I have been providing video sermons for a few congregations over the COVID season. It has been a blessing in many ways, but the most important lesson for me is that a sermon should provoke a theological response. I don’t have the answers, I have some insight, I don’t have the wisdom, I belong to wise community. This sermon is no different. I want the text to prompt questions and provoke an ongoing conversation.

In this reading we encounter Nicodemus, a leader compelled to hide his questions under cover of darkness. For many of us, we have inherited an expectation that leadership does not allow for questions or even human failings. What does that look like for Nicodemus?