Sermon: Hungering for connection and belonging (March 8, 2026)

Lent 3A
March 8, 2026
John 3:3-42

INTRODUCTION

We have been talking this Lent about hunger, but today’s readings are all about thirst. We start with the Israelites wandering in the wilderness, and they are thirsty. They beg Moses for something to drink, remembering the good ol’ days of slavery in Egypt when they had plenty to drink. Remarkably, by God’s power, Moses will bring forth water from a rock and everyone will get plenty to drink.

The Gospel also begins with thirst – this time, it is Jesus who thirsts in body, and an unnamed woman at a well who thirsts in spirit. Jesus’ talk of “a spring of water gushing up to eternal life” brings to mind that water gushing from a rock in the wilderness – but this water of which Jesus speaks is eternally quenching. 

A few things to notice about this encounter with the woman at the well. First, remember that Samaria is not a place Jews would voluntarily go because they hated Samaritans. Yet John tells us they “had to” go through Samaria – this is a theological need, not a geographical one – he’s showing the disciples what belief in him implies. Second, this story comes right after Jesus’ encounter with Nicodemus that we heard last week, and that’s by design. This woman is everything Nicodemus is not: he is a named, educated, important man; she is a nameless, uneducated, nobody woman. He’s a respected Pharisee; she’s a despised Samaritan. Nicodemus encounters Jesus by night; the woman at high noon. All of these details matter – and spoiler, it is the woman, not Nicodemus who comes out the rockstar of faith! (By the way, happy International Women’s Day!)

As you listen, notice where you yourself are thirsting today: where in your spirit are you craving a drink of living water? The spiritual hunger I’ll be addressing in my sermon today is a hunger (or maybe, a thirst!) for connection and belonging. Let’s listen. 

[READ]

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Scholars have troubled over this woman’s story for generations. What is her deal? Why is she coming to the well by herself at the hottest part of the day? Why has she had five husbands? Did these guys all divorce her? Why? Could it be because she was baren? Or did they die? And who is this current guy she is living with? 

I, too, am so curious about her story. As I try to imagine it, my heart only breaks for her. If her previous husbands divorced her (which could be done for any reason from burning her husband’s morning toast to being unable to bear children), then she is seen as damaged goods by her community. If she can’t keep a husband, or can’t have children in a society that sees this as women’s primary role, then she is shrouded in shame. If her husbands have died, then she is living with the grief of that, not to mention the fear that she is somehow cursed, and has no one to care for her. It’s no wonder she comes to the well when no one else will be there – she is riddled with shame, grief, pain, fear, and who knows what else. Imagine that feeling of disconnection from her community. She must be hungering to belong, hungering for connection. 

That hunger for belonging and connection is not unfamiliar to us. Already in our Lenten devotional we have read two stories from current St. Paul’s members who moved to Rochester and felt at first a sense of disconnection and grief, as they searched for a new place to belong. I have felt that hunger myself at various times and for various reasons, and I’m sure you have as well. Even in our most intimate relationships – in marriage, with kids or parents – we sometimes crave connection and belonging.

So, how does Jesus meet this woman in her hunger, and how can this story help us to be fed as well?

First is exactly what I just said: he meets her there. Jesus did not have to go through Samaria, but he chose to. He approached her at the well and asked for a drink, though John makes a point to say that this was not customary behavior for a Jewish man with a Samaritan woman. So this is significant: Jesus goes to and meets the woman exactly where and how she is.

Second, he truly sees her, the real her. He leaves space for her and her questions and her complicated past, he sees her exactly where and how she is, without asking her to be anything other than she is. In fact, he sees the parts of her that cause her the most pain –her doomed marriages, her current and potentially scandalous living situation, the things that bring her the most shame. He sees all of that, and stays with her. Engages with her in a lengthy dialogue. This clearly has extraordinary impact on the woman, because when she goes to witness, to testify to the town about this amazing man, that is what she says: “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done!” He saw me, my darkest corners, the things I would want to keep hidden, the things that bring me shame – and he didn’t leave me alone in them. He can’t be the Messiah… can he?

I have been enjoying reading the book, Theo of Golden. Anyone read it? I’m about halfway through, and it’s lovely. The premise is that an elderly man, Theo, moves to the southern town of Golden. He sees some beautiful portraits of some townspeople, drawn by a local artist, displayed in a coffee shop. He is touched by how well they capture each person, and he resolves to buy them all, and gift them to their subjects. He invites these strangers, one by one, with a letter to meet him at a certain bench. They are understandably skeptical at first, but soon enough, Theo has these individuals talking, telling him about their lives, opening up in ways they never have before. He truly sees them, and this forges life-changing connections, not only between him and these townspeople, but between these people and the other people in their lives. They find both emotional and physical healing from that connection Theo makes possible, simply by allowing them to be seen. That’s what happens when we are seen. (I don’t think it is an accident, by the way, that the author, who has said his Christian faith influences his writing, named this charming protagonist Theo, a name that means, “God”!)

One more thing Jesus does that feeds this woman’s hunger for belonging is he creates a space of mutuality. He comes with a need – a physical thirst – that he asks her to meet, before he offers to meet her spiritual need. She’s got the bucket and the well; he’s got the Living Water. 

This is not unlike our Lutheran understanding of mission, which assumes that everyone has something to give. When we serve, we don’t come in with an agenda, ready to impart our gifts on someone in need. We come with an intention to walk with one another, to both give and receive. We are not here to save someone else, but rather, we belong to one another, and need one another. Jesus models that here. Even he, the Savior of the world, makes space for the one seeking belonging and connection to contribute what she has to give.

So, what difference does all that make for us today, for those of us who do still hunger for belonging and connection?

First, it is knowing that just as Jesus met the woman where she was, in all her shame and grief and harbored secrets – Jesus meets us where we are. He knows everything we have ever done, and loves and values us still. More than that, he makes space in his love for our pain to exist, without judgment. Let me say this again, because it is so important: God sees you and meets you exactly where and how you are, making space for your pain, and loves you in that place, just as you are. And by that connection, that relationship, he makes healing possible. He makes transformation possible.

Second, when we have experienced that belonging, and we are, like the woman, transformed by it, we are then equipped to offer and create that life-changing space of belonging and connection for someone else. Like Jesus, we can go to the people in pain, and listen. Like Theo of Golden, we can make space for stories to be shared. By making space and bearing witness to one another’s stories, full of pain and questions and curiosity, life-changing connections are forged. And from there, belonging is created. Souls and longings are fed. Spiritual thirst is quenched, and we become a part of God’s work of quenching the thirst of a world in need of transformation.

Let us pray… God of living water, we hunger and thirst to belong, to connect with you and with one another. Meet us where we are, so that we would be sustained by the space your love creates for us. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Sermon: Hungering for certainty and knowledge (March 1, 2026)

Lent 2A
March 1, 2026
John 3:1-17

INTRODUCTION

Today’s texts are all about faith. In Abraham’s case, he trusts a God who is basically a stranger to him and his kinsfolk, doing something that likely seemed ridiculous to everyone he cared about simply because this stranger God told him to. In John, we will hear the story of Nicodemus, a devout teacher of the law, who comes to Jesus by night with his questions about faith. This text will include the most famous thumbnail articulation of the Christian faith: John 3:16. Psalm 121 and Romans 5 will offer us commentary especially on Abraham’s remarkable faith, but on the practice of faith in general.

Faith. It’s something we all claim to have, or at least try to have, though some days may be better than others on that front. And yet, it is also something notoriously difficult to understand or describe. As a pastor, I hear a lot about people’s joys and their struggles with faith, as you can imagine, and most of the time, people have more questions than answers about their faith. If this sounds familiar, then today’s readings are for you! Whether you are a lifetime believer and knowledgeable practitioner of faith, like Nicodemus, or someone very new to encountering God, like Abraham, there is something here for you today. 

During this Lenten season, we are doing a preaching series on spiritual hungers. Today’s hunger, in the midst of all this talk of faith, is, a hunger for certainty and knowledge. Let’s listen and be fed.

[READ]

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. 

“St. Augustine is walking along the beach when he sees a little boy digging a hole in the sand and running back and forth from the ocean to fill the hole with water. Curious, Augustine asks the boy, ‘What are you doing?’ The little boy replies, ‘I’m putting the ocean in this hole.’ Augustine says, ‘Little boy, you can’t do that. The ocean is too big to put in that little hole.’ The boy, who is really an angel, responds, ‘And so, Augustine, is your mind too small to contain the vastness of God.’”

That’s how I feel sometimes when I read John’s Gospel, and today’s story is no exception. How desperately we want real, concrete, understandable answers, just like Nicodemus! “How can these things be??” we ask. We want to understand God and God’s ways. We have a hunger for certainty and knowledge about the questions of faith – like, why do bad things happen to good people, why do good things happen to bad people, why is there violence and war, who is going to heaven and who isn’t, and what is the purpose of even being here? All good questions – to which only God knows the answers. And the smallness of our minds compared to the vastness of God’s makes it impossible for us to know or understand. And so, we feel we are left hungry for more certainty, more knowledge. 

Today’s story about Jesus and Nicodemus shows us just how much we don’t, and can’t, understand or know. There is so much going on here, and much of it is so cryptic. And yet in the midst of it all is probably the most famous verse in the Bible, a word of immense love, John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that all who believe in him would not perish but have eternal life.” Martin Luther call it “the Gospel in a nutshell,” and it’s true – it says succinctly the whole purpose of this faith: God loves us so much God didn’t want us to die, but to live, forever in God’s care. 

It’s good news! And yet this verse of love – as well as several other verses in this passage – have been used over the years not to include people in God’s embrace, but to exclude them. The “born again” imagery comes to mind: it has been used by evangelicals to say that unless you have had a believer’s baptism – one in which the one being baptized is able to confess their own faith, as opposed to infant baptism – then it doesn’t count. You’re not a real Christian. This, even though the verse right after John 3:16 clarifies that Jesus didn’t “come into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world would be saved through him.” Why has such a word of love been turned into such a word of judgment? Why do humans think we know who is saved and who is not?

So, what do we do with all this? We come back to those tough questions of faith – who is saved, why do things happen as they do – and the fact that we simply cannot know. “It’s a mystery,” as my pastor dad always says when we can’t know the answer to a faith question. Our minds are the small hole in the sand, and we are that little boy, trying to fit the ocean in there. The knowledge and certainty we crave simply cannot fit.

But that doesn’t have to stop us from digging into God’s word and trying to understand. So, for those hungry for knowledge today, let’s do a quick word study, focused on the word translated as, “world.” The Greek word John uses here is kosmos, and throughout John’s Gospel, this word refers to “that which is hostile to God.” So we could translate John 3:16-17 this way: “God so loved the God-hating world, that he gave his only Son…” and, “God did not send the Son to the world that despises God to condemn it, but instead so that the world that rejects God might still be saved through him.” In other words, the world hated and rejected God, and God lovingly sent God’s Son to save it anyway. It is hard for our small-hole-in-the-sand minds to grasp such audacious, unearned, and unexpected love as that! It truly is a mystery! 

Now, does knowing that little bit more satisfy your hunger for knowledge? Or make it grow? Or maybe your craving for knowledge is now causing you to think, “Well, then what’s the point? Why believe if just anyone can get into heaven, even those who hate God?” To that, I have two answers. 

The first one is: my mind is just as much a small hole in the sand as yours is. Who knows if anything I just said is even true. I mean, I hope it is, I think it is, but I don’t know! This is all way beyond me. It was way beyond Nicodemus, a teacher of the law. It is way beyond anyone who isn’t God, so don’t let anyone convince you otherwise. God and God’s ways cannot be understood. That is where faith and trust come into play – the sort of faith we see in Abraham and that we see beautifully articulated in the Psalm. We cannot know, but only trust. 

The other thing is that while we don’t know for certain all the practical details, what we do know is that it is up to God, and not us. And if God welcomes someone into heaven whom I wouldn’t have let in if it were up to me, that doesn’t in any way diminish my own experience of heaven. (Plus, do I really want a God who would make the same flawed choices I would make?? I think not!) So there are some things that are worth thinking about, sure, but are not worth worrying about – all we can do is the best we can, living into this life in the way Jesus teaches us how, by loving God and neighbor with all that we are and all that we have.

I said I had two answers to the question, “What’s the point of believing in Jesus?” My second answer is a testimony. There are lots of things I don’t know for certain, and I do often hunger for more knowledge and certainty. The sheer number of books on my shelf are proof of that! But I do know, or trust, some things; and if your question is, “What’s the point of faith?” then let me tell you at least what is true for me. Here is what I think is the point, and why I believe in Jesus Christ: 

I believe in Christ because that faith makes my life better. My faith makes me feel full. When the world or my world is full of fear or despair, my faith gives me hope. It gives me strength when I am weak. As much as I cannot and will not ever understand about God, my faith still helps me to make sense of the joys and the challenges of this life. 

I believe in Jesus because that relationship makes me want to be better. It moves me every day toward living more and more authentically into life as a baptized child of God, a life of looking to the needs of others, a life of self-sacrificial love, a life of speaking out for the needs of the oppressed and vulnerable. It gives me purpose, and moves me to do things like, strive and work toward a world where no one is hungry, where peace prevails, and to be the best version of myself. 

I believe in Jesus because the story of death and life that God tells through Christ is one that I have seen to be true in my own life. It is a story that, because I know it is true, I am compelled to search for it. I am moved always to search for life, even in the darkest of deaths. 

And this keeps my head above water, and frankly makes my life worth living. It gets me up in the morning and puts me down at night. And I tell other people about this, not because I want them to go to heaven (though I do!), but because I want them to experience the life right now that I experience by having a relationship with Christ. I want other people to feel the fullness and love that I experience by my belief in Jesus. For me, that’s the point of faith.

We cannot know about things to come. Our minds are small holes in the sand, and we can only fit so much ocean into them. What we can know is this: that God loves us. God loves us so much, that God sent His only Son so that we could have a glimpse of that love, a glimpse of what is yet to come. God loves us so much that God endured the same pain and suffering we do, so we would know we are not alone in it. God loves us enough to provide us a Way into a new life of fullness and love, so that, though we may still hunger, we are also eternally nourished and sustained. 

That’s the point.

Let us pray… God of all knowledge, when we hunger for certainty, make us satisfied with not knowing any more beyond that you love us, and that because of that love, you would do anything for us – and did. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.