Year B Lent IV, March 15, 2015
Numbers 21:4-9; Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22; Ephesians 2:1-10; John
3:14-21
Prayer: Let us pray. Lord, open
our hearts that we may hear your Word. Give us grace to journey with you
through the remainder of this Lenten season and into Holy Week, and bring us to
the glorious celebration of your Resurrection. In the Name of the Father, and
of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
I cannot begin to imagine the
Israelites’ horror when the snakes came. I grew up in the South Carolina Low Country,
and I have experienced many times when I have thought “the only good snake is a
dead snake.” Maybe some of you think that snakes are okay, and as long as they
are at a safe distance, like behind the glass in a zoo, I have to admit that
some can be mysteriously beautiful. To the Israelites, however, the snakes
meant painful, poisonous bites and physical death.
The snakes came because the Israelites
were grumbling against God and Moses. So, here are a people who have left the
only home they have ever known to follow a man to some place called the
Promised Land. Like most humans, they got hungry and thirsty and weary, and
when they did, God provided for them. Yet, what God provided did not seem good
enough; in fact, they found the manna rather disgusting. They complained that
it would have been better for them to have stayed in Egypt as slaves. After
all, they had been on this journey for close to forty years, more or less, and
it seemed high time to do something besides wander in the desert heat on hot
sand from one place to another. But their complaints brought unexpected
consequences when “the LORD sent
poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many
Israelites died.” Once again, however, God provided a way out for his people by
having Moses make a bronze serpent and place it on a pole so that all who were
bitten might look at the serpent and live.
Whether
we want to take this story literally or see it as an allegory, I think the
snakes can readily symbolize our conscience when we are confronted with our bad
behavior. In Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet, Act four, Hamlet and Horatio
are talking about what happened once Hamlet left with Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern for England. Hamlet describes how he took King Claudius’s letter
that commanded England to behead him on his arrival, and rewrote it to say that
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern should die. Horatio’s response is “What king is
this?” Here we have God sending snakes to bite and kill his chosen people, and
I want to say, “What God is this?” If biting, fiery snakes seems a little over
the top to us, then perhaps we should remember that the people had complained
before; that’s why they were getting manna to eat. These are the same people
who refused to enter the Promised Land when God was ready to take them there
because they were afraid. Suzanna Metz says, “Our passage from Numbers talks about a real
fear of bodily harm – a fear of death in a natural way. Yet, underneath that
natural fear was the darkness brought on them by cursing God. It was their sin
of not believing that God would keep the promise of bringing them to a land of
milk and honey” (Metz,
Suzanna). “Though
the people of Israel are unhappy with Moses and God, the one thing that is
never in doubt is God’s presence among the people. When the people complain
against God, the Lord hears. When the people repent, God hears and responds
with healing and relief from suffering”. God instructs Moses to make a serpent of bronze and put it on a pole
which he lifts up in front of the people. If they are bitten and look at the bronze
snake, they will live. If not, they will die.
Now
let’s move to John’s Gospel where Jesus tells us that God sent his only son to
save the world. John 3:16 may be the best known verse in Holy Scripture. Unlike
the snakes in Numbers, John tells us that Jesus came to love us, and to show us
by his own example how to treat others. Have you noticed in your reading of
Scripture how Jesus is so rarely interested in the sins that others are accused
of? For instance, think for a moment about the woman caught in adultery. Jesus
tells the religious men gathered there “Let him who is without sin cast the
first stone.” When asked whether the blind man sinned or if his parents sinned,
Jesus tells the disciples 3 “Neither
this man nor his parents sinned, “but this happened so that the works of God
might be displayed in him. 4 As long as it is day, we must do the works
of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. 5 While
I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”
For
John, light and darkness are really important metaphors. People who live in
darkness practice evil. People who live in the light are different. Most of us
would not choose to live in darkness, but we read in John 1:10-11, “He was in the world, and though the world was
made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was
his own, but his own did not receive him.” When Jesus came to live
among us, he came to gain new life for us. Jesus did not come to condemn us,
but to offer the path to salvation. Yet, we all choose to enter that darkness
of sin from time to time.
In fact, we are all capable of doing
some pretty appalling things to others. It’s those appalling things that we
need to take stock of most especially in Lent. This season is not so much about giving up or adding something more to
our spiritual disciplines, but is rather a time to take a look at the darkness.
Lent gives us the opportunity to hear that we are loved, that we can walk in
the light of that love, and that we can be different. I think with Dr. Tara
Brach, author of Nourishing Loving Relationships, that “At the end of our
lives, as we look back, “what will most matter will be the moments of loving
presence in our relationships.” All we need do is take a look at how God loves
us. God gave us Jesus, the Son, who served others and sacrificed himself on the
cross. Jesus showed us availability and vulnerability in his being lifted up so
that we could see what genuine love is. “So here we learn something important about the nature of true
love. Some people think they love others because of what those people do for
them or how they make them feel. But God shows us that true love has nothing to
do with what you can do for me, but everything to do with what I can do for you.”
God
gave us everything when he sent Jesus. When we give out of our abundance, we
hardly miss what we’ve given, but when we give all we have, like the widow with
her copper coins, then we are more likely to understand just how much God loves
us. As Teresa of Avila said, “The
important thing is not to
think much, but to love much; and so do
that which best stirs you to
love.”
Works Cited
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