Talofa lava, kia ora, greetings to those of you who have joined us on our livestream. 

I wonder how many of you can relate to being called away from everything you know and love  and asked to begin again.   To leave behind what is familiar.  To step into a place where you do not yet know the terrain, or the expectations, or even who you will become there.  To cross a threshold without a clear map. 

This week, on Saturday the 7th of March, I will quietly mark 35 years of ordination.  Thirty-five years since I said yes to something I had never imagined for myself.  Ministry was not part of my childhood plan.  As a Samoan woman, that pathway was not one I saw laid out clearly in front of me.  It wasn’t that I resisted a call it was that I did not know there was a call to resist. 

And yet, through the merging of traditions, through shifts within the church, a door opened that I had not known existed. I discovered that a female Samoan colleague of mine was training for ministry. And I remember thinking:  “If she can do this… perhaps this is something I can do too.” 

It felt like being handed a passport to a country I didn’t know I was allowed to enter.  A passport into a life I had never envisaged.  And once you glimpse that possibility, once you hear that quiet call, 

you cannot un-hear it.  You can try to ignore it.  You can try to rationalise it away.  But somewhere deep within, you know something has shifted.   Abram: Leaving Without Knowing 

The story we hear in Genesis 12 comes to us from a people who themselves had known displacement. By the time this text took shape in its written form, Israel had experienced exile, upheaval, and the loss of everything that once defined them — land, temple, stability, identity. 

They were asking: Who are we now? Where is God now? Is there still a future? 

Into that collective uncertainty, the ancient storytellers remembered Abram. “Go from your country. Go from your kindred. Go from your father’s house.”  In the ancient Near Eastern world, that instruction was radical. Your land gave you livelihood. Your extended family gave you protection. Your father’s household gave you social standing. 

To leave all of that was to step into vulnerability.  There is no detailed itinerary in this story. 

No strategic plan. No timeline. Only promise. “I will make of you a great nation. I will bless you. 

And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” 

Abram is not chosen instead of others. He is chosen for the sake of others. 

This is one of the great theological movements of the Hebrew Scriptures: 

to be blessed is to become a blessing.  Abram’s call is not about personal spiritual fulfilment. 

It is about participating in a wider good. He steps out so that others may be gathered in. 

Now we turn to the Gospel reading.  In John chapter 3, Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night. 

By the time this Gospel was written toward the end of the first century  the early Christian community was navigating tensions with the synagogue, questions of identity, and the challenge of living faithfully in a changing world. 

Nicodemus is a leader. A Pharisee. A teacher of Israel. He is not a caricature of legalism; he is a thoughtful, sincere seeker.  He comes at night, perhaps out of caution, perhaps out of curiosity. In John’s Gospel, night often symbolises incomplete understanding. Not ignorance, but partial vision. 

He comes with respect:  “Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God.”  And Jesus responds in a way that is both puzzling and profound:  “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”   

Nicodemus hears a literal restart.  Jesus speaks of a spiritual re-orientation.  This is not about re-entering the womb.  It is about re-seeing the world.  To be born from above is to have one’s perspective reshaped.  To perceive differently.  To live differently. 

Water and Spirit imagery evoke creation itself — the Spirit hovering over the waters in Genesis. This is not a small adjustment. It is a re-creation. 

And then comes one of the most quoted lines in all of Scripture: 

“For God so loved the world…”  The world — the Kosmos.  Not just the faithful.  Not just the insiders.  Not just the certain.  The world the whole created order the oikumene. 

God’s love is expansive.  Generous.  Boundary-crossing.  Movement and Transformation 

When we hold these two stories together Abram leaving and Nicodemus seeking we begin to see a shared pattern.  Both are invited into movement. 

Abram moves geographically.  Nicodemus moves spiritually. 

Abram leaves the security of land and kinship. Nicodemus leaves the security of theological certainty.  Both must trust.  Neither has the full picture.  And perhaps that is what faith so often is   not a possession of certainty, but a willingness to step forward.  I didn’t know where my journey of ordination and ministry would take me over the last 35 years.  All around the world in small chapel, classroom, bedsides and beautiful cathedrals.   

Most of us will not be asked to leave our homeland and wander into the unknown desert.  But many of us know what it is to begin again.  Some of you have crossed oceans to be here. You have left families, languages, and familiar landscapes behind.  You know what it is to rebuild a life in a new place. 

Some of you have begun again after loss after the death of a loved one, after a relationship has ended, after a diagnosis has changed everything. Some of you are beginning again in quieter ways rethinking assumptions, learning to forgive, allowing your heart to soften where it once hardened. 

Being “born from above” does not necessarily mean a dramatic conversion moment. Sometimes it is the slow reshaping of how we see and how we live.  It might mean recognising that the person we once viewed as “other” is actually part of that beloved world God loves. 

It might mean discovering that our sense of security is not anchored in control, but in trust. 

If I look back over 35 years of ordained ministry, one of the things I see most clearly is that the call of God rarely arrives when we feel fully prepared.  Abram was not a young man setting out on an adventurous gap year. He was well into his life. Nicodemus was established and respected. 

And I certainly did not feel ready.  I remember joking,  Oh Jesus started his ministry at 30 but he was crucified at 33.  I wonder what will happen to me in 3 years’ time?   

But readiness is not always the prerequisite for calling.  Sometimes willingness is enough. 

Sometimes all that is required is a step.  And over time, step by step, the path becomes clearer. 

I did not know, when I was ordained, where the journey would lead. I did not know the congregations, the countries, the conversations that would shape my life. 

But I knew the nudge.  And perhaps you know that nudge too.  Not necessarily to change careers or move countries but to grow, to soften, to risk compassion where it feels costly. 

Every time we say yes to love, yes to justice, yes to generosity, we participate in that ongoing new birth. Not once. But again and again.  A Wider Vision Genesis reminds us that blessing is meant to flow outward. 

John reminds us that God’s love already encompasses the whole world. 

Put together, these texts challenge any temptation to shrink our faith into something narrow or self-protective. 

We are called not simply to preserve what we have, but to participate in what God is doing. 

In a world where fear of the stranger can take root, where divisions can harden, where uncertainty can lead us to cling tightly to what is familiar, these stories invite us outward. Out of fear. Out of rigidity. Out of night. Into promise. Into love. Into blessing. 

Thirty-five years ago, I could not have imagined this journey. I could not have predicted where the call would lead. But I have learned this: God does not call us because we are ready. God calls us because there is blessing to be shared. Abram went. Nicodemus stepped toward understanding. 

And we, too, are invited. Perhaps not to leave our homes, but to leave behind whatever keeps us from loving more widely. Perhaps not to be born again in a dramatic sense, but to allow ourselves to be reshaped  gently, persistently to be that beacon of hope for others.   

Amen. 

Audio of selected readings and reflections

Audio of the complete service