Homily for Fourth Sunday in Lent 14 March, 2021
Numbers 21:4-9
Ephesians 2:1-10
John 3:14-21
Psalm 107:1-3,17-22
It’s been….. one…long…. year!
Pandemic, economic uncertainty and political turmoil have left us numb, wondering what might come next and when it will end. We long to return to “normal”, all the while realizing that “normal” may be very different than in the past.
None of us has lived through this year without experiencing some effects: Tragedy, feelings of isolation, perhaps even anger, have reached into the lives of all of us.
We’ve found ourselves stressed, “on edge”, depressed.
Goodness knows, there have been many causes for resentment.
Maybe we can be a little gentler, a little more understanding of the emotions in the hearts and minds of the Israelites in today’s first reading.
They’ve slogged through a seemingly endless wilderness since their escape from Egypt. It’s been something like 40 years! Many who started out on the journey with such enthusiasm and high hopes were no longer even alive.
Still, they seemed to be constantly complaining!
Yet with each complaint, Moses had interceded with God to solve the problem and God had come to the rescue!
They complained that their drinking water was “bitter”. Moses prayed and God told Moses how to “sweeten” it.
They complained about the lack of food and God provided manna.
They ran low on water and Moses struck a rock with his staff and fresh, cold water gushed forth.
They yearned for meat and God sent a windstorm that blew flocks of quail into their camp.
Notice that their complaints were always directed at their leader, Moses.
BUT: THIS time, something was different!
This Time, “The people spoke against GOD as well as against Moses. “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in this wilderness? For there is no food, and no water………and we detest this miserable food”. (that would be manna!).
They’d formed what one commentator called a “Let’s Go Back to Egypt Committee”! (Sound familiar?)
And God, it seems, had had enough!
Their camp was overrun by poisonous snakes which bit people who began to die.
Then, they realized that they have gone too far in their whining.
They came to Moses and beseeched him, “We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you; pray to the Lord to take away the serpents from us.”
It’s called “confession”.
But remember:
“Confession” leads to “repentance”.
“Repentance” leads to “Forgiveness”.
“Forgiveness leads to “Restoration.”
Moses DID pray, and God DID act! God instructed Moses to make a bronze replica of one of the snakes, mount it on a pole, and lift it up high in the middle of the camp so all the people could see it. If those who had been bitten and were dying looked up at the image of the snake on the pole they would be healed!
But they, obviously, had to choose to do it. They had to believe Moses’s words.
THERE WAS NO “MAGIC” INHHERENT IN THE IMAGE OF THE SNAKE!
HERE WAS ONLY OBEDIENCE AND FAITH!
That snake on the pole was the sign, not only of God’s power to heal but the affirmation of God’s forgiveness, faithfulness, and restoration!
End of story?
Sadly, not quite!
Let’s fast forward about 500 years to the period when the nation of Israel was ruled by kings.
Some were bad kings and some merely incompetent. But there is one exception, King Hezekiah.
King Hezekiah was a really good king, a good man and a reformer.
He set about “cleaning house” in Israel. Much had gone very wrong!
The people were really into the “Magic” thing!
He found all kinds of crazy cults and altars to strange gods. People were sacrificing to them and worshipping them in direct defiance of the laws Moses had brought down from Mt. Sinai.
AND, Hezekiah also found the pole that Moses had crafted, the bronze snake still attached. People had made it one of their gods! They thought it was “magic”, having power in and of itself!
Hezekiah pulled it down and smashed it to bits!
So now let’s “fast forward’ again, this time to Jesus and a conversation he was having with a fellow named Nicodemus, a prominent figure who’d come to Jesus under cover of darkness. He was concerned about his soul but didn’t quite know how to bring up the subject with the young rabbi.
And Jesus, as he so often did, just “cut to the chase”. His words were hard for Nicodemus to understand but Jesus drove them home, “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness”, he said, “so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life”.
We’ve heard something like that before!
“Look up to the bronze image of the snake of the pole and be healed…..
and……”
“Look up to the Son of Man (Jesus) as he is lifted up, believe in him, and have eternal life.”
Jesus, of course, was referring to his coming “lifting up” on the cross!
We need to remind ourselves during this Lenten season that the joy of Easter comes only after the pain and suffering of Good Friday; the “lifting up” of Jesus on the cross!
Yet THAT is the ultimate acting out of God’s love for all!
It’s all bound up in the familiar words: “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.”
In these days, as Lent draws to a close, let us confront the serpents of despair, fear, grief and isolation.
Let us lift up the cross of Jesus, the Christ, with faith….and be healed!
We do that as we repent, confess, know forgiveness, and receive restoration.
May we in these days of our own wilderness wandering:
“Lift High the Cross,
The love of Christ proclaim,
Till all the world,
Adore his sacred name.”
Amen.
