Lent 4
Preached by Sarah West, ordinand at Westcott House
It feels like this last year has been a rather long lenten journey through the wilderness. This time last year, as the first lockdown started, spring had a very different feel. This year as flowers have sprung to life around us, and with the easing of lockdown and the promise of vaccination, spring feels full of hope and excitement. I feel more able to engage with Lent as a time of repentance and decision.
As today’s readings show, sometimes there is a choice to be made, sometimes sitting on the fence just won’t do.
Jesus makes a curious analogy, he says:
“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”
How is the son of Man in any way like a serpent? And why was Moses lifting up a serpent in the wilderness anyway?
Jesus refers to the story of the bronze serpent - a story of trust and repentance.
Moses was asking the people to follow him and trust that God would keep his promise to lead them to a new land. However, the Israelites are fed up and impatient; they have been traipsing around the wilderness for years following Moses, with no end in sight, and they are complaining again. All they want to know is: are we nearly there yet?
Amid the thirst, hunger and uncertainty of the wilderness, Israel’s memory of God's faithfulness has faded and they complain: “Why have you brought us out of Egypt?
They say “there is no food or water” and what’s more “the food is terrible” ... And they are not just complaining to Moses this time, but speaking against God too.
The “let’s go back to Egypt committee” has formed and they just want to go back to how it was before. Surely slavery in Egypt wasn’t that bad, it’s better than this endless uncertainty wandering around the wilderness, isn’t it?
I think that after the year we have had - frustrated by the uncertainty of endless lockdowns, the separation from loved ones, the fear over our and their safety, and impatient for everything to just go back to how it was before - I can relate to the complaints of the “let’s go back to Egypt committee”!
I love how these stories do not tell us how awesome the Israelites were – Israel forgets to remember, they forget who they are and what God has been for them. They lose faith, complain and rail against God when things get tough and unrelenting. They react, well, just like we do. These stories show how we relate to God in difficult situations and it is not always in the way we might like.
God, in response to their unfaithfulness, sends poisonous snakes into the camp and some people get bitten and die. This is more than they had bargained for and they immediately repent and beg Moses to intercede with God. Israel prays ‘God, please take away the serpents’.
God does not take away the serpents, or stop them from biting, but he does provide an antidote - God tells Moses to make a serpent and mount it on a pole. If people are bitten they are to look up to the bronze serpent and they will live.
Of course, it wasn’t the bronze serpent that was healing the people; it was God. The serpent lifted up redirected Israel’s gaze to God. They needed to decide to look to God and trust in him, even through the wilderness.
God longs for Israel, and us, to take the next step - the step towards him with the faithfulness of a toddler taking her first steps towards a loving parent, trusting fully that she will be caught if she stumbles and welcomed in a hug. God longs for them to trust in him, to know that they are loved, to simply believe.
How is the serpent lifted up like Jesus? Augustine of Hippo wrote “What is the serpent lifted up? A serpent is gazed on that the serpent may have no power. A death is gazed on that death may have no power”. The raising up of the serpent points to Jesus' death on the cross and his resurrection. To his lifting up, his exaltation. The bronze serpent had no poison, Jesus was without sin. And yet through the cross, redeems us and gives us new life, if we look to him, if we believe.
In the cross, God goes all out and gives everything to be with us:
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life” (John 3:16).
This is the whole gospel.
God so loved the world – God’s love is wide and has no limits. It was divine love that carried Israel through the wilderness, and through exile. It was love that sent Jesus to be with us and teach us that love is not just for those who look, think and believe like we do, but even for our enemies and those that persecute us. It was love that inspired the 1st Century church to open the doors of communion to include Gentiles, both those worthy and those deemed not so worthy.
To have eternal life, or to enter the Kingdom of God, requires a decision to be made, a decision by us. There is no list of entrance requirements, no arduous challenges to complete, no initiation to pass. The bar is very low – everyone is invited. Not just a select few. Not just those who are good enough. Everyone. There is only one condition - simply believe.
The snake-bitten, the complaining Israelites, the incredulous Nicodemus, and all of us here, are promised that by the raising of the Son of Man, that by trusting in him, we will be given new life – everlasting life with God.
God’s purpose is not to condemn the world, but to save it. God's great act of love was not a great act of damnation. God sent his son to rescue the world. By his action the sins of the world were forgiven (1 John 2:2).
Eternal life does not just mean unending existence, but a life lived in intimate communion with God, now and eternally. But, to live outside of this relation with God, John’s Gospel tells us, is to be judged ‘condemned already’. God loves the world, but does not force us; we must decide whether or not to “do what is true” and believe.
Augustine says that doing what is true is to “confess our sins and receive forgiveness” and in this way come to the light. Others say that ‘doing the truth’ is shorthand for trusting Christ. I think that one leads to the other: it takes trust to step into the light; to respond to the call of the one waiting to forgive; to entrust yourself to Him.
Israel was told to look to the bronze serpent and live, John’s gospel tells us to believe in the Son of Man lifted up and gain eternal life.
Nicodemus asked Jesus: How in the world can these things happen? The answer is by Jesus, the Son of Man, being lifted up, and by us simply trusting that this will bring us into a new relation, a new life with God. The answer is to trust in God.
The Gospel tells us that God is faithful, that he keeps his promises, and that we can trust in him. God calls us to keep looking to the risen Christ as we journey through our own times of wilderness, through doubt, COVID, and through all the seasons of our lives. Look to Christ and see the true sign of God’s love poured out for us. For God so loved the world.