Sermon for Sunday, March 1, 2026 || Lent 2A || John 3:1-17

This sermon is about the cultivation of that wonderful gift of God known as curiosity. The older I get, the more I realize what I don’t know and the more I value curiosity. It’s strange. There seems to be an inverse relationship here. When I was younger, I should have been more curious, but I thought I knew way more than I did, so I did not cultivate curiosity. Now that I am edging into my mid-forties, my curiosity piques all the time. I get excited to learn new things, to explore topics that I never knew would interest me until I started digging into them. I love being curious.

During my school days, I definitely explored topics that interested me – the electoral college in 4th grade stands out in my memory. But more often than not, I was too concerned with maintaining my image as the perfect student to risk too much curiosity. Indeed, perfectionism is the enemy of curiosity. I succumbed to the lure of this enemy one day in fifth grade. We had a math quiz on something having to do with fractions. It was a self-graded quiz, and as my teacher went over the answers, I realized that I had not understood something and all my answers were off by a zero. So instead of marking them wrong, I cheated and wrote in the missing zeroes. I was so concerned with my standing as the student who knew what he was doing that I did not take the opportunity to ask my teacher to explain what I had done wrong. I chose false perfection over authentic curiosity.

Jesus recognizes this same thing happening in his conversation partner from today’s Gospel reading. The Pharisee Nicodemus is stuck in the narrow box made by his own standing in society, his need to be seen as an expert. And Jesus sees it as his duty to break Nicodemus out of the box. The narrator tells us that Nicodemus comes to Jesus by night, presumably so his companions on the council would not know of the visit. So we can rule out that Nicodemus has come to Jesus as a representative of the council. No. He’s there on his own time.

That Nicodemus would seek out Jesus shows that he has the capacity for curiosity. But his first line of dialogue demonstrates that he has not exercised his curiosity muscle in a long, long time. Nicodemus calls Jesus a teacher and then proceeds to shut off any path to Jesus teaching him anything.

“We know,” he begins. We know. This is not the posture of a willing student. “We know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.”

I think Jesus recognizes Nicodemus’s dormant curiosity trying to wake up, and so Jesus engages Nicodemus in some ambiguous wordplay. “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” The phrase “born from above” can also be translated “born again.” The original Greek word is ambiguous, and I think Jesus intends this ambiguity.

Next, Nicodemus succeeds in asking a question, unlike his first line of dialogue, but the question is a sarcastic one. Come on, he seems to say. You’re just messing with me. How “can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?”

Jesus speaks about a spiritual birth that goes beyond physical birth. And then Jesus hits him with more ambiguity: “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” The word ‘wind’ is the ambiguous one here because it could also be translated ‘Spirit.’ This intentional ambiguity wakes up Nicodemus’s dormant curiosity, and he finally asks a risky question.

“How can these things be?”

Now that Nicodemus is being curious, Jesus takes the opportunity to teach him deep truths about God’s reconciling love. In one short conversation, Jesus breaks Nicodemus free of the box of his expertise. Nicodemus embraces curiosity, which leads him on a new path, one that takes him all the way to the cross.

Each of us can put ourselves in Nicodemus’s place in this story. Each of us can come to Jesus and ask him to open us up, to help us embrace a beginner’s mind, to prompt us to ask questions. This is the only way we will grow into the people God is calling us to become.

God invites each of us to cultivate our own curiosity for a multitude of reasons. Here are five of them. First, curiosity is an antidote for fear. Fear comes from a place of rigid judgment; curiosity comes from a place of expectant openness. 

Second, curiosity allows us to overcome our biases. When we meet someone new, whose identity differs from ours in one or more ways, we can choose to be curious about their experience. Rather than categorizing them due to facets of their identity, we can choose to get to know them personally. This choice widens our understanding of the diverse palette of humanity, all thanks to curiosity.

Third, curiosity helps us to have difficult conversations. When we’re having a challenging discussion with someone and they put forward a position that we vehemently disagree with, rather than condemning them or shutting down the conversation, we can choose to get curious. We can ask them this: “I’m curious about how you came to that understanding. Can you share a story about how that become part of your worldview?” Such curiosity can change the whole tone of a conversation and turn it into an opportunity for learning. Our curiosity does not signal agreement with the other position, but it does deepen our understanding of the story of the one with whom we disagree.

Fourth, curiosity destroys perfectionism. If we maintain a posture of curiosity, we never fall into the trap of thinking we need to be perfect about anything. We can risk asking the teacher why we got stuff wrong on the math quiz.

Fifth, curiosity helps us embrace new things. When I was a kid, I was a very picky eater. I definitely approached new foods with an attitude that I would not like them. This attitude persisted until I was 27 when I met Leah. She introduced me to new tastes and slowly, my attitude changed. Instead of pessimism, I started approaching food with curiosity. I went from, “This probably tastes bad” to “I wonder what this tastes like.” Sure, I tried things that weren’t to my taste, but the roadblock was gone.

Jesus ushers Nicodemus into a new realm of understanding once this know-it-all member of the council risks asking a curious question: “How can these things be?” Jesus invites us into this same posture of curiosity. This week, I invite you to exercise your curiosity muscle. Try a new food. Research a topic that you know nothing about. Have a conversation with someone whose point of view differs from yours. Be open, for the wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. Be curious and listen for the wind.

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Banner Image: Photo by Oliver Hihn on Unsplash.