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Second Sunday in Lent • Year A
March 1, 2026
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Historical Collect
Almighty God, look upon the hearty desires of your humble servants and stretch forth the right hand of your majesty to be our defense against all our enemies. Grant this, we pray, through your Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen. (Gregorian Sacramentary, 6th Century)
Thematic Collect
Holy One, through the sacrament of baptism you bring us into your kingdom and grant us eternal life for the sake of your Son, Jesus. Keep us faithful, trusting in your promises of salvation for your creation; through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
The Common Thread
The Lord told Abram to go, and go he did—in faith. When Abram entered the land, it was filled with Canaanites but he trusted the Lord’s promise: “I will give this land.” His life depended upon faith in the Lord—as do our lives. In hope, we believe against hope (Rom 4:18) that we will see the kingdom of God (John 3:3). Our sins mount against us and would derail the hope we have in Christ. Yet our faith is not in a lack of sin, but in him who overcame the sin of a whole world. We have faith in the Son, sent to save an otherwise condemned world.
First Reading • Genesis 12:1–9
The call of God is difficult, yet sweet. Abraham was probably content in worshiping other gods with his father in the land beyond the Euphrates (Josh. 24:2). When God called Abraham “out of the church of the ungodly” (Luther’s Works, Vol. 2), he had him leave the comforts of home and family. The familiarity of life as he knew it was about to change. Such change is difficult. Yet, God was calling Abraham and all his progeny to a sweeter life and land, a land flowing with milk and honey. By faith, Abraham went out and along the way built various altars to the Lord and worshiped the true God. God was not simply calling Abraham to a place; he was calling Abraham to himself, and that was sweet indeed.
Psalm • Psalm 121:1–8
Our journey is sure because God is with us along the way, and because God is the destination. When our eyes are too much upon the traveling, though, we sometimes look for help in the wrong places. We look to the hills (v. 1), but our help is not in the heights or even in higher places. Our aid comes from the One who made the heights and the heavens. He keeps us from evil and guards our very lives. Our footing cannot be moved from the journey to God because God keeps us in the journey to himself.
Second Reading • Romans 4:1–8, 13–17
On the way, Abraham was afforded many opportunities to stumble. All of these possibilities were along the lines of depending upon himself. If he worked harder or was more crafty, he might just make a place for himself and his kin. He tried; he worked hard at it; but he always fell short. His attempts to gain the promises of God were never sufficient, and he gained nothing by all his works. Yet, he still believed the word of the Lord. We will probably never be called to strange lands, yet even in our familiar places, we work hard to live the faith — and we fail. May we, like Abraham, continue to depend upon the One who fulfills his promises to us. For, like it was to Abraham, such faith will be counted to us as righteousness.
Gospel • John 3:1–17
The world comes to Jesus, if it comes to him at all, with some deference. It says, “He was a great teacher” and “Jesus was a good man.” In doing so, the world wants off the hook by not facing who Jesus really was and is. Jesus was such a good teacher that he wondered at being called good (Mark 10:17-18). Nevertheless, he was so much more than a good teacher. The confession of this "something more" is what gets the world off the hook. The same could have been true for Nicodemus that night. Instead, he came to Jesus deferring to him as a good teacher, and perhaps hoping he would also receive deferential treatment. “Keep up the good work!” may have been what he hoped to hear. What he heard though, was the condemnation of the law, spoken by one come from God — yet more than a prophet. “You are dead, Nick, and you must be born again.” This shocked the Pharisee so much that his sarcastic response seems to indicate he did not, at least at first, hear the gospel that Jesus also spoke. First Jesus rattled Nicodemus, and then he told him that by believing in him, Nicodemus could have eternal life.
Resources
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