This is talk in our Lent series, From Dust to Glory, is called Shadow and City. Last time we sat with the image of the grain of wheat — the hope that from our endings, God brings forth life. This week we go somewhere harder: the spaces in between. The valley. The darkness that doesn't lift on cue. The prayers that feel like they're hitting the ceiling.

Today's sermon comes from John chapter 3 — the story of Nicodemus, a religious leader who comes to Jesus under cover of darkness, not quite knowing why. It's a passage about the Spirit's quiet work in us before we understand it, about new birth as something received rather than achieved, and about the long, gradual movement from night into light. If you've ever sat in the back pew wondering why you came, this one's for you.

This is the first in a short series called Dust and Glory — three Lent talks exploring mortality, suffering, and resurrection. This first talk is called Dust and Wheat, and it begins where Lent always begins: with the uncomfortable reminder that we are dust. But it doesn't stay there. Drawing on Genesis, the Gospel of John, and a poem by Wendell Berry, it asks what it might mean to discover that even our endings can become the soil of something new.