Lectionary Readings: Year A – Second Sunday in Lent
When I first heard the phrase “The proof is in the pudding,” my first thought was not about what the proof was, but about the type of pudding. Vanilla? Chocolate? Turns out its meat. Animal flesh. Sausage to be exact. This phrase originated in the 1600s, and referred to the pudding – the mixture of ground meat, spices and vegetables – that was stuffed into intestines to make sausages. You couldn’t tell how this would all turn out until it was all cooked – who is going to eat raw meat, after all – and then you could taste it. The original phrase was, “The proof in the pudding is in the tasting.” Once it was cooked, you could determine if your recipe was any good. Figuratively, this came to mean that you have to experience something, to test it before you could make an assessment. As time progressed, the phrase was shortened first to “the proof in the pudding,” and then morphed into “the proof is in the pudding.”
Now, I know you might be wondering why I’m talking about sausages and phrases that started out in the 1600s but evolved into something else over time. After all, isn’t the Gospel today about this famous conversation with Nicodemus about being “born again?” Doesn’t it include the famous line, “For God so loved the world?” What’s this about pudding?
Well, this phrase in our scripture today, being “born again,” has also changed over time. The Greek can mean either “again,” or “from above,” and you see that the version that the Deacon read today says “born from above.” To the original author of the Gospel, being “born again” did not have the same meaning as it does today. Nowadays, to be “born again” means that you had an encounter with the Messiah, and you chose to believe in Christ as the savior of the world. It’s a personal experience. It’s internal. It’s a mental and emotional decision that can happen at any time. And, and it puts the decision, the action, firmly on the one who believes. It is a concept of faith that came about in the Great Awakening, during which people were told that the rituals and traditions of the church did not hold as much importance as their own experience. In a way, this made people more self-aware of their own sin, and democratized the church, but it also set up the idea that spiritual rebirth was somehow dependent upon us as individuals and our choices – and not at the initiation of the God of all.
However, when you read the conversation with Nicodemus with the idea of being “born from above,” you are reminded that none of this works unless there is a God, and that it is at God’s invitation that we are even able to enter into God’s kingdom. There’s still the element of personal decision, but it makes a community of faith that seeks to make the Kingdom of God known on earth an absolute necessity. It is not a private, personal, or individual endeavor, but a public and communal one.
For several centuries after Christ’s death and resurrection, the idea of being “born again” – or “born from above” – meant that you were baptized with water. One of the clearest places we can see this is in Romans, chapter 6, where Paul says that we were baptized into Christ’s death, and therefore we died to sin. And, just like Jesus was raised from the dead by the glory of God, we too were raised into new life through our baptism. This was the “rebirth” that the church spoke of for centuries. You experienced “rebirth,” being “born again,” in the water of your baptism, when you renounced Satan and the former life you were living – that former life where you lived as if God did not exist, and in which the focus of your life was not the Kingdom of God, but you and your own desires.
In a document called the Apostolic Tradition, written in the third or fourth century, we see a description of those who wanted to join the church – called catechumens. It says, “Let Catechumens spend three years as hearers of the word.”1 Then, it says, those “who are to be set apart for baptism shall be chosen after their lives have been examined: whether they have honored the widows, whether they have visited the sick, whether they have been active in well-doing.”2 After their sponsors had testified that these people had lived worthy lives, they were then brought to the water and baptized. And the bishop would pray over them to receive the grace of God through the Holy Spirit. And once they were baptized, they could then receive Communion.
Talk about a process! Three years to join a church. Three years to experience “rebirth” – to be “born of water” at baptism. And not only that, people had to see that you had amended your life, and that you lived in community with the goal of working for the benefit of those who could not work for themselves. They had to see that your life was oriented above, that you had been born of the Spirit, and that you were seeking the Kingdom of God. You could say that the community of believers wanted to experience you and how you lived in the community before you could be baptized. They wanted to see the proof in the pudding.
Think of what we have now. Instead of three years of catechism, we just require that people spend at least three Sundays in church. You know, Christmas, Easter, and maybe the Sunday closest to your birthday so that you get a blessing from the priest. You’re expected to give at least a dollar or two, or maybe some of your time, and boom! you’re eligible for baptism.
Simultaneously with the idea that faith was an individual, and not a communal practice, society changed over time, and the world became more divided on issues such as religion, sex, and politics. What you believed in any of these areas became deeply private – and lacking accountability to a group. Religion especially took an ever more individual turn, and we now define ourselves by what we claim to believe, rather than how we live or behave. That is, our identity is wrapped up in what we say, rather than what we do.
Since faith is now considered personal, and private, you could show up on Sunday – even just three times a year – and then be a royal wretch the other six days of the week. Without the focus on being born “of water and the Spirit,” and without a focus on the above, that is, God’s Kingdom, it is far too easy to assume that if we’ve been baptized that our own actions have completed everything there is to complete in this journey of our faith. But even John’s gospel – in this conversation with Nicodemus – provides us with more understanding of what it means to be “born from above.”
John’s gospel has a lot of themes like darkness and light, public and private, truth and lies, evil and unbelief. In today’s Gospel, it says that Nicodemus came to Jesus in the darkness of night. He was a leader of the Jews. And he clearly understands part of Jesus’ identity, because he says that “we know you are a teacher who has come from God, because no one can do these things apart from the presence of God.” And then in their conversation, Jesus tells him he needs to be born of the water and the spirit. And Nicodemus cannot understand what Jesus is talking about. What this Jesus character is saying to him sounds nuts. Totally nuts. And so, he leaves Jesus.
But this conversation was less about Nicodemus and his level of understanding, and more about explaining the process that comes with being “born from above.” You see, Nicodemus was part of the leadership of a group of people who were actively opposed to Jesus and his teaching. He came to talk to Jesus because he understood that God had sent Jesus, but he came privately, in the darkness of the night. He still feared repercussions about coming to Jesus publicly, in the light of the day. What would people think? Especially that group of leaders to whom he belonged? Would he be cast out? How would following Jesus affect his life?
Nicodemus’ battle is one that many people today face. They may understand who Jesus is, and want to be a part of the church, but they are still more concerned with what other people think. Others may find that they are happy to attend church on a Sunday, and then live like someone who has never seen the inside of a church on the other six days. And they can do this, because our understanding of “newness of life,” and being “born again,” has been whittled down to a private and individualized faith. A faith we claim is between me and God alone. A faith that no one is allowed to question, a faith that no one is allowed to confront, and a faith that no one is allowed to correct.
It used to be that the community of faith wanted to see the proof in the pudding before you were invited to the “rebirth” of the waters of baptism. But now we can claim that we are followers of Christ on a whim, because who can really question that statement, since it’s such a private and personal thing? And, when confronted with the suffering of others, when confronted with a poor widow, a crying orphan, or who is sick, we can offer nothing more than “thoughts and prayers.” Why? Because we believe that we’ve already completed the necessary requirements for our salvation. The focus is on us and our own lives, our individual connection with God, rather than on God’s kingdom. God’s kingdom is a kingdom that comes from above, and serves all God’s people, and the rest of the world and is not just a castle in our own minds.
Jesus told Nicodemus that he would need to be born of water and the spirit. We like to look at Nicodemus and use him as an example of someone who rejected Jesus, and who walked away from the faith, because he didn’t understand the concept. But if we continue in John’s Gospel, we see that later on, Nicodemus stood before the other leaders of the people at Jesus’ trial, and he defended Jesus against them. And, after Jesus’ crucifixion, he came alongside Joseph of Arimathea, and publicly helped to bury Jesus. It says that he bought about 75 pounds worth of embalming spices, and he did all of this in the light of day – publicly, among the community of those who followed Jesus. Nicodemus went from spending time with Jesus in the darkness, to sharing in the community’s burdens. You might say that the proof of Nicodemus’ pudding was pretty evident by the end of the Gospel.
This is part of the reason why this story of Nicodemus and Jesus is shared with us during Lent. Jesus tells us that we are to experience being “born from above,” with both water and the Spirit. Baptism by water is a ritual that symbolizes the rebirth that happened through the Holy Spirit, and which prompts us to live in such a way that the Kingdom of Heaven is made manifest on this earth – among a community of believers, and as a beacon of light for the whole world. And Nicodemus is the example of the slow burn, the slow transformation that comes with accepting the invitation from above, from the Spirit, which allowed him – and all of us, together, to become good pudding.
[This sermon was delivered at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Wickenburg, AZ on March 1, 2026.]
- Apostolic Tradition, 17, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/61614/61614-h/61614-h.htm ↩︎
- Apostolic Tradition, 20, Ibid. ↩︎