Called Beyond Our Certitude
Texts: Genesis 12:1–4a and John 3:1–17
Many of us were taught to approach Lent as a kind of spiritual self-improvement season — a holy version of New Year’s resolutions. We give something up, try harder, fix a habit, and aim to become a little more religious.
None of that is necessarily wrong. But it is not deep enough.
Because even that version of Lent can leave the ego in charge: I am controlling my spiritual progress. Lent becomes one more self-management project.
But the deeper Lenten question is not, “What bad habit will I drop?” The deeper question is: What certitudes do I need to release so God can give me new life?
That is where the lessons meet us.
Abram and the Call Beyond Security
In Genesis, Abram is not called into a private spiritual experience. God calls him out — out of land, kinship, inherited identity, and the visible structures that gave him security.
God does not give Abram a map. God gives him a promise.
Abram is called not into private privilege, but into vocation: through him, all the families of the earth will be blessed. This is one of Scripture’s great patterns: God’s call is never just about “me and God.” It is always for the life of the world.
Yet so often we want God to bless our existing arrangements. We want reassurance without disruption. But sometimes grace arrives as dislocation. Sometimes grace comes as a call beyond what has made us feel secure.
Abram had to leave what made him secure.
Nicodemus and the Call Beyond Certainty
Then we meet Nicodemus in John’s Gospel — sincere, educated, respected, religiously serious. He is not a villain. He comes at night, which in John’s Gospel is more than a time stamp; it suggests partial sight, guardedness, and real seeking without yet seeing clearly.
Nicodemus comes to Jesus with respect and categories. He is ready for a theological conversation.
Jesus does not give him a tidy answer.
Instead, Jesus destabilizes his certitude.
The problem is not that Nicodemus is bad. The problem is that he is settled. He wants to understand Jesus through the categories he already has, and Jesus is inviting him into something those categories cannot contain.
“Born Again” and “From Above”
When Jesus tells Nicodemus he must be “born again,” the Greek word he uses (anōthen) carries two meanings at once: again and from above.
Nicodemus hears repetition — as if Jesus is describing a second physical birth. But Jesus is speaking about origin: a life that comes from a deeper source, the life of God.
That distinction matters.
Jesus is not handing Nicodemus a slogan. He is opening a new imagination.
This is why reducing “born again” to a private religious label misses the point of the passage. In John’s Gospel, Jesus is talking about entering and perceiving the Dream of God — a new way of seeing, participating, and being human.
Wind, Spirit, Breath
Jesus then presses the point with another layered word: pneuma — wind, spirit, breath.
You cannot control the wind. You can hear it, feel it, and see what it does, but you cannot possess it.
That is Jesus’ point: the spiritual life is not a technique to master, but a life to receive.
The Spirit is not a possession of the religious. The Spirit is the life of God moving in the world where it will.
And that is where Lent becomes so much more than self-improvement. Practices like prayer, fasting, generosity, and silence are not ways to control God or prove ourselves. They are ways of becoming available — ways of making room for the breath of God in our lives.
Lent as Holy Disruption
So the Lenten question becomes more searching:
What certitudes in me need to die so that new life can be born?
It may be the certitude that says:
I know who I am because of my role.
I know how God works.
I know who is in and who is out.
I know what keeps me safe.
I know what my future must look like.
I know I cannot change.
Lent is not self-hatred. Lent is consenting to God’s holy disruption.
Letting go is not loss for its own sake. It is making room for a new imagination.
What Looks Like Loss Can Become Life
Near the end of this passage, Jesus references the strange wilderness story of Moses lifting up the serpent. It is a weird image — and worth keeping weird.
But the wisdom in it is profound: healing comes not by denial, but by facing the wound in the presence of God.
In John’s Gospel, Jesus connects that image to being “lifted up” — a phrase that points toward the cross. What looks like shame, defeat, and loss becomes the very place where divine love is revealed. What looks like loss becomes the doorway to life.
This is the paradox at the heart of faith: the very things we resist most — uncertainty, the unknown, loss of control — may become the places where God meets us most deeply and calls us into our human vocation.
Abram had to leave what made him secure.
Nicodemus had to release what made him certain.
We are asked to do the same — not for less life, but for more.
Because beyond our certitude lies not chaos, but a deeper kind of trust that opens us to Life itself.