How Can These Things Be
Lent 2; John 3:1-17
Reflect on this encounter in the night -
a literal mind tests signs and teaching heard.
The Rabbi Jesus speaks in metaphor
to lead to truth beyond the factual word.
This Pharisee comes seeking something new:
his walls of laws begin to seem too tight
like mother’s womb to baby ripe for birth,
but still he mocks, lest “born again” prove right.
He’d rather cite the limits of the flesh,
for Spirit seems too nebulous, untamed.
What would he be if he were Spirit born?
What of respect and leadership he’d claimed?
This Jesus says he speaks of what he knows -
does that rings true? Is “God with us” much more
than Nicodemus dreamed, his world made new
and God more loving than he thought before?
If one beloved of God can give his life
to save the world, not righteously condemn,
then how did “born again” become a term
applied to label sides as “us” or “them”?
If God is love, then “others” are all “us”,
progressive and conservative are one
and we might find in world-wide holy books
the love and mercy shown us by God’s Son.
The Spirit like the wind moves where it will,
we don’t know how it comes or where it goes.
Responding in the moment, we are changed
as wind shapes trees to bend the way it blows.
Barbara Messner 25/02/2026
Barb, poet priest 