Numbers 21:4-9 | John 3:14-21
Jeremy Richards
A couple years ago, I started meeting every so often with 3 other dads. I call them my “dad’s group.” Two of them would definitely not call themselves Christians (I’m not sure how they would identify themselves, probably agnostic), while the other has referred to himself as a “lapsed Catholic,” who actually went to Union Theological Seminary. When we get together we talk about a lot of different stuff. Obviously dad stuff is a big part of it, but it always surprises me how much they want to talk about faith. In fact, sometimes I’m afraid we talk too much about it, but they’re usually the ones who bring it up, not me.
We were supposed to get together almost exactly a year ago, but we cancelled because it was the week everything got real with Covid. Well, for the first time, a little over a week ago, we got together again. The lapsed Catholic wasn’t able to make it, so it was just me and the agnostics.
At one point during the night, we were sitting outside at NePo 42, eating some food and drinking some drinks, and, of course, we were talking about all the stuff that’s gone wrong with the world: Covid, climate change, injustices, you know, the things that have become every day for us at this point. Then one of them said, “The other one that’s sneaky but’s really scary: AI.” And the other one said, “I think that’s gonna be good though, I think it’s gonna help.” And the other one said, “No, it always goes bad. Everything starts out with good intentions, but it always ends up being bad.” Then he turned to me and said, “What do you think?” and it was clear he meant, “as a pastor.”
And I said, “Ummm…” and before I could say anything else, he said, “You better not! You better not!” Like, you better not be pessimistic. If any of us should be optimistic, it’s the pastor, he was saying.
So this is what I said. I said, “I think one of the best things about Christianity is that it’s very realistic. It’s realistic about how broken the world is, and about evil, and things like that. Even though it’s been used in a lot of bad ways, this is why sin is such an important concept, and why it’s good that Christianity does talk about it. Christians don’t really put any hope in the idea that humanity is going to save itself. We do tend to think that everything does end up getting corrupted (this may seem pretty pessimistic, but its pretty obvious when we look at history).” (I didn’t say, but should have said, “Jesus did get crucified after all.” If that isn’t proof that no good deed goes unpunished, that humanity will, time and again, choose destruction, death, and violence over peace, love, and life, then I don’t know what is.) I went on, “But yet we do, ultimately, have hope, because we don’t think it’s up to people. We believe it’s up to God. We believe God – or what you might call the Good – is always working, and that in the end everything will be made right. But that doesn’t mean that we’re off the hook. We, as people, are invited to participate with the Good, with God, to bring about that restoration. But it isn’t ultimately up to us.”
I think that’s essentially what our passage from John this morning is about. Jesus’ words have a good dose of reality, maybe an uncomfortable dose of reality. Humanity as a whole, and human beings as individuals are easily corruptible.
We don’t really talk a lot about that here at Grant Park. Which I don’t really see as a problem. Many of us have been given enough shame and guilt through Christian religion to last us a life time. We need to be reminded that the first words God said about us is, “This is very good.” As a church, we try to emphasize the inherent blessedness of humanity, and of Creation. All of Creation, including us, is blessed because all of creation is loved by God.
We’ve been praying every Sunday, “In love you breathed life into our bodies. In love you sent your Son Jesus Christ and raised him from the dead. In love you poured out your Holy Spirit for us. Through love and in love you have called us your children and drawn us to yourself.” That’s true. Love comes first. God loves us. God loves you.
This week, I was driving down 39th, and someone has these encouraging signs posted along the road where everyone can see, and one says, “You are worthy of love.” I think one of the misunderstandings we have about sin is that we think sin makes that statement untrue. We think that sin makes us unworthy of love. When we read the word “sin” in scripture or hear it in a sermon or a song or a prayer, we think that the point is that we have somehow become unlovable. Sin = not guilt but shame. To be a sinner it so be unlovable, maybe even repulsive in God’s sight.
But sin doesn’t keep God from loving us. As we’ve heard again and again these last few months, “God’s steadfast love endures forever.” There’s a passage from Isaiah 65 that I used to read in a condemning way, but I’ve come to see in a new light. God says through the prophet, “All day long I have held out my hands to an obstinate people, who walk in ways not good.” I used to think the emphasis was on the people’s wayward ways, but now I think the emphasis is on God’s patient love. All day long I have held out my hands. That’s the point.
The emphasis of our reading this morning is on love and salvation, not sin and condemnation. “For God so loved the world…,” “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
But Jesus won’t force anyone’s hand. Everyone is presented with a choice, an invitation to participate in what Jesus calls the “eternal life” or the “abundant life” or the “kingdom of God” or the “kingdom of heaven.” Whenever Esther’s on the verge of doing something she knows she’s not supposed to, and we see the wheels spinning, her little mind weighing the risks and benefits, we say to her, “It’s your choice Esther. You can choose to do the right thing, or not.” Of course, now she thinks everything’s her choice, even things that aren’t actually her choice. Like, we say, “It’s time to go to bed,” and she says, “No, I don’t want to. It’s my choice.”
Constantly, when people encounter Jesus in the Gospels, they are faced with a choice. Keep living the way you were, or turn toward the abundant life, the eternal life, the kingdom of God, which is available now, in the present, or keep going the way of the world. To Peter and Andrew he came along the seashore and said, “Follow me!” and they dropped their nets and did so. To the rich young man, he said, “Sell everything you have and come and follow me,” and the young man went away sad because he couldn’t let go. To the 12 disciples and all the disciples who would come after, including us, Jesus says, “Pick up your cross and follow me.” And we all get to choose whether or not we’ll take him up on the offer.
The religious word for all this is “repentance,” which is another one of those beautiful words with a lot of ugly baggage. Every time Jesus says “repent” he offers us an invitation into a fuller life, a life lived in communion with the Triune God and in fellowship with people and the earth. To go back to my conversation with my dad’s group, it’s God saying, “See! I’m doing a new thing!” and inviting us to participate in it, to live in the light of it.
But this choice that Jesus presents us with is a kind of crisis. In fact, the word that’s translated “judgement” in v. 19 (“And this is the judgement, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light…”) does mean judgement, but it’s pronounced krisis, and it’s the word from which we get our word “crisis.” When we encounter Jesus, we are faced with a choice, a crisis.
The teachings of Jesus, the person of Jesus, shines a light on our life. We see the life he lived, the life he called us to, beautiful as it is, but we also see the incongruities in our own lives. We like to think we’re nice, caring people, but then Jesus says “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you” and we realized how much hatred we still harbor in our hearts. We think we’re inclusive, but then Jesus says, “When you have a party, don’t invite your friends over, but invite the poor and the sick, those people who have nothing to give you in return,” and we realize how exclusive we truly are. But Jesus doesn’t point these things out to shame us, he points them out to free us. Hate is a prison, privilege and fear of the other are walls that cut us off from the beauty and humanity of our neighbors, which cuts us off from our own humanity.
But so often we aren’t brave enough to trust Jesus. We must hold on to our anger, we think. We’re justified in the hatred of our enemies. We must keep ourselves safe from “those people,” we can’t invite them into our homes. We retreat into the darkness. But the light doesn’t go away. The love isn’t rescinded. It’s always there. “All day long I have held out my hands,” God says.
In our reading from Numbers, the people’s sin leads God to send poisonous serpents to bite them, and they’re dropping left and right. Then God tells Moses to make a serpent of bronze and lift it high, and everyone who looks on the serpent will live. Please don’t get bogged down by the particulars of the story. Don’t get all upset about why would God send these serpents into the midst of the people, and why is God so vindictive, and all that. Let’s not miss the forest for the trees. Because really, on a psychological, spiritual level, the message of this story is so profound. We really shouldn’t miss it. The message is: to be healed you must look upon the source of your sickness.
Repressing, avoiding, denying the habits and tendencies – what we call sins – in our lives that harm us and other people, that cause pain, that keep us from entering the abundant life Jesus offered only gives them more power, and only increases our suffering. The only way to truly be free of them is to bring them to the light – the light not of condemnation, but of Christ’s love. To look directly at them. To be real about them. To be honest with ourselves.
If we will trust Jesus – and that’s what “believe” in our Gospel means, “to trust, to put your faith in” not “to mentally assent to” – he will expose the poisonous snakes in our lives, what scripture calls sin. But, again, the light he shines is not the light of condemnation, but the light of love. The snakes were what were condemning us, what were hurting us. In love, Christ exposes these things, and it’s uncomfortable and painful and often we don’t want him to do it. But we have to look at them in order to be healed from them.
As we travel through Lent, as we travel toward the cross, we are reminded that Jesus doesn’t ask us to do anything he isn’t willing to do himself. In his relationships, in his life and ministry, and especially on the cross, he became vulnerable. He was exposed. Just as the bronze snake was raised up, so he was raised up for everyone to see. He has given himself fully to the world, so we can trust him enough to give ourselves fully to him.
Lastly, I have to acknowledge the danger of this passage when it comes to other faiths and how we view them. Jesus seems to be saying that if you aren’t a Christian, if you don’t believe in Jesus Christ, then you are condemned. There are many passages throughout scripture, even some passages in this very Gospel of John, that challenge that idea. I don’t think that’s the way Christ works.
Context is always important, so very quickly let’s look at the context. This teaching takes place in the midst of a larger conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus, a Pharisees, a Jewish religious leader, who recognizes that Jesus is from God, but doesn’t know what to do because Jesus is challenging the very core of their religious institution. And in that context, Jesus’ message is actually radically inclusive, not exclusive. At the time, most of the Jews thought that they alone were God’s chosen people, and everyone else was condemned. But Jesus appears and says that “God so loved” not only the Jewish people, but the whole world, the cosmos, and anyone, no matter their “background, race, or ethnicity” who believes in him will be saved. Anyone can belong.
But, on the flip-side, to be clear, Jesus’ message isn’t anti-Judaism. Jesus, the Jew, isn’t anti-Semitic. He isn’t challenging Judaism, but religious exclusivity. So to interpret this passage as saying only Christians know God – to come away with the conclusion that one group (Christians) exclusively has the Truth – would be to fall into the very way of thinking Jesus is refuting. Christ’s light shines on everyone, everywhere. It’s not for us to determine how.
The choice, the crisis, the invitation, Christ presents us with is for us, the people like Nicodemus, who have come to Jesus and opened our lives to him. We have engaged him, we have encountered him. And he has opened himself to us, given himself for us.
All day long he holds out his hands to us.
Will we take hold of them? Will we take hold of him?
Amen.