This is a translation of the homily for the Second Sunday of Trinity (year III), in Uskedal Church and Ænes in Kvinnherad, Norway, Sunday 22nd June, 2025. The readings are as follows: Ezekiel 36:25-29; Romans 6:3-8; and John 3:1-13. Unless otherwise noted, when quoting Scripture, I will use the Revised Standard Version, Second Catholic Edition (RSV-2CE), corrected to British spelling.
Collect of the day (translated by yours truly):
Let us Pray:
Life-giving God, you have created us for communion with you and born us anew of water and the Spirit. We pray: Let us remain in the grace of baptism, so that we can live as the disciples of Jesus, He who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one true God, world without end. Amen.
In today’s Gospel we meet Nicodemus, who was a member of the High Council, what was called the Sanhedrin. We can compare it to a parliament, but at that time it was not democratic. Those who sat in the Council were from high-ranking families and they were often very rich. And there sat this Nicodemus, and he was a teacher of the Old Testament law. He had both religious, social, and legal authority. He was a man who was looked up to, and he chose to go to Jesus, at night, to talk to him, because he and many others realised that there was something special about Jesus. And the first thing Jesus says to him is this: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” But Nicodemus did not understand what he meant. “How can a man be born when he is old?” he asked. “Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.”
Jesus points, then, to baptism. Baptism is the place where God gives us a share in his salvation. As I say at the beginning of the baptismal liturgy:1 “Through baptism, God receives us and unites us with the crucified and resurrected Jesus Christ.” Before baptism, I mark the baptismal candidate with the holy sign of the cross as a sign (or a testimony) that he or she “will belong to the crucified and risen Jesus Christ, and believe in him.”2 And after baptism, I say to the baptised person: “The almighty God has now given you his Holy Spirit, made you one of his children and accepted you into the fellowship of his faithful people. May God strengthen you with his grace to eternal life. Peace be with you.”3
But why do we have baptism? Well, first of all, because Jesus instituted baptism. At the end of the Gospel of Matthew, he said: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:18-20). We baptise because Jesus said we should do so, and Jesus is the Lord of the church. But that does not tell us why baptism is important, it only tells us that it is. But why did Jesus instituted baptism? I believe He did so because He wanted to give us something concrete, something we can see, experience, and feel, since we are not angels or spirits, but humans, corporeal beings. We call baptism a “sacrament.” That is not a biblical term, but it captures what the Bible teaches about baptism and about the Eucharist. A sacrament is often defined as “a visible means by which God gives us his invisible grace” or as a “visible sign of an invisible grace,” often attributed to St. Augustine.4 And the reason is precisely that we are humans, and that God meets us where we are, here in this world, through what He has created. He meets us through things we can sense – in the Scriptures, in baptism, and in the Eucharist, to name the top three. Our identity as humans are essentially bodily and physical. Yes, it is so important that God Himself became man, that God became “flesh,” as it says in John 1:14. The new thing about Christianity is not that we can be spiritual, but that God became flesh. God meets us as human beings, and has chosen to use baptism, a bath, to emphasise that He purifies us and takes us into his kingdom. “I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you,” he tells us in today’s first reading, from the prophet Ezekiel. “A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh” (Ezekiel 36:25-26).
And the reason we need baptism, or the salvation we receive in baptism, is that we do not live in paradise, where everything is perfectly good. We live in a fallen world where people do a lot of good, but also where people do a lot of bad. And none of us are innocent. When the Bible sets out the ideal for man, it says this, in Psalm 1:5 “Blessed are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path that sinners tread, or sit in the seat of scoffers; but their delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law they meditate day and night. They are like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither. In all that they do, they prosper” (vv.1-3) This is what we are called to. But we do not live up to this. The Psalm goes on to say, in vv.4-6: “The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous; for the LORD watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.”
We need salvation, we need grace. And this is what we call the gospel. It is that Christ came to us, that He gave God what we are called to give, that He took on the responsibility for us. God Himself stepped in and made amends for us, atoned for our sins. Because he was truly blesses. He lived the life we are called to. Jesus is not just true man, as well as true God. He is the true man, the only one who truly has fulfilled what the Psalm tells us about the blessed. He is not only human by nature, but He lives the human life the way we are called to. He is our representative before God, living the life we are called to, in obedience to Him. Jesus sacrificed Himself for us. He gave God the sacrifice that we could not. He lived life as the perfect man, and as our representative, in our place. Jesus lived as a man, and lived in the obedience we are called to. He fulfilled the law of God. And through baptism, as through the word, this is given to us for salvation.
This is expressed quite explicitly in the apostle Peter’s first epistle, where he uses Noah’s ark as an image: “God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water. And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you” (1 Peter 3:20-21). Here, baptism is primarily about salvation from sin. And we see the same in our creeds, such as the Nicene Creed, where we confess “one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.”
We must insist that when we baptise – be it children, young people, or adults – we do so in order that they may share in Jesus, that they may be baptised into His death, but also into His resurrection. We share in His victory over evil, sin, and death. This is the foundation at the center of our faith: “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” (John 3:16). And this is worked in us by the Holy Spirit. In Him, we receive salvation and new life, as Paul writes in his letter to Titus (3:5): “[God] saved us, not because of any works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy, through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.”6
We cannot capture the Spirit in our own terms and concepts. He is completely free. He is God. “The wind blows where it wills,” says Jesus says in today’s Gospel, “and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.” In Greek there is one word, pneũma, which means both spirit, wind, and breath. We cannot capture the Spirit. He works in us, as He wills, for salvation and peace. And this is important. It is the Spirit who gives us this. We do not create it ourselves, and there is nothing we can do to it or from it. We only need to receive it in faith. This is given to us in baptism, completely free, and we are allowed to receive it. You did not baptise yourself, you were baptised by someone else, someone outside. I myself was baptised on 23rd October, 1983, and was not even three months old. I could do nothing but trust and receive. And that is precisely what we are called to, as Jesus says: “Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it” (Mark 10:15).
Baptism is and remains a gift, not our achievement. And we can always look back to the grace of baptism. It is something concrete, it is something tangible. Baptism is something I can point to and say, “There I was adopted as a child of God.” So it does not depend on my own works, on my own efforts. Everything is grace. To quote Paul again, from the letter to Titus (3:5): “[God] saved us, not because of any works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy, through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.” But when we are saved, we also receive a call to live a new life. In today’s first reading, God says, through the prophet Ezekiel: “And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances” (Ezekiel 36:27).7
The Spirit works in us, not only for salvation, but for new life and for a new way of life. He helps us to live with Jesus as Lord. But as I said, we cannot capture the Spirit in our own concepts. He is completely free. He is God. As Jesus says: “The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.” But then Jesus says something interesting. He does not say “so it is with the Spirit.” He says “so it is with every one who is born of the Spirit.” When we are born of the Spirit, we will also be led by the Spirit. And we cannot put this leadership into a formula. The Spirit is in us, and leads us forward. But each and every one of us have different tasks. We are called to live in the world, as God’s disciples, but we live in freedom, a freedom that has been given to us to use for good, where we are allowed to walk in the works that God has prepared for us. This does not mean that God has laid down a finished, detailed plan that we must follow. He has given us freedom within certain limits. And within those limits we are to live in the Holy Spirit, who “blows where He wills.”
So it does not stop with baptism. God calls us to live a Christian life, which also means growing up in this, just as you must live and grow in your natural life. And here we come to the responsibility we have as a church and as a church body, and the responsibility parents and godparents have. The responsibility is both physical – the daily care – but also spiritual: not only the values, teachings and views we pass on, but also the practice, or in fact first and foremost the practice. We sing hymns, we pray, we read and hear the word of God, we gather around the altar to celebrate the Eucharist. In order to live and grow in the Christian faith, one must also be introduced to it. One does not learn to pray by reading about prayer. One learns to pray by praying, and by seeing others praying. But parents and godparents do not stand alone. As a church, we are involved, both those of us who have the church as our daily workplace and all those who are gathered here.
We must all pray for those who are being baptised. We must all take the responsibility of spiritual upbringing seriously. Show care for your children and for everyone they meet and come into contact with. Pray for them, teach them to pray themselves and help them to use the word of God and participate in the Eucharist, so that they can live and grow in the Christian faith. For everyday life is lived in the home, so faith must also be lived out there. Always remember your baptism. For we can always seek back to the grace of baptism, and to God.
The new life is about constantly going back to baptism. This is the opposite of the idea that we can make ourselves worthy of grace. We should therefore look back to the work of God in which we became part of his church, the body of Christ, without our doing anything for it other than simply receiving. Receiving, we get to share in the life that God has given us, the fellowship we have with him in Christ.
The baptismal gown is an image of this. It is white, and is supposed to represent Jesus Christ, that we belong to Him, that we are clothed in Him. It is, as you have probably seen, a little too long. It is supposed to symbolise that we must grow in it. And we see the same symbolism further. We see it in the confirmation gown, which is supposed to be an image of the baptismal gown, and we see it in my vestments, which is also supposed to be a baptismal gown. This gown is called an alb, from the Latin alba, which means “white.” The point is that Jesus cleanses us and gives us new life, as it says in today’s first reading: “I [God] will will deliver you from all your uncleannesses” (Ezekiel 36:29). Remember that. Remember to constantly remind yourself that you are baptised. There, in a very concrete event, you became a child of God. Base your hope in that, in God’s work, and not in your own efforts.
For the gospel is precisely this, that everything is grace, that God forgives you for everything you have done wrong and sets you free. To conclude, I want to finish with some verses from the Old Testament, Micah 7:18-20, which are the final words of that book. These function as a great prayer of thanks to God for all that He has done for us, on the cross and in the resurrection, and what He gives us, through faith, in the word, in baptism, and in the Eucharist:
Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity
and passing over transgression
for the remnant of his inheritance?
He does not retain his anger for ever
because he delights in mercy.
He will again have compassion upon us,
he will tread our iniquities under foot.
You will cast all our sins
into the depths of the sea.
You will show faithfulness to Jacob
and mercy to Abraham,
as you have sworn to our fathers
from the days of old.Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, who was, is, and will remain, one true God, world without end. Amen.
See (Stavanger: Eide/Kyrkjerådet, 2020, hereafter: GDNK 2020), 263 (translation, pdf, p. 1). Original: “I dåpen tek Gud imot oss og sameinar oss med den krossfeste og oppstadne Jesus Kristus.” For online sources, with translations, see this page for liturgical resources of the Church of Norway.
GDNK 2020, 268 (translation, pdf, p. 6). Original: “Eg teiknar deg med det heilage krossmerket ✠ til vitnemål om at du skal høyra den krossfeste og oppstadne Jesus Kristus til og tru på han.”.
GDNK 2020, 269 (translation, pdf, p. 7). Original: “Den allmektige Gud har no gjeve deg sin heilage Ande, fødd deg på nytt og teke deg inn i sin truande kyrkjelyd. Gud styrkje deg med sin nåde til det evige livet. Fred vere med deg.”.
For his similar phrase, discussing the nature of the priest (in response to the Donatists), see St. Augustine, Epistulae, 105, 3.12: “If he [the priest] is good, he clings to God and works with God, but if he is bad, God produces through him the visible form of the sacrament, but God himself gives the invisible grace.” See St. Augustine, Letters, vol. 2, in The Works of Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, part II, ed. Boniface Ramsey, trans. Roland Teske (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2003), 60, cf. 54-64.
I have made one change. I have substituted “blessed” for “happy” in v. 1.
I substituted “washing” for “water,” as that is the more correct translation of the Gk. loutrón.
Since I always read the Old Testament in light of the New, and particularly in light of Christ and His revelation, I have chosen to change the capitalisation in the word “Spirit.”