Sunday, March 10, 2024

Lent 4

Number 21:4-9; Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22; Ephesians 2:1-10; John 3:14-21

The Rev. Clint Brown

This morning, I should like to take you on a journey, a journey through time. Our first stop is around the year 700 BCE during the reign of King Hezekiah of Judah. If you are acquainted with the book of Kings, you will know that the narrative is frequently punctuated by the mention of this or that king beginning to reign in such and such a year and always accompanied by a brief editorial comment: “this king did what was right in the sight of the Lord,” or, more often, “this king did not do what was right in the sight of the Lord.” It was the chronicler’s way of linking character with destiny. Impiety led inexorably to misfortune and this will eventually serve as the explanation for the destruction of Jerusalem and the carrying away of the people into exile just a few generations later. At this point, however, that is still a long way off, and Hezekiah was one of those few kings, in the long list of kings, who did what was right in the sight of the Lord. In fact, his reign became legendary for its reforms. We learn in the book of 2 Kings that one of them involved a rather curious object that had – along with the ark of the covenant and the tablets of the Law – survived in the Temple as a relic of Israel’s past. It was a large bronze snake affixed to the end of a pole, and, through the years, we learn, it had become the center of a cult. Understandably, for the pious Hezekiah, this was intolerable. There should be – could be – no rival to Yahweh for the hearts and minds of the people, and certainly not one in the form of such blatant, blasphemous idolatry. And so, the Bible says, Hezekiah broke it in pieces (2 Kings 18:4), and for this and the many other proofs of his righteousness, the text goes on to say that God made him victorious, both in resisting the mounting threat of the Assyrians on his northern borders and against Israel’s traditional adversaries nearer to home, the Philistines.

But to return to the snake and to appreciate its full significance, we must climb into our time machine and move further upstream to the Wilderness wanderings of the Israelites, our second stop. Having received the Ten Commandments, the people of Israel depart from the mountain of God and embark on what, map wise, should have been a relatively short trip to the Promised Land. But apparently not short, easy, or simple enough, because they complain about everything. The water which God makes to gush miraculously for them from a rock? Nice, but it could be colder. The manna from heaven? Okay, I guess, but does it have to be for every meal? At one point, they even have to audacity to claim that they have no food and water, apparently forgetting the basic principle of logic that you can only find unsatisfying something you actually possess! And as the people’s resolve breaks down, for the first time they speak out not only against Moses, but now also against God. “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?” (verse 5), but the “you” is plural. And, well, God is having none of it. God sends poisonous snakes to torment them and punish their ingratitude. Vast numbers grow sick; some even die. But one thing is for sure, God now has their attention, and, seeing their error, they repent and appeal to Moses to make everything better. And so, consulting God as to what to do, God instructs Moses to make a bronze snake, the very one we have just met with surviving down to the days of Hezekiah, and Moses was told to set it on a pole, and all who looked on it would be healed. The people’s salvation would lie in being forced to look upon their sin and accepting its consequences.

Fast forward a thousand years and we come to the last stop on our journey, to a grove of olive trees outside the walls of Jerusalem in about the year 30. It is night, and Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish council and an influential leader of the party of the Pharisees, has come to Jesus, secretly, to interview him about who he is and what he’s about. Now I have always been rather sympathetic to the figure of Nicodemus. I actually do not hold against him that he is not yet ready to publicly declare for Jesus – that will come. What I admire about him is his sincerity, his curiosity, and the fact that, though starting out muddled and confused, he doesn’t let things stand that way but he leaves open the possibility of finally understanding. So I am right there with Nicodemus as he finds himself growing not less, but more confused by Jesus’ cryptic answers that don’t really help to clear things up at all. Second births? Wind and water and spirit? What does it all mean? And all of it quite unsettles Nicodemus and he bursts out in exasperation, “How can these things be?” (John 3:9) And so Jesus makes a quick mental tour of the Torah for some allusion, some image that might help to pull together all these threads and forge with this fellow student of the scriptures a meeting of minds. And the image he settles on is the one with which we, by now, are very familiar with thanks to our tour through time. Who Jesus is and what he’s about is this: “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” (John 3:14). The cure for what ails us, says Jesus, will be to look up, as the Israelites had done long ago, and see him, crucified, dying upon a cross. He is the cure. He is salvation lifted up on a pole. His body is stripped and broken; his condemnation is the result of our perversion of justice. This cross is where all our sin gets us, and we must accept its consequences. This is the length to which God will go for you. Behold your God and be healed.