4th Sunday in Lent
March 11, 2018
Numbers 21:4-9; Ephesians 2:1-10; John 3:14-21
This Lent we’ve been looking at different covenants that
God made with his people in the Old Testament. We began with Noah and the
rainbow. Then we read about God’s covenant with Abraham and descendants as
numerous as the stars. Last week we looked at the ten commandments. This week
is another covenant involving Moses. After Moses leads God’s people out of
Egypt, out of slavery, crossing the Red Sea on dry land, you’d think the people
would be, what? Grateful. In awe of what God can do. Appreciative. But they’re not. At least five times
they complain against Moses. There’s a “Back to Egypt” committee that would
rather go back to being slaves and how life used to be. They complain that the
water is bitter, and God tells Moses how to sweeten the water. They complain
about the lack of food, and God provides manna. They complain that they’re
thirsty, and God tells Moses to strike the rock and out spurts good drinking
water. Then they ask for some meat to go with the manna, they don’t want to be
vegetarian, and God provides quail. All these complaints are why the Israelites
wander in the wilderness for 40 years. It’s not because they got lost. It’s not
because Moses didn’t want to stop and ask for directions. It’s because even after all God has done for them,
rescuing them from slavery and leading them to the Promised Land of Canaan,
they still complain. So, God said that that generation that came out of Egypt
would not live to enter the Promised Land. It took 40 years for all of them to
die off and it was their children who got to go into Canaan.
Today’s Old Testament reading is the fifth time that the
people complain. And this time, they don’t just complain against Moses, they
also complain against God. They say
that there’s no food and no water and they hate the food (which means there is food), but you know how a lot of
times what someone complains about isn’t actually what they’re upset about? The
people aren’t really upset about the food. They can live with it. It says they became impatient on the way. Are we
there yet? Are we there yet? How much longer? [Pause.] Now how much longer? And
the truth was they had years to go! I
mentioned a couple weeks ago that God does not do things on our schedule. And
the people are impatient. They grumble and complain. They do not trust God to
take care of them and provide for them. They don’t trust God’s timetable. They
speak against God and against Moses. What does God do? He sends poisonous
snakes among the people , who bite
the people, and many people die. Now,
God’s got their attention. And the people confess to Moses, “We have sinned by
speaking against the Lord and against you. Please pray the Lord will take the
snakes away from us.”
Confession, repentance, and forgiveness were among the
themes that we talked about in bible study last week.[1]
One of the things said in the study was that we don’t change until we
acknowledge that we need to change.
Too often we instead find ourselves justifying our sin, offering excuses for
it, or just plain in denial that we need to change. When we ask God to “bless
this mess,” it means we don’t really want to change. “We may long for a better
life and even lament the hardships and struggles that our sins bring, but we
don’t necessarily want God to give us something truly new and different.”[2]
Sometimes it takes something drastic, like snakes, for us to be ready to
confess what we did wrong and be ready for change. Because the Israelites
started dying from snake bites, they were finally ready to be honest with
themselves and with God and admit that they had sinned and needed help. They
hit bottom and were forced to change if they wanted to live. The last sentence
in the chapter we read for bible study last week says that “We must recognize
that God doesn’t want to bless our mess; he wants to fix it, with our help.”
God
offers a way out of the mess. For the Israelites, the way out looked like a
bronze snake that was set up on a pole and everyone who was bit by a snake
could look at this bronze snake and live. There are at least two interesting
things to note about this healing offered to the Israelites. First is that the
people had to change their focus to be saved. Instead of focusing on
themselves, their snake bites, their impatience, and their lack of good food,
in other words, instead of focusing inward, they had to look outward to be healed. And not just look
down at the ground in front of them, but look up to the top of this pole. They
had to change their focus. This can happen to us, too, when we’re hurting. We
focus on our hurt, our pain, our loss, what’s happened to us, but we can’t save ourselves by ourselves. We need God’s
help. And so we look to him, and God’s always ready to help. He’s like the father of the prodigal son,
waiting with arms open wide for us to turn back to him.
The
other interesting thing is that the people had to look on the very thing that
was causing their death in order to receive life. Can you imagine if snakes
were around, biting people, would you ever want to see another snake again in
your life?! But this symbol of their fear is put up on a stick and they have to
face it, they have to look at it, in order to be healed. Could you do that? If
a symbol of your fear were put on a stick and held in front of you, could you
face it? That had to be hard, and yet worth the cost, because facing your fear
meant life instead of death. In my research for today, I read that 36% of all
adults in the United States list snakes as their number one fear.[3]
And yet one of the suggestions for children’s time for today was to bring in a
live snake! You’ll be happy to know that while I put a rainbow on the altar for
Noah and a star on the altar for Moses, I decided to not put a snake on the
altar for today. The people had to look at what was causing them harm in order
to live. The newest Marvel Comics TV show that dropped on Netflix this past
week has the heroine doing the same thing. Jessica Jones has to face what
happened to her 17 years ago that gave her her super powers. She spent 17 years
avoiding it, and in the new season of her show, they have her learning about it
and facing it. I haven’t watched all of the episodes yet to find out what happens,
but I expect some resolution by the end. Likewise, God’s people had to be honest
with what they had done wrong, face it, confess, and God offered them a way out
in order that they might live.
Thankfully,
God offers a way out of the mess for us, too. The passage we read from John was
part of Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus. Nicodemus was a Pharisee, a member
of the Jewish ruling council, and, out of fear of what others might say, came
to Jesus under the cover of night. They have a great conversation about
salvation and eternal life and Jesus makes a reference to the story of Moses
and the people and the snake. “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the
wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may
have eternal life in him.” This is where our
healing comes from; his name is Jesus. Just as that bronze snake was lifted up
on a pole, so also Jesus was lifted up on the cross to save us, that “whoever
believes in him might not perish, but have eternal life.” Jesus is our way out
of our mess. Now some of the same things still apply as to the Israelites. We
have to acknowledge that we need help. That we can’t do it by ourselves. We
have to acknowledge what we’ve done wrong and how we’ve messed up and ask
forgiveness. And that can be painful. It can be painful to face the hurt you’ve
caused yourself and others. It can be painful to be completely open and honest.
But that’s where real change comes from. We have to open up in honesty, at
least to God and to ourselves. Confess. Repent. Ask for and receive
forgiveness. God’s already offering it. Forgive others the wrong they’ve done
to you. Forgive yourself for messing up. All of these things keep you from God,
and unfortunately, or, rather, fortunately, the cross comes before the resurrection.
Suffering comes before redemption. Sometimes the night gets darker before the
light comes, and you know the darkest part of the night is always right before
the dawn.
Jesus
calls us to look at him and be healed, to believe in him and be saved, to
confess where we’ve messed up and receive forgiveness. Then we are called to go
and offer healing to others. The healing doesn’t come from us; it comes through us, as we allow God to work in
our lives. Remember what we read in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, “For it is
by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it
is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s
handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in
advance for us to do.” Salvation is what Jesus does, not us, yet it is freely
offered to everyone, that’s what makes it grace. The offer of unconditional
love regardless of what you’ve done, yet accepting it means admitting what
you’ve done. “The bottom line of both the snakes in the wilderness and Jesus
forgiving from the cross is that God loves and takes care of us even when we
mess up,”[4]
and that’s what grace is. It takes courage to face your fear, to name the ways
you’ve messed up, to repent and to forgive. It takes courage to shift your
focus from yourself to others. Yet we are called to live in healthy and holy relationships
with each other. It’s called a covenant. We are all on this Christian journey
together and we invite others to join us, in this “community of love and
forgiveness, [where we] grow in [our] trust of God, and [are] found faithful in
[our] service to others. We will pray for [each other], that [we all] may be
true disciples who walk in the way that leads to life.”[5]
Thanks be to God. Amen.
[1] Restored: Finding Redemption in Our Mess
by Tom Berlin
[2]
Ibid., p. 57
[3] Feasting on the Word, Year B, Volume 2,
p. 101
[5]
UMH 35
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