The Mystery of God’s Love – Br. Lain Wilson
Br. Lain Wilson
Preached at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, Little Rock, Arkansas
The Second Sunday in Lent
Good morning!
On behalf of my Br. Jack, and all my Brothers in Cambridge of the Society of Saint John the Evangelist, it’s such a delight to be with you all this weekend. It’s been such a gift to us to share silence and conversation, to hear about what is active in your all’s spirits, and to talk a bit about our life and vocation.
It’s also a gift to hear this morning one of the key passages of John’s gospel, which is central to our own community’s understanding of who we are.
Nicodemus, whom we meet for the first time in today’s reading from John’s gospel, is one of my favorite figures in the gospels. He’s an enigma with a capital-E. What is his agenda? Who does he represent? What purpose does he serve to John’s narrative? These are all contested questions, and the truth is we just don’t know.
And our own unknowing is, in a way, mirrored by Nicodemus’ own perplexity in his encounter with Jesus. What do you mean, you have to be born again, or from above? How can these things that Jesus describes so cryptically be?
Honestly, I’ll admit . . . I admire Nicodemus. I admire his doggedness. He’s coming to Jesus at night, so presumably he has something to lose in being seen with Jesus – his status, his reputation, maybe even his life. He could be like others and stand afar of, doubting and disparaging this miracle worker. Instead, he wants to learn more. He’s curious about life-and-death matters, about which maybe this Jesus has an answer.
But he wants certainty. His direct responses to Jesus demand the kind of clear-cut answers that Jesus is not able, or not willing, to give him. “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it goes” (John 3:8). For someone who just wants to know, to be sure, to be certain, this is such a wild answer to receive.
I sympathize with Nicodemus, because I too crave certainty and assuredness. I’m sure many of you are the same. I too crave a direct answer when I come to Jesus in prayer. There is so much around us – in our lives, our communities, our nation, our world – that is unsettled and uncertain. The events of the last two days only serve to underscore how unsettled and uncertain our world truly is.[1] If only I, if only we could just hear clearly, “this is what I have planned for you – this is why this is happening.” If only we could hear, “everything will be alright.”
But we often don’t hear that assurance, do we?
So too to this man Nicodemus who comes looking for clarity and assurance in the dark of night. Instead of offering Nicodemus a simple answer, a torch that might light up all before it clearly, Jesus gives Nicodemus a flickering candle, which seems to obscure as much as it illuminates, raising more questions with each answer. Yet in the light of this flickering candle, Jesus isn’t obscuring a simple fact, but rather revealing a mystery, a mystery that is in the very heart of God.
When we think of the word “mystery,” it’s natural to think of it simply as a “lack of information.” This is the mystery of the detective novel, where one clue will break the case wide open. Mystery in this case is about something missing, something absent, a void waiting to be filled. Once we find it, know it, understand it, everything will be better.
But that’s not the only meaning of mystery. There’s also the positive meaning of mystery – that “mystery” itself is not an absence, something we don’t know, but rather a hidden presence. Something like the supermassive black hole at our galaxy’s center: a presence discernible by its effects but hidden from our observation. So too, in addition to whatever may be knowable, certain, sure, there is some hidden kernel that just is mystery – never fully knowable, certain, or sure, except to God alone.
We Brothers name this form of “mystery” in our Society’s Rule of Life, in our chapter on “silence”: “In silence we honor the mystery present in the hearts of our brothers and sisters, strangers and enemies. Only God knows them as they truly are, and in silence we learn to let go of the curiosity, presumption, and condemnation that pretend to penetrate the mystery of their hearts.”[2]
We are invited to behold and stand in awe before this unknowable mystery that is at the very heart of each of us. Even those who are most difficult, whom we may dislike or even hate – even those have present in their hearts mysteries known to, and loved by, God.
What does it mean for you to claim that mystery of your heart?
What does it mean for you to recognize that mystery in the hearts of others?
And what does it mean to hear the great conclusion of today’s gospel – “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life” (John 3:16) – what does it mean to hear this beloved verse less as the conveyance of fact to be understood, and more as the revelation of mystery to behold in awe?
The mystery of God’s love lies at the heart of the Scriptures – that God chose a people for God’s own; that God loved them through all their constant failings and fallings away; that God offers his only Son; that God even now, in all the mess we have made of the world, that God even now loves us – loves you – unconditionally. This great love isn’t a mystery in search of missing facts or clearer answers; it’s a mystery that reveals something fundamental of who God is for us.
And it’s a mystery that invites us to respond, in our lives and in our prayer, with faith and trust. To trust as Abram trusted, called from all that was familiar to embrace something new. To trust as the Psalmist trusted, knowing that God will watch over us, preserve us, and protect us. Indeed, to trust as Jesus himself trusted his Father in his most desperate hour in the garden of Gethsemane: “Abba, Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me; yet, not what I want, but what you want” (Mark 14:36).
To see all that is unsettled and uncertain around us – in our lives, our communities, our nation, our world – all the violence and hatred and resentment and brokenness . . . to see all that, and to trust that God is nevertheless present with us, in ways we can’t, and may never, fully know or understand, present alongside us in our struggles and grieving with us.
To trust that God really, truly, loves us, and loves this world, so much.
And to trust that God offers us the promise of new life, of being born again, if we but stand before the mystery of that great love, and say together, “We believe.”
Amen.
[1] The United States and Israel conducted joint air strikes on Iran beginning on February 28, 2026.
[2] The Rule of the Society of Saint John the Evangelist (Lanham, MD, 1997), 54.