March 10, 2024
Numbers 21:4-9
John 3:14-21
I don’t know if this will surprise anyone coming from me. It might surprise someone that it’s coming from a pastor.
There are passages in Scripture I’d just as soon ignore.
Sometimes it’s due to relevance. The four chapters of Leviticus setting out the why when and how of sacrifices doesn’t align with our practice of faith. Sometimes it’s due to one and done kind of events. As the prophet Elisha was dying, according to 2 Kings 13, he invited Israel’s King Joash to fire arrows out a window and got angry when the king didn’t shoot enough of them. I really hope that that was a one-time event. Then there’s the ones that are confusing, like Ezekiel’s vision in chapter 1 of his book.
Or… Moses and the serpent of bronze.
It’s a peculiar story. Once again during this exodus from slavery to freedom, the people complained about the route, about the water, and about the food. Generally in the Book of Exodus, Moses got upset and God calmed him down, or God got upset and Moses was the peacemaker. Here in Numbers 21, nobody wanted to take a deep breath, and God sent snakes to bite the refugees. Which seems… harsh, at best.
When the people acknowledged that their complaining had brought this on, God directed Moses to make a serpent out of bronze and invite those who had suffered snakebite to look at it. When they did, they were healed. End of story.
Which seems awfully close to… well, creating an idol? Which God expressly forbid in the second commandment?
I’d be happy to ignore this text.
It’s a pity that Jesus didn’t.
“And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”
Oh, Jesus. That wasn’t fair, was it?
These words in the third chapter of John completed Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus. That discussion included Jesus’ words about being born anew, or again, or from above, and it included what I think was Nicodemus’ skepticism about how willing people are to adopt new ways. Which hasn’t changed much from the first century to the twenty-first.
I don’t know what Nicodemus understood when Jesus spoke of the Son of Man being “lifted up.” For one thing, while we’ve been well taught that Jesus referred to himself as “Son of Man” in the Gospels, Nicodemus hadn’t. I also don’t know whether Nicodemus understood “lifted up” as referring to crucifixion. Again, we have the benefit of knowing the end of Jesus’ story. Nicodemus had to live it.
I can only guess he thought Jesus’ reference to the bronze serpent on a pole was peculiar. Heaven knows I think it’s peculiar.
But then, a crucified Messiah is… peculiar.
Lance Pape writes at Working Preacher, “In terms of human agency, of course, the cross is a moment of profound humiliation and defeat. But in John’s theological imagination, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension are collapsed into a single movement of divine agency: Jesus exalted by God. Just as the Israelites were paradoxically required to look upon the very thing that brought death in order to receive life, so we are asked to look upon Jesus’ ‘lifting up’ in humiliating crucifixion and receive it as part of God’s plan to glorify Jesus and save the world. The image of Jesus as the serpent ‘lifted up’ is paradoxical, not simple.”
Most of our attempts to make it simple have failed. One of the best-known verses of the New Testament is right in the middle of this passage, and it is a pretty good summary of the Christian message: “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.” Ironically, people keep using this verse to announce who may have eternal life, and who may perish, with the emphasis on the perishing. “Believe in Jesus: Saved! Don’t believe in Jesus: Damned!” Simple!
But it isn’t, is it?
What does it mean to believe? Is it as straightforward as a declarative statement? “I believe in Jesus.” Excellent. I’m all set.
And I can do anything I want after that. Except that Jesus seems to have thought differently. “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.” This would have been something Nicodemus could agree with without trouble. Back in seminary, Theology Professor Gabriel Fackre told us that all the doctrines of the Christian faith relied upon special revelation, some information from God that came outside of normal human experience, except one. The doctrine that you can prove without reference to a prophet or a Scripture or an experience of divine inspiration is: that people do bad things.
That you can see. Pretty much any day of the week, you can see that.
Even that is peculiar, when you think about it. People embrace the shadows rather than the bright places of the world. Yes, it’s easier to hide things in the shadows – but isn’t it easier, and more satisfying, to display your gifts in the light, rather than conceal your shame in the shadows? Isn’t it easier to heal from our woundedness if we bring it to where it’s visible? Aren’t we our best selves when we are our whole selves?
Listen to these words from Mary MacLeod Bethune, an educator of black girls in early twentieth century Florida and the founder of the National Council of Negro Women. Speaking of John 3:16, she wrote, “With these words [John 3:16] the scales fell from my eyes and the light came flooding in. My sense of inferiority, my fear of handicaps, dropped away. ‘Whosoever,’ it said. No Jew nor Gentile, no Catholic nor Protestant, no black nor white; just ‘whosoever.’ It means that I, a humble Negro girl, had just as much chance as anybody in the sight and love of God. These words stored up a battery of faith and confidence and determination in my heart, which has not failed me to this day.”
Those peculiar and paradoxical words, sometimes used to contain and condemn, can inspire and liberate. If we let them.
Samuel Cruz writes at Working Preacher, “To change the world or save it requires a process that ends hate, injustice, oppression and replaces it with justice, compassion, mercy, love, equality, etc. However, verses 19-21 tell us that some choose hate over light, evil deeds over good deeds, and therefore they reject the light of the son of God. Others, however agree with Jesus’ quest to change or restore the world to its original intent from a world full of evil and injustice to a loving, just and caring world. Therefore, for John, believing in Jesus has more to do with what people believe regarding evil, hate, exploitation, and injustice rather an esoteric ‘religious’ conversion.”
How peculiar that believing in something could lead a person to change their circumstances, their society, and… themselves.
Of course, believing in something and working to change things is the only way things have ever changed.
It was peculiar that God invited Moses to the ragged edge of idolatry, asking him to cast bronze in the shape of the thing that had afflicted the people and inviting them to look at the thing they feared in order to find their healing. Peculiar, but also very much the way that healing, that repentance, that renewal, work. If you want to get better, you have to deal with the thing that ails you. If you want to find forgiveness, you have to confront the things you have done and acknowledge them. If you want to be renewed, you have to know what’s lacking and what you need to be filled.
It was peculiar that God in Christ accepted the pain and shame of crucifixion as a means toward giving people life. But then: is not death what we fear, and shame what we recoil from? Do we not need to face these just as much as we need to face our ailments, our sins, and our emptiness? How will we find life except to face death?
Debie Thomas writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “[Jesus] unveiled the poison, he showed us the snake, he revealed what our human kingdoms, left to themselves, will always become unless God in God’s mercy delivers us. In the cross, we are forced to see what our refusal to love, our indifference to suffering, our craving for violence, our resistance to change, our hatred of difference, our addiction to judgment, and our fear of the Other must wreak.”
In confronting those things of the shadows, those deeds we would hide, we come to the light, to the truth, to the life.
Then it may be clearly seen that what we do from this day forward is done in God.
Amen.
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Sermon
Pastor Eric makes changes in his sermon text while he preaches. Sometimes they’re intentional.
The image is Jesus and Nicodemus by Henry Ossawa Tanner – U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17073529.
