HOMILY: "Jesus in Creationtide"

Sunday, September 6, 2026
The First Sunday in Creationtide
John 3:1-17

1.

The question that Nicodemus asks, several times really, in today’s reading is so spot-on, I think, so fair in fact, that it seems a little flippant, or maybe whimsical, in the moment. “How can an adult,” he rightly wonders, aloud for all to hear. “How can an adult be born a second time?” And then, so that his point isn’t lost in translation: “I can’t go back into my mother’s womb to be born again!” There may even be something playful about all this, this witty banter between the two of them. Nicodemus and Jesus. And they’re into it.

Now I think we can assume Nicodemus understands that Jesus is working here in the realm of metaphor, poetry, philosophy. When Jesus says: “The truth of the matter is, unless one is born from above, one cannot see the kin-dom of God.” Of course, he is. And what we’re reading, then, what we’re privy to here in John’s gospel, is a conversation around interpretation and meaning and faith. And maybe readiness. Maybe readiness.

What would it mean, Nicodemus is asking himself, for me to trust this particular Teacher? This strange cat who’s turning water into wine at weddings, who’s flipping profitable tables in the temple market, who’s hanging out with hooligans and prostitutes in the name of God? What would it mean, he’s asking himself, for me to start all over again and engage Jesus’ particular path, Jesus’ wisdom and Jesus’ truth? Am I willing to surrender to this kind of newness, to this kind of metaphor, to the reshaping of my inner and outer life? And indeed, friends, these are the questions we ask this morning. Am I willing to surrender to this kind of newness? Am I ready?

Nicodemus has heard something, seen something in Jesus, that arouses his curiosity, awakens his imagination, excites him in some strange and consequential way. Maybe it’s Jesus’ capacity for trust in a power higher than himself. Maybe it’s his conscience, his unbounded compassion, his courage in crisis. Nicodemus has experienced it. Am I willing, he’s asking himself now, to surrender to it? To make it my own?

And that’s how, that’s why, the two of them—the Pharisee and the Rabbi—get into it around birth and rebirth, around faith and the kin-dom, and around the kind of Holy Spirit that blows where it wishes, and surges as it desires, and dances to its own sweet tune. So here they are. Chapter Three. Puzzling together over the newness of life with God. Questioning whether this kind of newness is even possible. What it might change in us. Where it might take us. And who it is—and this is maybe the biggest question of them all—who it is that speaks from the heart of this sweet, holy, windblown mystery. Who it is—this Jesus, this Rabbi, this poet—that speaks so fearlessly about rebirth and resurrection and everlasting life. 

Everlasting life? No wonder Nicodemus needs a minute.

2.

This text, of course, has been and continues to be all too smugly quoted and deployed, and for most of the wrong reasons. For God so loved the world, the King James version we all heard first: “For God so loved the world, that He gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.”

The thing is, though, that Jesus resists—throughout John’s gospel—Jesus resists the simplicity and dogmatics that are so often foisted upon him. And what we’re working with here is metaphor, language, poetry. And it’s wonderfully complex and curious as metaphors so often are. So let’s clear all those dogmatics aside, for the morning at least, and dive into these deep, dark, wonderful waters. The third chapter of John. And let’s wonder about our own readiness: our own readiness for rebirth in the Spirit and new life in Christ; and what in God’s name this kind of newness means for you, me and the church.

Yes, God…so loved…the world. John 3:16. But in the realm of metaphor, yes, in the world of spirit and faith, words have to matter. Words have to matter. And particular words challenge old habits and suggest a new kind of consciousness. And the Greek here, friends, the ancient Greek word in 3:16 is ‘cosmos.’ World is simply too small. World is simply too familiar. World is too comfortable and maybe even too tribal. My world is what I know, where I’ve been, where I could plausibly go; it’s defined by the horizons of my experience, and maybe my species’ limitations.

“Yes,” Jesus says, “God so loved the COSMOS as to give the Only Begotten One, that whoever believes may not die, but have full and everlasting life.” It makes a difference. COSMOS. Again, we want to clear all those dogmatics aside. COSMOS. The word itself suggests a much wider lens for our reading, a deeper receptivity to what’s going on here, and a more humble approach to faith, rebirth and Jesus himself.

Because that word, you see, COSMOS in the ancient Greek, has a far more expansive meaning than just ‘world.’ Because COSMOS captures everything, everywhere, always. All of it. All of us. Because COSMOS includes the places we know and love and touch with our fingers and toes, and the places we’ve never been and probably never will go. Because COSMOS includes the knowledge and wonders we can grasp in our minds or see with our eyes, and everything else: all the questions we’ll never answer, all the mysteries only God can understand, all the weirdness and loveliness that lies beyond our grasp. COSMOS. God so loved the COSMOS.

So you see, this text, this passage isn’t a threat. It’s an epiphany. The mystery and mercy of this Jesus is hidden in a love that is always bigger, bolder than we can imagine. And that’s the good news. That’s the heart and soul of faith itself. God so loved the COSMOS. The mystery and mercy of this Jesus is generated by a love that is wilder than any wind, swifter than any current, and sweeter than any feast. And this Jesus, then, is given to us all not just to anoint or bless or save a few, or a tribe, or a nation, or a species, but to gather the whole of this creation in glory and everlasting life. This is the perfect text for this First Sunday in Creationtide. This Jesus gathers it all in glory. Ecosystems and communities of all kinds. The tiniest creatures that live but for a fortnight and the greatest beasts that earth has ever known. Galaxies and unsearchable dimensions of the unseen beyond. You and me, and every hungry or headstrong child in every land and generation.

Faith isn’t a competition for salvation, you see. The zealots get it all wrong. Faith is a way of participating, Jesus says; faith is a way of delighting and sharing in the one great love that moves inside us all, and bathes all that is and will be in grace. Not just the lives or ideas we know and understand. Not just the places we visit and love. But all that is and will be. In grace. This Jesus isn’t interested at all in dividing the world up into the saved and unsaved, the familiar and the scary, friends and enemies. This Jesus comes from God to reconcile, to refresh, to awaken God’s radical and holy oneness in you and me.

And here’s the thing. The reason this chapter still works. The reason it still matters. Because surrendering to that love, yielding to that kind of grace, is kind of like being born from above. That’s it, Jesus says: that’s the metaphor. So play with it. Dive in, splash around. Let it wash over you and awaken nerves and feelings and dreams you never knew you had. Surrendering to this kind of love, the John 3:16 kind of love, is kind of like being born from above. Are you ready for that? That’s the question as a new year dawns in Durham. Are you ready for that?

3.

A few weeks ago, I’m sitting on a dock up the coast a bit, and I’m dangling my ankles in warm summer waters. And I’m visiting with one of my daughters who is sitting nearby, and dangling her own ankles likewise, in the glassy lake we love so very much. And we’re talking about family stuff, about us in fact. And maybe some will recognize this dynamic; my daughter and I are working out something kind of new in our relationship. And it’s tricky, to be honest. She’s not a kid anymore, in fact she’s a young adult training to be a psychotherapist; and she’s involved for the first time in a very serious relationship. And some of the old ways we’ve related, and loved one another, and supported one another, don’t work the way they used to. Is this sounding familiar? She’s not 7 or 12 or even 19 anymore. She needs something different from her dad now. And I haven’t quite figured out how that goes.

So we’re talking all this through, and I’ll be honest and tell you it’s not all that easy, this growing up stuff at sixty-four. But we’re doing our best. The two of us. We’re dancing around the important stuff, sure, but getting into it a little, just enough. When high above us, in a stately old pine, there’s a really loud rustling in the branches, and then a dramatic flapping sound; and we turn from one another to look skyward, and catch two bald eagles, two great birds, casting themselves from the tree into the summer breeze; and then directly over our heads not more than a stone’s through; and then way, way out, across the bay before us. Where it seems they land together in another tree, on another shore, to wait together and watch (presumably) for their next meal. It seemed to happen in a instant. For that instant the two of us, my daughter and I, took one collective breath. And gasped.

“So don’t be surprised,” Jesus says to Nicodemus, “when I tell you that you must be born from above. The wind blows where it will. You hear the sound that it makes, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it goes.” Watching those two eagles, watching them with my daughter that day, I found myself wondering if Jesus’ faith is about a kind of uninhibited trust, and the kind of uninhibited trust that allows those great birds to leap from one nest, in every expectation that there will be another out there, another strong branch, somewhere across the bay. And if that’s faith, if that’s where Jesus is going, just maybe I’ll trust that my daughter and I will figure it out, that we’ll work through our disappointments or even missteps; and that what I need to do, always what I need to do is stay open to her, be honest with her, listen well and turn my spiritual life over to God. Again. And again. And again. Like the eagles winging it across the lake and disappearing from view. As they’ve been doing, I presume, for thousands of years.

And when Jesus says, “So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit,” maybe he’s saying we work out newness in our lives, you and I; we work out newness in our relationships, and newness in our communities, as we surrender to summer thermals, as we yield to God’s invisible but undeniable grace, as we trust the Spirit’s care and courage to see us through. “So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Or in the words of the great gospel tune by the legendary Thomas A. Dorsey: “The Lord will make a way somehow.” The Lord will make a way somehow.

NAMES: "Hannah Rose"

BOOKS: "Here Where We Live is Our Country"

 

I've just finished Molly Crabapple's remarkable history of the Jewish Bund, and I can honestly say that it is the most difficult book, the most affecting history I've read in a long, long time.  It's the story of Jewish resistance in tsarist Russia, and then Poland and beyond, as the Bund faces rising tides of bigotry, racism, fascism and genocide...and resists through courageous networks of workers, artists, activists and visionaries.  And all the way through, there runs a thread: that our one hope is one another, solidarity, building movements beyond borders and differences.

Here's what Molly says about her project:

"So why did I write thie book about the Bund--who lost, who were failed--and not about victorious killers? Because I am sick of monsters--whether they belong to my group of any other or any other.  Because I know that we all have the capacity to be victims and tormenters, as well as bystanders, staring blanklyat a burning wall.  Because I want off the samara wheel of atrocity, and the Bund's demand of solidarity across difference is the only way to get there.

"Such solidarity is fragile and frequently betrayed, but it is all we have.  It is the only thing that can save us..."

For my many friends working so bravely to protect human rights, strenghten democracy and end the occupation that has decimated Palestinian communities in Gaza and the West Bank...I recommend this book as a challenging, indispensable and inspiring reflection on where we've been, and where we might still go.

See more about Molly Crabapple here.

SIGN ON: "No Partnering with ICE!"

CONCERT FOR PEACE: "With Sheikh Abed and Stu"

A chance to experience the creative, peacemaking spirit of Sheikh Abed Manasra; the soulful genius of Stu Dias; and the heartfelt voice of Brennan Whaley!  An intimate concert Saturday night, with no tickets or charge!  Come to be inspired!

Who is Abed Manasra?

Sheikh Abed Alsalam Manasra is from Nazareth in the Galilee region of Israel/Palestine. He represents the third generation of spiritual masters in his family within the Sufi Qadiri Tariqa As-Salaam, described as a branch of Sufism/Islam dedicated strictly to the study and promotion of peace.  His father Ghassan has been to Durham twice these past several years, sharing the family's commitment to reconciliation in this heartbreaking season of war and genocide.

In addition to his speaking work, Sheikh Abed is also an oud player. The oud is a traditional Middle Eastern short-necked lute. He uses music as a core mechanism for reconciliation in times of division and uses the instrument to engage young people through his Young Peacebuilders Training Program.

Abed says that he committed his life to grassroots diplomacy in high school while working in a region marked by long-standing conflict and oppression. He serves as the interfaith dialogue expert for Rising Tide International and the Israel programs manager for the Abrahamic Reunion, a nonprofit organization focused on building sustainable peace among the diverse faith communities of the Holy Land.

"Given the difficult circumstances we are facing today in the world, and especially in the Holy Land," he says, "our great responsibility compels us to work hard for a better future for all of us — a future in which we live in safety, peace, and love, and reject hatred, aggression, wars, and extremism."

MUSIC: "Can't Find My Way Home"

MUSIC: "With a Little Help..."

MUSIC: "Up Where..."

HOMILY: "What 'If'?"

Isaiah 58
Sunday, July 12, 2026
On the Semiquincentennial of U.S.A. (Part 3)

1.

Watching from afar, or at least the next state over, we have of course witnessed this week the dissolution of what was a promising Senate campaign in Maine. One that had for many months inspired a movement of Mainers—with visions of universal health care, a fair and just economy, and a national commitment to international law, human rights, rather than perpetual and genocidal war. The political tide seemed to be literally turning in Maine. And change seemed be even within their shared and collective grasp.

Like so many of you, I have friends north of the border, and a good many are devasted this weekend. And there are questions, so many questions this weekend, that pertain, I think, to our summer conversation about democracy itself and what we in the church bring—spiritually, theologically—to that project.

Was Graham Platner a fatally flawed candidate with a compelling message? Was he set up for failure by hasty operatives in his own party or maybe taken down by frightened powerbrokers in the other party? And then this one: Do you have to be a perfect human being to participate in democratic decision-making, in community leadership, in public life? How imperfect or even broken can you be and still contribute? And perhaps just as urgently, maybe most urgently: What are we to say and do about the pervasive crisis of sexual violence in our country, and in our world? Because sexual violence continues to destroy communities and traumatize, devastate the lives of sisters and brothers, siblings, we love.

2.

To this last point, let us remember that the fundamental commitment of the gospel is inclusion, and the core practice of Christianity is healing. Healing of bodies. Healing of spirits. Healing of communities. Over and over again, Jesus engages meaningfully and bravely with women, and a few men, who have been brutalized. Brutalized by systems of cruelty and privilege. Betrayed by family and even religious leaders they trusted. And over and over again, Jesus makes space for their truth, for the sharing of hard stories, for their grief and rage, and then for compassion, for inclusion, and the healing of their bodies and spirits. And, indeed, that’s the calling, the vocation of beloved community itself. Ours and so many others. If you’ve been violated in any way, there is a privileged place for you at this table. We can heal together. So we bring to this work—just as Jesus does—our most humble hearts and most courageous loving. There is simply no other way.

I want to suggest too, and this is hard to say; but I want to suggest that it may well be that Graham Platner too is a victim of systemic, organized, generational violence. And it may well be that his choices, his treatment of women, his violence (if that’s what it is)—that his life has been scarred by unholy wars, and toxic masculinity, and the trauma of American violence perpetuated by governments going back decades and decades in this country. Which is not for a second to rationalize or dismiss the price paid by the abused and scarred among us. It is simply to say that violence, war: it is all too often ingested, embodied and transmitted—generation to generation; soldiers to their families; partners to their partners. And in the cacophony of this week’s news, in the flurry of activity to oust him from the race in Maine, I fear that this point is too easily lost on us. The kind of violence of which Graham Platner is accused is mapped out in war rooms, paid for by Congress, and rationalized by presidents who all too often lie to make it happen.

Graham Platner served three tours, we know, in Iraq and Afghanistan: three tours in countries we had brutally occupied, three tours in communities of families ripped to shreds, three tours in conflicts where unimaginable terror traumatized the young people sent to do our government’s dirty work. And that kind of violence, coupled with toxic masculinity and crippled self-esteem, does awful, awful things to men, and to the women they love.

And if we’re committed to the difficult tasks of supporting those who’ve been abused and violated, and healing those who’ve ingested war, and violence, and abusive notions of power and sex; if we’re committed to this, we must address the patterns of violence, even the political economy of war and violence, that betrays democratic traditions of collaboration, negotiation and neighborliness.

Rape is not just Graham Platner’s issue, or his fatal flaw. It is an American issue, a public health issue, a spiritual crisis; and we are all responsible for healing this body politic. This country. Our country. Who will we choose to be?

3.

Both readings this morning are lyrical, almost musical in the ways they land in our hearts and here in our pews. And in two very different ways, perhaps, they set before us—and before our country—a choice.

Down in Massachusetts, Regie Gibson says:

“Any path this nation takes, it’s because we helped to choose it. Any tyranny that eventually triumphs, it’s because we helped excuse it. Any freedom this nation loses is because Massachusetts helped to lose it…” And Isaiah’s ancient text is, too, about a choice, a choice in every generation, a choice that involves particular commitments, shared among us, expressed in personal piety and public policy. The choice is consequential; and so too the blessing on the other side: “The Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong…” Isn’t this the blessing we ache for in our generation? That our bones, that our democratic bones might be made strong again?

And this extraordinary word, this poetry, is indeed a stunning call to a particular practice, and it’s a shared and communal practice. With implications, profound implications of course, for personal piety. For the patterns of our own families and households.

You heard the text. God’s promises are sweet. God’s blessing is indeed on offer. But this practice (says the prophet) is our obligation, our collective responsibility. To betray that responsibility is to dismiss the promises themselves. What Isaiah conjures for us is a practice that meets violence with justice, a practice that meets the abuse of power with the rebuilding of trust. And this has profound implications, I think, for our American democracy. Listen.

“If you remove the yoke from among you,
the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,
if you offer your food to the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
then your light shall rise in the darkness
and your gloom be like the noonday.”

There is a conditionality to God’s blessing. That’s the troubling, but essential prophetic tradition in a nutshell. There is a conditionality to God’s blessing. Isaiah’s speaking to an entire people, to a people he obviously loves, but chooses here to challenge and even cajole. “If you remove the yoke from among you, then your light shall rise in the darkness…If you satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then you shall be like a watered garden…” This, my friends, is the word of the Lord. The blessing of a people, of a nation, comes with conditions. The promise of God’s spirit, of God’s repairing, of God’s healing: these too come with conditions.

A democracy will hold up in the sweep of history, amidst the storms of history, only insofar as we act together, as we collaborate in communities, to remove so many yokes of oppression. A democracy will thrive and mature among us only insofar as we satisfy the needs of the afflicted, of the children, of the refugees and vulnerable in our midst. There is a conditionality to God’s blessing. And it sounds through both these texts like an anthem today, like Woody Guthrie singing “This Land” or Bob Dylan singing “The Times They are a Changin’” or Nina Simone singing “To Be Young, Gifted and Black.”

And so I offer these texts to you this morning, to the church, and maybe to our friends in Maine, and maybe even to Graham Platner and his team. I offer them as anthems of hope, as clarifying words, and (yes) as sharpening tools, in a democratic moment that requires clarity and discernment among us all. We have obligations, responsibilities. And God has indeed set conditions on every nation. But the promise, the blessing, and the hope is extraordinary:

"Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;
you shall be called the repairer of the breach,
the restorer of streets to live in.”

MUSIC: "Golden Slumbers"