Fourth Sunday of Lent
Numbers 21:4-9; Ephesians 2:1-10; John 3:14-21
This was quite a week here at Holy Spirit. The main trusses for the fellowship hall were lifted into place by a great crane. A couple of the students in the Nursery School have been paying special attention to every detail of the construction process. One of the four year olds who observed the grand operation told me that he was sure the crane that was used was “big enough to lift the whole world.” It was impressive. The lifting of such beams. Another type of lifting occurs every Sunday here at Holy Spirit. A small child, of which we have an abundance, raises their arms, and the parent reaches down and lifts them up. Witnessing that simple parental act again numerous times this week caused me to wonder. when was the last time I was lifted up? Admittedly, my sons are now old enough and large enough that every once in a while they make the attempt to grab me from behind and lift. And they do get my feet off the ground, barely, but I would hardly call that lifting me up. Not like the kind of lifting I did to them when they were two or three years old. I doubt if most of us can remember what it feels like to be lifted in such a manner, swept up into the air by arms so much stronger and then held or placed on shoulders that bear us easy. I do have these vague memories of sitting on someone’s shoulders, maybe my father’s, or an uncle’s, and watching a tractor pulling contest.
Among the images that unify our lessons for today, the image of lifting up has a central place. Our Gospel lesson begins with the words “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.”If we did not have the Old Testament lesson from the book of Numbers describing in detail the story of Moses creating a bronze serpent and placing it on a pole we would probably have no idea what the gospel writer of John is talking about. Even with the story we are at a bit of a loss to fully know what to think. There are some books in the Bible that I can almost guarantee no one has read, at least not in their entirety. Anyone who has attempted to read the Bible from beginning to end knows some of these books. If you begin reading in Genesis, except for a few genealogies, the story reads pretty well. The same can be said of the second book of the Bible, Exodus. But then comes Leviticus with the details of worship rituals and laws, and if you survive that you come to Numbers, a book that few find of much interest unless they are looking for details of the wilderness journey and need to know that the tribe of Reuben had 46,000 men and always camped on the south side of the Tent of Meeting.
Our first lesson for today is from the book of Numbers, the only lesson of our three year worship cycle from the Book of Numbers. This is actually a very disturbing book of the Bible. There isn’t a great deal in the book that is what we would consider up lifting. It reads more as a compendium of downers. The book of Numbers continues the story of the Israelites begun in Exodus as they journey out of Egypt to the Promised Land. A journey that takes a very long time. Ajourney that is filled with hardship and tragedy. In Chapter 11 the people complain as they did often about the hardship of the journey and we are told God starts a fire that sweeps through the camp. Then we are told the people crave meat and complain so God sends a flight of quail so thick that the camp is covered 42" deep with the birds and the people eat too much and get sick with some even dying. In the next chapter a woman named Miriam questions Moses' prophetic authority and the anger of the Lord blazed and Miriam was struck with leprosy . In chapters 13 & 14 the people fear reports that are returned by spies sent into the Promised Land and the result is that everyone over 20 years of age must die in the wilderness before the people will be allowed to enter the promised land. What follows is forty years of wandering in the wilderness. Time and again in the Book of Numbers we are told that the Lord’s anger is kindled against the people and there is death, plague and leprosy. Even while they wander in the wilderness, in chapter 21, the source of our first lesson, the people become impatient and speak again against God which results in poisonous snakes being sent among the people, and people die.
The one thing we begin to notice in the telling of these stories of the journey is that every time something bad happens in Numbers there is the immediate and all too human tendency to blame God for it, and then to react in amazement with a question that we would phrase as “Why me Lord?” Why are you doing this to me? Why are these things happening? God’s judgment. God’s anger. God’s wrath. is what the stories time and again identify. Responsibility for the evil in the world rests by these accounts not with the people but with God. To place the blame.
We have a dog at our house, a basset to be accurate, and like most pets there are times when she is less then perfect. When she is wrong she slinks under the table. I will berate her, and as I yell at her she will bark back at me even though she knows she has done something wrong. It is as if to say, how dare I scold her for her misdeed. The Gospel lesson for today speaks of people of light and people of darkness. It points to those who love darkness, a category that we all fall into at some time or another. Our sins precede us, and when God reveals our sin through the law we make excuses. We try to dismiss our sins and blame God. Much like the Israelites of old, our claim is that nothing deserves the kind of suffering being visited on us. We bark at God and the world. We may not be perfect but we are unable to believe that anything we do could possibly bring such darkness into the world. We dismiss the tragic and painful as “God’s will” or some how “God’s plan.” The book of Numbers is a chronicle of the journey of faith. A journey that our world is still making. A world where time and again the sins of the world are visited on others. A drunk driver kills an innocent passenger. A power hungry world leader or terrorist brings death to non-militant civilians. A career-possessed parent neglects the emotional needs of their child. And again and again we become the people of darkness. We look for something to lift us up so that we will see the world differently, and when no one lifts us up we do our own lifting, flying flags and banners of our design to justify our deeds.
We hear the stories of judgment, pain and suffering in the Old Testament. And see them as reason to blame and fear God. But there is more here. far more. There is a moment of grace in the story, a moment of new life. This is the moment that our Gospel captures as central to our understanding of God, and the Christ, a moment of lifting up. Here is a mystery of faith captured in an ancient story from thousands of years ago. The serpent bites and death is certain, unless, we are told, the one who is stricken looks and sees the snake, the bronze snake that Moses erected on a high pole. This was not intended as some ancient story of magic, of worshipping some idol totem. Here is the moment of faith, for in the midst of the burning pain of being bitten, the eyes of faith turn to seek that which God has provided to bring life. Here is a mystery of faith, for why look for deliverance unless one believes that God will bring life from the very form of pain and death. Believing that God would deliver from death, that that which would destroy is lifted up as a sign for healing and life. This is the same reason we turn to God in prayer. Stricken by illness or bitten by the world’s pains.
This is the meaning of prayer for a vision of peace that will lift us out of war and violence. The events of our modern world have made us painfully aware that poised at every moment of life are those shadows of death. Coiled in the corners of our lives are the threats of darkness and pain. We can be seduced so easily by our culture and place of privilege in a world that knows so much want. We are tempted to lift up our vision for the world above all others, through military might if necessary. But we forget that Moses did not act of his own power. God directed Moses and God provided the miracle of healing. Israel saw in the lifting up not the power of their leader or even his vision but the miracle of God’s grace to transform the evil into a new life. It is God who lifts up! God who swept up the children of Israel time and again in mighty arms that carried them through times of want and near despair. The serpents of darkness are all around. and they sting us again and again. We respond by looking for our symbols to lift on high. our culture, the media, politicians all try to tell us where to turn, what to look for, we lift our own salvation symbols high, the right education, the right political belief, the right investment strategy. But then we get bitten, stung again. The church is no better. We hoist aloft the patterns, teachings and even doctrines of the past rather then looking up and seeing the power of God’s mission and the true power of God’s love.
One congregation I know had an annual meeting at which they passed a $250,000 budget, approved starting a Christian preschool and providing space for a pastoral counseling program to be developed. and all that was done in 20 minutes as people were captured by the vision of the light and the mission of the church. But then the darkness caught up with them and the next hour was spent in heated debate over whether the Sunday announcements should be at the beginning or the end of the worship service. The serpent coils again. but the only source of light and life is that which is lifted up, lifted up on the Cross.
Christ gives his all. and God lifts Him up that
we might be able to see the light of sacrificial giving, the power of grace
to give life if we but recognize the gift. When our children were much smaller
there was a simple activity that we played with them. We used to grab the little
one’s hands and say “How big is Jonathan?” and then we would
take his hands and raise them over his head and say “Soooooo big.”
Eventually when ever we asked “How big is Jonathan?” He would raise
his hands and we would be expected to say “Sooooo big.” Sometimes
I think that is what happens with our relationship to God. We find ourselves
asking “How much does God love us?” We look at the illness. the injury,
the pain and ask, “How much does God love us?” and then we hear John
3:16. God loved us soooooo much that he sent his only Son. Look up. Soooooo
much. Soooo much light. Soooo much grace. Soooo much love. When was the last
time you were lifted up?. We look to the one who was lifted up and who draws
us to him. “Big enough to lift the whole world”. That’s how big
he said the crane was. “Big enough to lift the whole world.” That’s
a big crane. that’s our big God.
Amen.