Fourth Lent
Numbers 21:4-9, John 3:14-21
We used to have a dog--a demonic little, well not so little, Basset Hound named Katie. For most of her life she was a sweet tempered, non-offensive, not very excitable lump. Sometimes however I think she got mad at us for not being home more or maybe she just got bored. We would come home and find the plastic wrapper from a whole loaf of bread that had been on the kitchen counter in the middle of the family room--empty. Or maybe we would find a mangled pair of glasses swiped from a purse left carelessly on the floor. Or maybe we would find 30 Kleenexes methodically pulled from a Kleenex box all over the living room.
All we would have to say would be, "Katie, what did you do?" and her tail would sink between her legs, her ears would droop and her already sad looking face would slide sadder and she would slink off to her mat in the laundry room. She did, in those moments represent for me the epitome of shame. Shame--with a capital S.
Shame is the painful consciousness of guilt, unworthiness or failure. Shame is the knowledge that wrong has been done and that we know where that wrong came from.
Today in our lessons we go back, back to one of the most neglected books in our Bible, back to an ancient story, the story of Moses and the serpents. Back, back , back...back to the time when Moses led the children of Israel out of slavery in Egypt and around the land of Edom. And the people began, as people who are on a long tiresome journey are want to do, to complain. They whined, "Why did we ever leave Egypt?" They nagged"There is no food, no onions and leeks, no water. They griped, "There is too much sand. They grumbled, "We're tired of walking and there's no television." They wished they were somewhere, anywhere else. As you might expect, God tired of all that whining and self pity. The Lord sent fiery serpents among the people and when a serpent bit someone, that person died.
Shame. The people realize they have been thankless. They really don't want to be back in Egypt. Manna doesn't taste so bad after all. They are ashamed. They are unworthy of God's attention, guilty of thanklessness Can't we just forget what we've done, can't we put it behind us, pretend it never happened and go on from here.
So the people come crawling back to Moses, apologizing and begging forgiveness. God tells Moses to put this bronze image of a serpent on a pole in the middle of the camp, so everyone can see it. Then everyone bitten can look on it and be healed.
So what is this serpent on a pole? Is it a new wonder drug? Is looking at a bronze serpent on top of a pole a medical procedure? Not even the children of Israel claimed that. They understood that by the turning of the head and looking at the serpent, they were acknowledging "from whence cometh our help. Our help comes from the Lord." To see the serpent was to understand "What did you do?", to admit and confess the wrong they had done. They understood that the turning of the head towards the serpent was a turning of one's heart towards the mercy and power of God. It was a physical act of faith to look at the serpent to admit their dependence upon the mercy of God. Their healing did not come from the bronze snake, but from the promised word of God. When they were bitten by the poisonous snake they knew they were unable to help themselves. They knew they had no power, no knowledge, and no resources to save themselves. Looking at the bronze serpent was the act by which they cast themselves on the presence and power of God to give health healing and wholeness.
So Jesus said to Nicodemus in our gospel lesson today, that the Son of man is to function in the world and for all creation as that bronze serpent. When the Son of Man is lifted up on the cross, he will be the most hopeless creature in all creation. . The Son of Man lifted up on the cross will have been hung up there by the powerful and self-righteousness of the military-religious-industrial-economic complex. The Son of man lifted up on the cross will be the one despised and forsaken by his friends. The son of Man will be the one teased and tormented by his jailers; laughed at and ridiculed by his enemies, watched and speculated on by the apathetic and cynical public, "he saved others; let's see if he can save himself." So we look on Jesus lifted up on the cross and we see our shame. What have we done? And we confess in our daily lives how we have been party to hanging innocence on a cross, how we have abused and neglected love that was offered. How we have hurt those who couldn't fight back, how we have ridiculed and denied respect to the weaker, how we have told untruths
The Son of Man lifted high on the cross was stripped of all powers, reduced to his own bare humanity. He is not James Bond on the cross with a bag full of tricks to save himself. He is not Superman or the Incredible Hulk. If something good is to come out of all this it will have to be by an act of the gracious and redeeming powers of God. For Jesus the Son of Man, lifted high on the cross, to have any new chapters in the story will have to have those chapters written by a new act of the power of God's love for creation. Any new life in this situation, any healing or redemption for this man will be a new gift of life given by God because it will not; it cannot arise out of the distorted self deception of the world and its powers.
When we are poisoned by the idea that each of us can make our own way in the world, we can turn our heads, look at the Son of Man lifted up and discover a new hope. We are reminded of the power of God to come into our world and to do a new thing. When we feel we are up to our necks in a snake pit, when we feel ourselves bitten by the green eyed monster of envy of all the consumer goods we do not have, when we have been wounded by the haughty arrogance of pride and self sufficiency or the serpent that crawls out of a bottle or any one of a thousand snakes we may look at the Son of Man and are awakened by faith to a new promise, a new assurance that there is a grace that can heal us. There is a power beyond our power that can come into our lives and act and give us new life.
The turning of our heads to look at the son of man is the turning of our hearts to the God who continues to act to give us new life when the old one has been poisoned to death, to give a new future when the old one has reached its end, to offer us new life and life more abundant when the old one is so poisoned by our past mistakes that it has no future except to be taken out to the place of the skulls.
The son of Man is lifted up on the cross in the sight of men and women poisoned by the power of sin and whoever looks in his direction turns and acknowledges that there is no hope for healing and life except in the saving loving power of the One who brought life from the death of the one who died on the cross.
In the ancient church the season of Lent with it's emphasis on penitence and contrition got long and ominous. This fourth Sunday was known as "refreshment Sunday". The message today was not the bad news of sin and shame but the good news;
For God so loved the world that he gave his only son so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.
Thanks to Rick Brand, Lectionary Homiletics Feb. -March 2006 for significant ideas.
Amen