Around the middle of Lent Christians of all stripes take a breather. The Orthodox have "mid Lent" where the rules are relaxed just a wee little bit (almost imperceptibly) while the West has "Laetare" Sunday, so named because the Introit antiphon for Mass the fourth Sunday in Lent begins with Laetare or Rejoice. Among the western rites many employ a rose coloured set of vestments instead of the unbleached linen or purple otherwise used (unless the parish priest absolutely cannot stand pink in any form, and having seen some of the shades of rose out there the irreverent thought of the Pepto-Bismol Mass unfortunately comes to mind...pick your fabrics carefully!).
Older lectionaries read the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand today, but the newer lectionaries for this year instead offer part of Nicodemus' interview of Jesus (John 3.14-21, which you can catch here). We all know that section, particularly verse 16: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." It's a verse rife with sentiment and often used as a baited hook in evangelism efforts by many. That in no way lessens its meaning, or its impact, but it screams for context.
The entire passage is about rebirth...many Evangelical Christians take from this passage "born again" to describe anyone who has said the "Sinners' Prayer". They call them "Born-Again Christians," a term at once redundant and simplistic. Jesus is talking in this passage that one must be born again, that is, one must take on a new nature in order to be part of the Kingdom of God. The old nature is corrupted, it tends toward and inevitably spirals into chaos and nothingness, a dead end that sparks for a while then winks out. The Kingdom of God is eternal, and anything part of it needs also to be eternal. The old nature will not, indeed it cannot suffice.
The passage many think hinge on the "believe" bit, and I dare say that is important, not so much a blind assurance that it is so and magically is, but more a trust in the face of uncertainty that God will do so. What many miss, however, is that the motion of the Spirit is needed as well. That suffuses this passage but is not evident in the segment picked out for today's reading (or for many other readings, focusing instead on the condemnation part). When Our Lord had said, "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." (John 3.8) The new nature comes from the Spirit, not from within, not from the "Sinners' Prayer", but from the Spirit. What we are called to do is to seek that rebirth from the Spirit and trust that the Spirit has made it so, to believe or trust what Jesus has told us. So if we believe it, if we trust we have this gift from the Spirit, then we must act on it, we must feed it, we must live it.
Whence comes this new nature? From the actions of Our Lord. Because God took on Human Nature in Jesus the Christ, He has made a new human nature, free of the stain of corruption that has been part of our sorry history from the beginning. That's a lot of trust, trust that Jesus has given us a new nature to take on in our Baptism, that the Spirit builds in us in our Baptism, that God strengthens in us in the Sacraments, that we practice in our daily living. If we are perishing, the way of life is pointless, purposeless, absurd even (think of the Nihilists and Existentialists here), but if we are born to a new nature, given to us by God, then the Way of Life is opened to us, and the purposelessness of a virtuous life is transformed as living in the eternal hope, the expectation set before us.
Indeed, we should rejoice.