A dramatic reading
Year A, Second Sunday of Lent–12 March 2017
John 3:1- 21 (adapted from the New Revised Standard Version and “The New Testament and Psalms: an inclusive version” published by Oxford University Press in 1995)
Narrator: Today’s reading is taken from John’s Gospel,
the story of the encounter between Jesus and
Nico-demus, a Pharisee and a leader of the Jews.
Nicodemus comes to Jesus by night.
Nicodemus: Rabbi, 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.
Jesus: Nicodemus, very truly, I tell you,
no one can see the realm of God
without being born from above.
Nicodemus:
How can anyone be born after having grown old?
Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb
and be born?
Jesus: Very truly, I tell you,
no one can enter the realm of God
without being born of water and Spirit.
What is born of the flesh is flesh,
and what is born of the Spirit is spirit.
Do not be astonished that I said to you,
‘You must be born from above.’
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.
Nicodemus: How can these things be?
Jesus: Are you a teacher of Israel, Nicodemus,
and yet you do not understand these things?
Very truly, I tell you,
we speak of what we know
and testify to what we have seen.
Yet you do not receive our testimony.
If I have told you about earthly things
and you do not believe,
how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?
No one has ascended into heaven
except the one who descended from heaven,
the Human One.
And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,
so must the Human One be lifted up,
that whoever believes in that one
may have eternal life.
For God so loved the world
that God gave God’s only Child,
so that everyone who believes in that hild may not perish
but may have eternal life.
Indeed, God did not send the Child into the world
to condemn the world,
but in order that through the Child
the world might be saved.
Those who believe in the Child are not condemned.
But those who do not believe are condemned already,
because they have not believed
in the name of the only Child of God.
Jesus: continued…
And this is the judgment:
that the light has come into the world,
and people loved darkness rather than light,
because their deeds were evil.
For all who do evil hate the light,
and do not come to the light,
so that their deeds may not be exposed.
But those who do what is true,
come to the light,
so that it may be clearly seen,
that their deeds have been done in God.’
Narrator: After this,
Jesus and his disciples
went into the Judean countryside,
and he spent some time there with them.
Here ends the reading.
May God bless our hearing with understanding.
