Look to the Saviour - Sermon for the Second Sunday of Lent (March 1, 2026)

Scripture Readings: Genesis 12:1–4 | Psalm 121 | Romans 4:1–5, 13–17 | John 3:1–17

“And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” (John 3:14-15).
 
Every Lent here at St. Luke’s, we hang up our paintings of the Stations of the Cross, twelve scenes depicting our Lord Jesus Christ’s agonizing journey towards His crucifixion, painted by the artist Sieger Köder. They are powerful pictures, creatively drawing us into the story of our Saviour’s passion and death. But despite… and probably because of their power and the artist’s skill… some of these paintings can be hard to look at. In them we can see up close the suffering and agony that our Saviour endured. And in some of them, we can also see glimpses of the heartbreak of those who loved Him, standing by powerless to stop His pain… and we are invited to imagine sharing in their grief and pain as well. 
 
Many things in life are terribly painful… and can be very hard for us to look at. To call to mind, and acknowledge the impact that they still have on our lives. Painful memories. Traumatic losses. Dreaded diagnoses. Damage done within our relationships.

It’s hard to look closely at these kinds of things, and so, it can be really tempting at times to just try to avoid it all… to avoid these things that make us feel unsettled, regretful, vulnerable… and maybe even condemned. I mean, why would we want to dwell on and look closely at things that are so painful and upsetting?
 
Well, one reason would be if there was someone who actually had the power… not to take them away per se… but to transform these things that we experience as evil into something very different… into a means of experiencing real healing, forgiveness, and even blessing for us and for our world. 
 
In that case, we’d be left with a choice: to keep on trying to avoid it all… or to place our trust in the one who claims the power to save us. To choose to trust in their intentions and in their ability to rescue us... or to keep on closing our eyes.
 
In our Gospel reading today we hear the well known story of Jesus and Nicodemus… of their secret, nighttime meeting, and their famous conversation about faith. In this passage we find one of the most well known sentences in the whole Bible, John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
 
And this passage is one of the notes that rings true all the way through the symphony of the Scriptures… the story of the Living God’s gracious, self-giving love reaching out to save His beloved world. We heard echoes of this same note in our first reading today from Genesis 12:1-4, where God chooses Abram and his family to experience His blessings themselves, and to play a pivotal role in bringing God’s blessings to all of the other families of the earth. 
 
But if that’s the case… if the story of Scripture is about God’s rescuing love reaching out to embrace the world… we might find ourselves asking: why are there so many people in our world today not being saved? 
 
Well, that’s a big question that I won’t pretend we can answer completely this morning. But there are a few things we should say in response to it in light of the Scriptures.

First of all, the kind of salvation we’re talking about here does not mean completely avoiding suffering, or every evil experience… at least for now. One day, yes, that will be the case! One day, we are promised a new Creation, and eternal life without pain or suffering, or tears. But not yet. Not until this current age of the world comes to an end, and the Risen Lord returns to set the world right once and for all. Until that day, we may still face great tragedies, and suffering… but we also believe that God remains with us, and that He will bring us through those difficult times, faithfully leading us towards His blessed eternal life.
 
And the second thing we need to remember is that throughout the Scriptures we see that God’s salvation is offered to us, but it is not forced upon us. It’s an invitation to receive a gift… but a gift we can also reject. And so, sadly, not everyone will believe the Good News of God’s saving love offered to us all in Jesus Christ… at least for now. I mean after all, who knows how everyone’s lives will unfold? Or how the LORD will be at work in their life, drawing them towards faith? Or how God might work through people like you and I to make the truth of His Good News known to them?  

The truth is, we really don’t know how anyone else in our world will respond to God’s great gift of salvation. But what we do know is that God’s intentions towards them… towards our whole world… is love! And we know that God’s ability to save them has been made known through His Son, Jesus Christ. Both of these gifts, God’s love and His gift of salvation… offered to us and to all, require faith… trust… belief… if we are to receive them, and to share in them. 
 
And so, in our Gospel passage, we find Jesus presenting Nicodemus, and all of us with a choice… a crisis moment: how will we respond to the gracious gift of God’s saving love through His Son? Will we believe, or not?
 
Reading beyond verses 16-17, this choice laid out in pretty striking terms. John 3:16-18, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. He who believes in him is not condemned; he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”

Choosing to believe or not has consequences either way. Just like choosing to receive or refuse an antidote when we’ve been poisoned has pretty clear consequences as well.
 
And so, here we find Nicodemus… and maybe ourselves as well… caught in a pretty tight spot. He was a teacher of Israel, and a Pharisee, someone who took God’s ways seriously, and who had sought to help guide his fellow Israelites to live rightly… awaiting the coming day of God’s great salvation… the day of the LORD, when God would set all things right, and rescue Abraham’s faithful descendants from their enemies, to share in God’s blessed life forever. 
 
But then here comes Jesus… doing and saying so many things that seemed at the same time both out of place… like challenging many of the teachings and practices that Nicodemus and his fellow Pharisees had built their lives upon… while at the same time offering powerful glimpses of God’s own hand at work… signs that were increasingly hard to deny… or to simply explain away. 
 
Nicodemus was in a hard spot: having to choose between two diverging paths stretching out before him: to stick with the path he already knew, or to follow this One who might just turn everything upside down... but who also seemed to have an undeniable connection to the Living God. And so, Nicodemus takes a big step. He meets with Jesus in secret one night, and says to Him: “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do, unless God is with him. Jesus answered him, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” (John 3:2-3).
 
Unless one is born anew… or born from above, as some translations put it… they cannot see the Kingdom of God. In these words, Jesus acknowledges the truth that big changes are needed to truly experience the life of the Kingdom. Not changes that can be accomplished all on our own… no, we need changes that come from above… changes that have their source in the grace of the Living God and His Holy Spirit at work in us. 
 
Just like a baby can’t make themselves be born, Jesus is saying that the life of the Kingdom is not within our grasp. We just can’t get there on our own steam. We can’t make it happen, or bring it about. But we can receive it. We can have it given to us. But how? Again and again, the Good News tells us, we receive God’s grace by faith! By trusting God, and turning towards Him with our hearts and lives open to Him. 
 
And then Jesus takes this whole conversation in a strange new direction, and brings up a strange story from long ago… from the days of Israel’s wanderings in the wilderness, when Moses lifted up a snake. What’s going on here?
 
Well, this story of Moses and the snake comes from the Book of Numbers Chapter 21, when God’s people were suffering and dying, plagued by poisonous snakes. But then, God tells Moses to create a surprising antidote: another snake but made of bronze… an enduring replica of the source of their suffering… and he was to lift it up, so that anyone who looks on it would be saved… while those who don’t, won’t. 
 
Numbers 21:5-9, “The people spoke against God and against Moses, ‘Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food. [by which they meant the manna God gave to them].’ Then the Lord sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died. The people came to Moses and said, ‘We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you; pray to the Lord to take away the serpents from us.’ So Moses prayed for the people. And the Lord said to Moses, ‘Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.’ So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.”
 
When faced with the agony of the serpent’s power, the Israelites were give a choice: to trust in God’s remedy as strange as it may have seemed, and receive life, or not. But to trust meant to not avoid looking at the snake. It meant turning to face the painful, and terrifying reality before them in full, all the while trusting God to transform it from being a threat into a gift of mercy. From the source of agony into the source of healing… and of forgiveness. 

After all, the serpents were there in the first place because the people had sinned. They had brought this suffering on themselves. And yet even so, God had turned their punishment into a sign and experience of His mercy… as a moment meant not to destroy them, but to reinforce their need to trust in Him… to place their faith an their lives in His hands, so they could truly walk in His good ways, share in His blessed life, and bring that blessing to the world around them. 
 
Lots of our experiences of pain and suffering come from life in general. Tragedies strike both the good and the bad alike. But sometimes, we do bring suffering on ourselves. And when we do, we can’t always avoid facing the consequences of our selfish and sinful actions. 
 
But that doesn’t mean that God can’t transform even our mistakes and messes into a sign and taste of His mercy… offering us forgiveness and freedom even in those moments when we least deserve them.  The question becomes: when we mess up and sin, will we dare to look to our Saviour? Will we not try to avoid His all-knowing eyes, as painful and as hard as that may be… and honestly confess our faults to Him… trusting that even then He will not turn us away?
 
The Good News is we have good reasons to believe… to trust in His mercy that go far beyond just wishful thinking. For as Moses lifted up the serpent, so Jesus, the Son of Man, was lifted up on the cross for the world to see… so that whoever believes in Him will not perish, but will have eternal life. 
 
The cross is a constant reminder of our sins… a sign pointing to the source of all of our world’s wreckage… and a painful reminder that our own hands have played a part in making such an awful mess of things here on earth. And yet, through Jesus His Son, God has transformed the sign of our condemnation into a sign of His incredible mercy… His remedy for all our sins… and He calls us again and again to look at His Son, hung from the cross for all to see, and to see there God’s own self-giving, saving love at work, and graciously offered to us all.
 
And not only that, but now the cross is a sign of hope… because of what happened after! Yes, Jesus first endured the agony of the cross, but He was then raised up from the dead, to be God’s Saviour for us and for our world. And those of us who believe in Him now have this same hope alive in ourselves. The hope that because of Jesus, we too will get to share in God’s blessed and eternal life… not instead of times of suffering and pain, but on the other side of it. The hope that comes from knowing that nothing we might face… no trauma, or tragedy, or regret, or pain… even if we have brought this pain upon ourselves, is greater than the saving love and the mercy of the Living God made known and offered to our world in Jesus Christ our Saviour. 
 
So then, as we make our own journey through Lent together… may we keep our eyes fixed firmly on Jesus at the cross… even when it’s hard. Even when it makes us feel and think about things that we find uncomfortable… or painful. Even then, may we continue to look at Him at the cross with the eyes of faith… and see in His face God’s precious gift of life, offered to us all, even while we least deserved it… trusting that He’s looking at us all with eyes full of mercy and love… longing for us to believe in Him, and receive the blessings that His love has in store. Amen.