected in the footnote offered by the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition at Genesis 12:3, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%2012&version=NRSVUE.
2. Frank Yamada, “Genesis 12:1–4a,” Working Preacher, February 17, 2008, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/second-sunday-in-lent/commentary-on-genesis-121-4a-2
3. Warsan Shire, “Home,” https://www.poetryinternational.com/en/poets-poems/poems/poem/103-30925_HOME, from Warsan Shire, Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head, Penguin Random House, 2022.
4. Wilma Ann Bailey, “An Urge to Travel (Genesis 12:1–4; Psalm 121),” https://www.religion-online.org/article/the-urge-to-travel-genesis-121-4-psalm-121/. This article appeared in The Christian Century, February 12, 2008, p. 18. Copyright by the Christian Century Foundation; used by permission. Current articles and subscriptions information can be found at www.christiancentury.org. This material was prepared for Religion Online by Ted and Winnie Brock.
5. Bailey, “An Urge to Travel.”

Psalm 121 is one of the Songs of Ascent, Psalms 120–134, as indicated by its opening words.¹

In general, these psalms focus on Jerusalem, the journey to Jerusalem—always categorized as “going up”—and worship in the temple. Many readers and hearers know the first verse as “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help,” from the King James Version, which makes it sound like the help is coming from the hills. The King James Version does not take the phrasing of the text as indicated by the cantillation (markings that function as punctuation) into account. The opening verse is two separate and complete sentences. The first is a statement: “I lift my eyes to the hills.” The second is a question: “From where will my help come?”

The psalmist never tells us why she lifts her eyes to the hills or to which hills she is looking, though many assume Jerusalem. (The presence of women like the daughters of Heman among the psalmists means that it is possible some psalms were authored by women; see 1 Chronicles 25:5–6 and Psalm 88.) The same expression is used in Psalm 123:1. “To you I lift up my eyes, O you who are enthroned in the heavens!” The prophets also repeatedly exhort the people to lift up their eyes (Isaiah 40:26; 49:18; 51:6; 60:4; Jeremiah 13:20; Ezekiel 8:5).

If “the hills” are the hills around Jerusalem, as suggested by the title and category Song of Ascent, then she may be looking toward Jerusalem and its temple, the throne of God. Some have suggested that the psalmist is looking toward the hills with apprehension, out of concern that there may be bandits between the psalmist and her final destination.

What is clear is that the help the psalmist seeks is that which is the particular specialty of God. The word ezer, “help,” familiar to some from the expression “stone of help,” “Ebenezer” in 1 Samuel 7:12, is rarely used of humans, with very few exceptions. (It is used for the help the first woman in the garden is to provide her partner.) Verse 2 makes it clear that the psalmist’s help does not come from the hills but, rather, from the God who created them, the heavens, and the earth. The heavens are always plural—actually dual—in biblical Hebrew.

There is a shift in voice in the psalm. The psalmist begins speaking in the first person with “I” and “my” in verses 1–2. Then the psalmist addresses an audience in the singular, either a collective entity like a congregation or nation, or an individual. The second-person address continues for the rest of the psalm. The addressee is likely Israel, named in verse 4; however, the psalmist only speaks about Israel by name in the third person, not directly to it.

As is common in psalms, the psalmist provides the hearer/reader with a list of God’s accomplishments and attributes that justify confidence in and praise of God. In verse 3 God is the one who keeps a person’s foot from “moving,” literally trembling—that is, slipping—a theme also present repeatedly in Psalms (see 17:5; 18:36; 38:16; 66:9; 73:2; 94:18). There is also a pun here: The word for “move/slip” rhymes with the word for “death.”

The psalmist’s God is ever-vigilant, neither slumbering nor sleeping in verse 4. Curiously, God sleeps in other psalms, waking as from sleep, shouting like a drunken soldier in Psalm 78:65—a surprising image—and in Psalm 44:23 the psalmist implores God to wake up. Even when read metaphorically, the language is striking.

In the psalmist’s language, God is so protective that neither sun(light) nor moon(light) will touch her charges. The image conjured in verse 5 is of an attentive God, constantly adjusting a canopy to provide shade as the sun moves throughout the day. That prosaic description builds to the primary claim of the psalm in verse 7: God will keep/preserve you from all harm (evil) and will keep/preserve your life. (The multifaceted verb means “keep,” “guard,” “preserve,” and “observe [commandments].”) The last line of the psalm declares that God’s care will be ongoing, moving with a person as they move through their life.

Psalm 121 is a comforting psalm, presenting an ever-present and attentive God caring for her people. It is a psalm that many pray or recite in difficult times when they want to feel God’s comforting presence. Like many psalms, the emphatic rhetoric transcends the experience of most people. We do come to harm, whether the minor harm of a sunburn or the greater harms inflicted by the broken world. Yet there are times when a person may find herself inexplicably spared from some harm or danger by no means of her own. At those times, the words of this psalm speak to faith in a God who does indeed protect her wards.

Notes

1. Commentary previously published on this website for October 16, 2016.

I hear daily, both in person and in the media, about people’s heartache over the current divisions in American society. According to recent polling, societal division is alternating with economic distress for the top concern among American voters. Coupled with other high-level worries, the current degree of animosity can feel singular, as though we are the only culture ever to experience such a tearing of the social fabric. But sadly, we are not singular in this affliction. 

Over history people have suffered from divisions at many times, and one of them was in the earliest years of the church. Fault lines among the Roman house churches, exacerbated by the Roman political situation, were uppermost in Paul’s mind as he wrote to the Roman assemblies, both the Gentile-Christian and Jewish-Christian churches.

The social context of Romans 4

Paul wrote this letter to gain financial support from Roman Christians for his mission to Spain, and in order to do that, he needed both to defend his Gentile-centric Gospel to this mixed group (Romans 1:1–6) and to show that he understood the internal divisions among the assemblies scattered over the capital city.

• The thanksgivings at the end of the letter are evidence of how many Roman house church leaders Paul had come to know personally during the time when Jews were expelled from Rome under Claudius in 49–50 CE (see Acts 18:2).
• By the time of the writing of Romans, the Jewish Christians have largely returned, possibly exacerbating the antagonism between the Jewish and Gentile house churches.

As a scholar, I have become convinced of Paul’s ongoing Jewishness during his entire ministry,  and his appreciation for all things Jewish—including the law—at the same time that he felt specifically called to bring the Gentiles into right relationship with the Jewish God (see Jeremiah 1:4–5 for Paul’s prophetic model). 

• In order to understand Paul’s strategy for bringing together the Gentile and Jewish churches in Rome, we need to develop ears for the complexity of his stance and the emotions of the communities in Rome who received the letter.
• And perhaps we need to send up a prayer of thanksgiving for the deacon Phoebe, who appears to be the person tasked with reading and interpreting this letter to its first recipients (Romans 16:1–2).

The literary context of Romans 4

Paul approaches the division among the churches by spending most of the first three chapters presenting the clear evidence that all people have sinned, “both Jews and Greeks” (Romans 3:9).

• At 3:21–26, Paul daringly uses the metaphor of the Yom Kippur sacrifice of atonement to describe how God chose to receive the crucifixion of Jesus as a holy sacrifice for the reconciling of all people.
• All—both Jews and Gentiles—are now reconciled to one another and to God. This is the new reality that Paul wants the Roman churches to acknowledge in their life together.

Romans 4:1–5, 13–17

The reading for this day then picks up at the beginning of chapter 4, when Paul pulls out yet another cornerstone of Jewish tradition.

• Here Paul dares to describe Abraham (the quintessential ancestor of all Jews) as also the patriarch of Gentiles who have chosen to believe in, or to entrust themselves wholly to, Jesus and his life of trust in God’s will.
• The passage circles around and around certain Greek terms: faith/faithfulness, law, and righteousness/justice. The words are discussed below not to include in preaching, but for the preacher’s own understanding. 

Faith (Greek, pistis)

For Paul, faith is an active entrusting of oneself to Jesus and his way of life. It is not a belief in certain things about Jesus, but a deep internalizing of Jesus’s values and patterns of life. It comprises both faith and faithfulness.

• Paul uses the word in three ways in this passage and elsewhere in Romans, which expose the active dimension of faith: the faith of Christ (Greek, pistis Christou, 3:22, 26, translated in the New Revised Standard Version as “faith in Christ”); the faith of Abraham (4:16); and the obedience of faith (1:5; 16:26).
• Abraham and Jesus Christ are models of the obedience of faith, of entrusting themselves completely to God’s ways.
• Having faith, or believing (the verb form of pistis: pisteuō) is not a mental assertion but an embodied way of life in right relationship with God and neighbor.

Righteousness/justice (Greek, dikaiosynē)

A second Greek term that is repeated in Romans 4 is dikaiosynē, which can be translated as righteousness or justice, or both simultaneously.

• Entrusting oneself wholly to God spills over into the living of a righteous life, living in right relationship with both God and the neighbor whom God loves.
• In New Testament Greek, there is no way to raise the subject of righteousness without simultaneously raising the subject of justice, as there is just one word for the two English concepts.

Law (Greek nomos)

In Romans 4, Paul contrasts law (which likely means certain teachings of Torah) with faith.

• This is a place where paying attention to Paul’s intended audience is crucial.
• Many scholars have come to believe that Romans is primarily addressed to Gentile Christians, with whom God has chosen to reconcile through the cross of Christ.
• Jews are reconciled with God through faithful lives shaped by Torah and temple; Gentiles are reconciled with God through faith in Christ, entrusting themselves to the moral patterns of Christ’s life, internalizing Christ’s way of life.

Addressing divisions

The letter to the Romans is concerned with reconciliation across differences that will remain (see Romans 15:1, 7). From the beginning of the letter Paul sets up a vision of salvation “to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek” (Romans 1:16). Jews and Greeks are still distinguished from one another, but are united by their faithfulness, exemplified by Abraham’s deep trust in God’s call.

• In Romans 4, Paul seeks to bring Jewish and Gentile Christians together as children of a single patriarch, Abraham.
• In Paul’s view, faith is a common requirement of both Jews and Gentiles, and he particularly wants Gentile believers to have complete confidence that their faith/faithfulness is sufficient for salvation.
• For Jews, faith/faithfulness grounds their adherence to Torah and temple.
• Saving the Gentiles, who have lived apart from God’s vision of justice, is God’s way of saving the world from the effects of injustice.

Paul has a hope that the Jewish community as a whole will come, in time, to recognize how God has made a way for the Gentiles to come into relationship through faith/faithfulness alone. But that saving reconciliation with God, “to the Jew first and then to the Greek,” will be a “harmony” (Romans 12:16; 16:5), not a monotone.

Resources

Robert Jewett, Romans: a Commentary, Hermeneia (Fortress 2006). Jewett’s is an exhaustive study of the on-the-ground realities of the people Paul was writing to in Romans. The size of the book is daunting, but I have found that people are riveted by getting a glimpse into the possibilities for describing the people who were drawn to Paul’s teaching in mid-first-century Rome.

Mark Nanos has many books on the Jewishness of Paul. Pick one and read it! It can take some time to develop an ear for hearing Paul’s letters in a “Jewish key,” but it is well worth it for understanding how the earliest Christian communities developed theologically within Judaism.

Stanley K. Stowers, A Rereading of Romans: Justice, Jews, and Gentiles (Yale University Press, 1994). Stowers asserts that Romans was written with a Gentile audience in mind, challenging the long-held assumption that he was addressing Jews and Gentiles universally about sin and salvation. This was a pivotal book for my understanding of Romans, and I continue to unpack its insights 30 years later.