03/14/21 - Seeking the Cure - Westminster Presbyterian Church Westminster Presbyterian Church | Serving God and others with open mind, hands and heart - 03/14/21

03/14/21 – Seeking the Cure

SEEKING THE CURE

March 14, 2021
4^th Sunday in Lent
Num. 21:4-9; Ps. 107:1-3,17-22; Eph. 2:1-10; John 3:14-21
Rev. Denise Clark-Jones

Have you got your shot yet? That is the current pressing question. By now, we all know that vaccines work by introducing a small amount of a virus into the body. With just a minuscule amount of the virus, the body’s immune system creates antibodies against the virus. When the virus is reintroduced, those antibodies attack and prevent the virus from growing in the body. Modern medicine has taught us that the cure for a disease can be accomplished, in some cases, by introducing disease into the already diseased body. The remedy for snakebite is taking in some of the same poison that the snake put in its victim in the first place. This healing occurs similarly to the way chemotherapy poisons some healthy cells so as to rid the body of deadly cancer cells. In our Old Testament reading for today, God seems to have punished the Israelites wandering in the desert for their sinfulness – in this case, ingratitude and lack of trust. God sent poisonous snakes, which bit them. But God was merciful. God provided a cure. In this odd tale, God took an image of death and made it the source of salvation. Moses was instructed to raise a pole with a bronze snake coiled around it, telling the people to look up at the snake and they would not die. In our Gospel reading, Jesus cites this passage from Numbers to explain to a puzzled Nicodemus how his being raised on a cross and crucified will bring salvation to all humankind.

The Israelites had many notable peak spiritual experiences when God came to their rescue, but they were always followed by valleys of growing distrust in God’s protection and provision. They had a mountaintop miracle when God gave Moses the Ten Commandments and made a covenant with them. But then they journeyed away from Mt. Sinai and began to complain again. The book of Numbers contains a series of “complaint stories,” in which the Israelites “murmur” grievances against Moses and God and express a desire to return to Egypt. This time their complaint was about the lack of variety on God’s menu. They were tired of manna and quail and they looked back on their experience in Egypt with rose-colored glasses, reminiscing about the more palatable meals they ate there. Given their cruel treatment in Egypt, it is unlikely they feasted on gourmet food. Their whining was even illogical. They claimed: “There’s no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food.” Obviously, the second part of the sentence denies the truth of the first part of the complaint. But, we know, our complaints aren’t always reasonable.

God seems to react to this new grievance rather harshly. Parents, or anyone who works with children, understand that bad behavior can get on your nerves and cause one to overreact, which then escalates the conflict. Letting loose a plague of poisonous snakes on the recalcitrant Israelites seems to be quite an escalation! The Hebrew word, translated in the NRSV translation as a snake, is seraph, which could also be translated as fiery serpents or winged serpents. Seraphs sound even worse than your garden variety of poisonous snakes. I am told snakes do their best to avoid human beings, but I still avoid being where there is even a possibility of an encounter with one. In case you are wondering about the likelihood of coming in contact with one, there are 40 species of snakes in Illinois and four of them are poisonous. You’ll be happy to learn that all four of the venomous vipers are non-aggressive, unlike the snakes God sent to surround and bite the Israelites.

Evidently, this plague of snakes was a loud enough wake-up call that the Israelites did not go to their default position of blaming God or Moses, but instead realized the error of their ways. They held themselves accountable for not trusting God. And that is the real issue here, not the complaining, but the lack of trust in God. The bible is filled with human complaints about God. There is even a whole book of the bible devoted to them – the book of Lamentations. Notice that God did not remove the snakes, nor stop the snakes from biting the people. God did not respond to their pleas in the way they had begged. God protected and provided for the Israelites, without removing the cause of their affliction. That is how some prayers are answered.

Both the punishment and the rescue were acts of God’s steadfast love. Whenever the Israelites strayed, God sought them out to bring them back into a relationship. The defeat of the Northern and Southern kingdoms of Israel and the subsequent exile to the lands of their oppressors was followed with God’s making the way clear for their return to their homeland. The people lost their nation, but they returned with the knowledge that their faith was not dependent on being a political empire or having a building in which to worship – the temple. Their relationship with God and one another was their identity and their purpose. Without worldly power, they were challenged to take a stand in the world about who they were, what they stood for, and what they believed.

The story of God’s intervention in the world, through the choosing of the Israelites to bring the whole world into the right relationship with God, is woven into the fabric of the New Testament. Jesus’ disciples had many peak experiences that encouraged them to trust and follow; but, like the Israelites, they had other experiences, which pulled them back into fear and doubt. The author of John uses the imagery of darkness and light throughout the gospel to represent sin and lies versus righteousness and truth, death versus life.

The context of our gospel reading is a conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus, a Pharisee, who was intrigued by Jesus’ teaching, He came to Jesus in the dark of night, so as not to be seen, because of the growing conflict between the Jewish religious leaders and Jesus. He was curious to learn more about eternal life, about which Jesus had preached. Later in the gospel, on the afternoon of Jesus’ crucifixion, in broad daylight, Nicodemus brings the spices to prepare his body for burial. With this play of dark and light imagery, John shows Nicodemus moving toward the truth about Jesus. The conversation with Nicodemus concerning eternal life, with the disciples present, is the first time in John’s gospel that Jesus foretells his crucifixion and resurrection.

John 3:16 is one of the most well-known verses in the New Testament. The verse has been lifted out of the narrative of Nicodemus’ conversation and Jesus’ prophesy of his death and resurrection, to stand alone as a formula for personal salvation. However, the Greek text indicates that John 3:16 is connected to the preceding verses. In Biblical Greek, when a verse begins with “gar,” translated as “for,” it most often means what precedes it gives the verse its meaning. Proceeding: “for God so loved the world…” Jesus made a direct reference to the Numbers verse:

“And just 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. ‘For God so loved the world
that he gave his Son, so that everyone who believes in him
may not perish but may have eternal life.

Recall, God sent the poisonous snakes because of the Israelites’ constant complaints about God’s gracious provisions. After the snakes came and attacked them, the people repented, confessed their sins against God, and pleaded with Moses to intercede with prayers that God would remove their punishment. Just as John 3:16 has been taken out of context to invent a theology of personal salvation in which all one has to do is believe in Jesus and they will go to heaven for eternity after they die, the Israelites repented so God would take away the snakes. But God demonstrated that there is no easy direct route from repentance to salvation. The snakes remained, but looking at a reminder of their sin and punishment, the bronze snake, shifted their focus back to God. Salvation was not granted as a cure for all spiritual ills but as a way of coming to terms with the structural evil of rejecting God’s provision and seeking another source, in this case, Egypt, which would enslave them. God’s gift of a cure for the snakebites was not for one individual, but rather was given as a cure for the community’s collective sin. Just as the Israelites looked up at the bronze snake on a pole and were reminded of their sin and the only source of a cure, in the same way, Jesus foretells that the people will look upon his crucified body on the cross.

Sin is inherent in our humanity — a disease, which plagues us. When we sin, we are being less than God created us to be, rejecting the life graciously given. It is deeply personal as well as communal because everything we do affects others.

There is gross inequality nationally and globally. We have a lifestyle that is supported by people who live in poverty. For example, the beans that make the coffee and chocolate we love, are often picked by children, who are either outright slaves or slaves to dire poverty. Much of our clothing is made in sweatshops in economically distressing developing countries. In fact, much of our manufactured goods are made in countries where the cost of labor is cheap. And we are not willing to pay the people in our own country; we depend on for our own abundant lifestyle, a living wage. All those death-dealing evils like poverty, injustice, violence, addiction, racism, and the myriad of other “–isms” that afflict us like a plague must be raised up and revealed.

We are like a snake biting its own tail, consuming itself. But God has given us a cure in Jesus. It was humanity that killed Jesus and his human body was lifted up on the cross as a reminder of our communal sin. When we look to Christ on the cross, we are reminded of our sin and of God’s power of resurrection and redemption.

God provided a cure for the poisonous snakebites because of God’s steadfast love, mercy, and grace. So too, was the gift of Jesus Christ a cure for our sin. As the Israelites were forced to look at the consequences of their own sin to be cured, in this Lenten season we are challenged to look back at the causes and consequences of our sin from the trajectory of Jesus’ journey to the cross. The revelation and repentance of sin bring us to the cross, shining a light on Christ whose life was freely given for us.

The Apostle Paul, in his letter to the Ephesian congregation, explains that we cannot separate salvation from the effects of that salvation, which is a life led by Jesus’ example. “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God…For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.” Our hope, our salvation is found at the cross.

We are halfway in our journey to the cross this Lenten season. The cross shines before us a light to guide us to the truth that will set us free. If we are willing to look at it, we will see more than Christ’s suffering and death. We will see love. It is in that light, the light of God’s love, that our sin and pain are held up for us to see and be healed. Paul tells us the cross is the ultimate example of God’s foolish grace. Our condemnation would make sense, given our perpetual disobedience, but instead, God chose to love and challenges us to do the same.

Amen. May it be so.

My Story

“What goes through your mind as you sit in the sanctuary and look around?

As I sit in my pew and look up at the cross with the wonderful light illuminating it, I am reminded of why I am at Westminster on this particular day. The cross reminds me that Christ died for me and, in a sense, I am to do the same in my daily life. The brightness of the cross illustrates for me the brightness of living my life in the way of Christ.”