What is Mission?

The Second Sunday of Lent, and today’s Gospel is one of the most, if not the most famous Bible passages of all time.

Often the exclusive property of one brand of Christianity. I remember when living in the United States that this verse was printed on mugs, on flags, on stationery, and even on a paper bag from a clothing store. Imagine walking out of Marks and Spencer with a Bible verse written on the front of it.  It just doesn’t happen here. It was cultural Christianity at work. John 3:16 is often referred to as the Gospel in a nutshell:

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

Is it as simple as that? In theological college, our brilliantly challenging Principal, standing in front of a post-lunch lecture room of tired ordinands, took great pleasure in waking us all up…. by asking us, one by one, to stand and tell the room in a single sentence: What is mission?

You have never seen a more terrified group of people….How can you possibly sum up the mission of God in one sentence? Many of the ordinands said, “Well, of course, it’s John 3:16. For God so loved the world that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life…”, to which he answered, “Yeeeees… what does that actually mean?”. We shared a variety of ideas and concepts, and the point of the task was to test our theology against the real world. A testing dialogue between principal and students.

And in this passage from John’s Gospel, we hear of a testing dialogue between Christ and a man named Nicodemus. Nicodemus, who comes to Jesus in the wilderness of night was Questioning and curious. Nicodemus was a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin: educated, respected, morally upright. He did not dismiss Jesus as others did; Rather he respected him as a rabbi. But why did he come at night? Night in John’s Gospel is never just about the clock. John has a significant focus on darkness and light. Night is a spiritual condition. Night is confusion, partial sight. Night is standing near the light but not yet stepping fully into it. Nicodemus was disorientated.

Jesus was dismantling his categories. And don’t we all love categories and simple answers? Nicodemus had spent his life mastering the law, mastering religious language. And Jesus tells him, you cannot master the kingdom. You must be born into it. It doesn’t take much imagination to understand what that kind of night feels like. Disorientation. An old map that is no longer working as well as it once did. This kind of spiritual disorientation is felt by many in our current age. It is certainly one reason we are sharing together in this year’s Lent lecture series at this Cathedral on the concept of truth for this time in history.

Nicodemus continues to question and challenge, trying to make sense of Christ when he says to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?”. This rather humorous back-and-forth about being born again is Nicodemus genuinely trying to understand. Christ is not speaking in physical terms but in spiritual ones.

“Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”

Nicodemus hears only biology. He is thinking about physical rebirth. Christ is speaking the Kingdom of God language. Being born of the Spirit. Being born from above. “The wind blows where it chooses… you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.” Wind the word ‘pneuma’ is the same word for Spirit.

Then comes the honest and perhaps most compelling question of all from Nicodemus: “How can these things be?”

In the darkness and in the disorientation, I wonder if this question comes to us all at times: How can these things be? How can these things be? Nations warring against nations as we witnessed over the weekend. To which Christ answers not with easy explanations or a blueprint to faith, but with himself.

God so loved the world. And the word for “world” in John  Kosmos  does not mean a neutral planet. It means the whole tangled system of humanity in rebellion and longing. Here is where Lent meets mission.

In mission and in life, predictable outcomes are desirable. Clear metrics. Strategic plans that guarantee growth. But it isn’t always that easy. As ordinands in theological college, we all wanted an easy answer to the question, “What is mission?”

Yet the complexity and breadth of our answers spoke more truthfully about mission. Like any good teacher, there is always more. More to learn, more than meets the eye. The hard truth comes when there are no easy answers. Sometimes what holds us back in faith and what holds the Church back from mission is not hostility from the culture or a lack of good answers, but our attachment to control.

But Jesus says the Spirit moves like the wind. Very unpredictable.

What is mission? Well, I don’t have a single sentence answer for you. Well not a good one anyway. All I do know from my experience this far, is that the mission of God is unpredictable and unmeasurable at times because life is paradoxical, unpredictable, and often perishing. And yet, as a Church, we are called and sent into our beautiful and searching world to loosen our grip on control, on easy answers, on shallow theology and to be brave enough to believe that the kingdom of God is still moving, still blowing in directions we cannot see or predict.

Lent 2026 might just be a Nicodemus moment. Coming to Christ in lent might look like, bringing our “How can these things be?” questions. Our “What is truth?” questions. Even our “How can Christ possibly be at work today?” questions.

And here is the grace-filled thing about Nicodemus; we do not know the whole of his story of his encounter in the wilderness of night. But we do know that it was not the end of his journey. John’s Gospel tells us that Nicodemus is there at the burial of Christ, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes to honour him. The one who first came in darkness comes, finally, in costly devotion.

We do not know all the details of what happened in his heart between night and burial. But perhaps that is the point.

The Spirit moves like the wind.