Homily March 1, 2026, Rev. Holly Cardone

Second Sunday of Lent

Year A

March 1, 2026

“God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son…”

I was raised in the Episcopal Church, so this verse, the one we see on t-shirts, protest signs, bumper stickers, has always lived somewhere inside me. And if I’m honest, it has also always made me uncomfortable.

It made me uncomfortable because the way I most often heard it preached felt less like good news and more like a threat. Taken out of context, it sounded like an argument for a God who was so enraged, so disgusted with humanity, that the only way to deal with us was to sacrifice his own child in our place. As if God looked down at all of us, also supposedly God’s children, and said, “I can’t stand them. Someone has to pay.”

That theology did something to me. Because if God is that angry, if God needs blood to forgive, if Jesus had to be killed to satisfy divine wrath… then what does that say about us? What does that say about us when we look in the mirror?

Tony Jones, in his book Did God Kill Jesus? writes about this interpretation of the cross, what’s often called penal substitution. He notes that this idea of an angry God who kills Jesus in our place is only about a thousand years old, though it has become one of the most dominant interpretations in Western Christianity. Preachers, Jones says, often describe God as so furious and offended by human sin that someone must be punished, and Jesus becomes that substitute.

But if we internalize that view, what happens to our souls? What happens to our sense of worth? Do we start believing that at our core we are so wretched, so defective, that divine violence was required to tolerate us?

That’s not good news. That is religious abuse.

Even though the t-shirts, and protest signs, and tattoos declaring 3:16 is often presented as an independent idea, it is actually part of a conversation. A late night, secret conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus.

Nicodemus is a Pharisee, a religious leader, possibly a member of the Sanhedrin, the high court. The Pharisees were deeply committed to the law, to purity codes, to maintaining religious integrity in a complicated political world. And Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night. He doesn’t want to be seen. He doesn’t want to risk his status, his position, his reputation.

And remember where we are in John’s Gospel. This is only chapter three. Jesus has called disciples. He’s turned water into wine. He has just stormed the Temple during Passover, flipping tables and driving out corruption. Nicodemus has certainly heard about all Jesus has done and Nicodemus has questions.

“Rabbi,” he says, “we know you are a teacher from God, because no one can do these signs apart from God.” And Jesus responds in a way that makes Nicodemus’ head spin: “No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”

Nicodemus is baffled. “How can someone be born after growing old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb?” He doesn’t get it. Maybe it’s because Nicodemus, and the system he represents, has become so invested in law-keeping, control, purity, status, and maintaining religious power that he cannot imagine that God might be doing something beyond all of that. Jesus even says, with a hint of frustration, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and you do not understand these things?”

Nicodemus comes at night. He is still living in fear. And it is into that fear, into that confusion, that Jesus says: “For God so loved the world…” Not God so hated the world, or despised the world, or condemned the world. But God so loved the world.

The word “world” in John’s Gospel, kosmos, doesn’t mean the nice, churchy people. It doesn’t mean the morally upright. It means the whole messy, complicated, broken human system. The political systems, religious systems, empires, corruption and fear. God so loved it all.

And how does God love it? By entering it. God doesn’t stand at a distance demanding payment. God enters the human story. God becomes flesh. God takes on vulnerability, poverty, friendship, betrayal, suffering. From birth to death, Jesus lives inside our reality and tries to show us that God is not somewhere else. God is here. God is among us. God is within us.

And what is the response of human beings to the Christ? They kill him. Out of fear because they have a deep need to protect their power and control. God does not kill Jesus. We do.

And even then, John tells us, God’s purpose is not condemnation. “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

In John’s Gospel, eternal life is not just about what happens after we die. Eternal life is a present, lived reality. It is life lived in the light. It is life lived in union with divine love here and now. We don’t earn it because Jesus died for our sins. You cannot earn eternal life because it is already freely given.

God’s love and grace are free, all the time. God so loved the world, the whole world, all people, at all times, regardless of who they are or what they’ve done. To live in that love is to live in eternal life, because God’s love is the very substance of this crazy, beautiful universe. Unlike Nicodemus, sneaking around in the middle of the night trying to figure it all out, what if we simply woke up to it? What if we embraced it, without needing to analyze or measure how much God loves us, and instead allowed that love to wash over us, take root in us, and then spill out into the world?

It wasn’t the blood of Jesus spilled out to redeem us from our sins, it was his love.

Amen.