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March 14 -- Snakes on a Pole (Lent 4B)

 

Deep into Lent are we, and it’s clear that something is coming, as we gather around the images and stories and lessons for today.  Something is being forecast with our readings for today…particularly this strange OT reading about the Israelites in the wilderness...  

There is a cross coming into view, albeit perhaps fuzzy right now:  Through our lessons, particularly our Old Testament readings these past weeks — the covenant and the rainbow of Noah, the promise to Sarah and Abraham, the 10 commandments, now we’re still in the wilderness of our Lenten journey, it might be foggy, might be rainy, but — a cross is starting to come into view.  We’re not there yet.  Today, it’s this strange, gruesome image of a serpent on a pole…

This OT lesson is worth recounting because it is a snapshot of the entire Old Testament pattern… in Bible Study: “God blesses, people mess up, God gets angry, people repent…”  See that here?  They’re in the wilderness – free at last (God blesses) but complaining and tired, they want to go back.
Moses reminds them of the food and how far God has brought them “we hate the food”, we would rather be back there! (people mess up) God gets angry, sends serpents to bite them.

The people cry out for help. Moses petitions God for the people.  God give them the snake on a pole.  And those who look to it are healed. (God blesses)

It is a curious story.  And it’s in our lectionary because of our Gospel reading.  Because Jesus in the Gospel of John makes a reference to it:  “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Humanity be lifted up.”  Same effect:  Those who look to him are healed.

There is a cross coming into view.  

But let’s stay with the OT story in the wilderness.  Snake’s on a pole.  God getting angry.  I think this story is amazing.  It’s entertaining on one level, in its strangeness.  But I laugh at it mostly because I can totally relate to complaining in the wilderness.  “We hate the food.”  (NRSV: “We detest this miserable food.”)  They of course are referring to manna, the holiest of holy bible food...next to the body and blood of Christ, of course.

Do you ever feel like the Israelites in the wilderness, wanting to go back to the way things used to be?  Sure it wasn’t perfect back then, but at least it was better than this?


If we had a nickel — for every time we heard somebody say (or thought it ourselves): if only we could go back to the way it used to be.  In other words, “We hate the new food.  Why, when I was growing up...”

I laugh when I read this text mostly, I’m afraid, out of discomfort, because it so aptly hits the nail on the head.  “God, why did you bring us to this point?!  We hate it.”
“God why did you bring us to this point in our lives?  WE hate it.  We detest this misery.”

And then all of a sudden…SNAKES!  In a recent poll of “Things We’re Afraid Of,” 36% of Americans list snakes as #1.
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Any chance those snakes are a gift?  Like a sharp tone in your mother or father’s voice – a sharpness you never heard before, and frankly it hurts.  There’s a bite to it.  

Any chance those snakes are a gift?  When we’re longing for the past, we’re not fully in the present because of that?  But as soon as you’ve got a snake slithering toward you, man, you’re right in the moment!   Your head is pulled right out of the clouds of the past, and all your senses are in tact – adrenaline, reflexes all as sharp as your body is possibly able.  You are alive—that’s what adrenaline junkies are all about.  “Never felt more alive, man!” is what they say.

Any chance those snakes were a gift?  God snaps us out of our natural default position to complain (which we often do from the easy chair), to long for something more (especially when we’re relatively safe and wondering “well, how can we get safer”), our natural default position to get nostalgic about the past, to burrow in to what we know…

God snaps us out of that with a bite, a sting, a harsh tone.  And then with adrenaline pumping, sticking us right smack in the present moment…

…Mercy.  Grace.  Healing comes.  Salvation (salvus).

Sometimes we need that jolt to remind us that God is the one who brought us here, God is the one who has never left us.  And God is the one who will bring us to the promised land.  Sometimes we need that jolt, because we forget.  Ever seem like we say the same thing in church, week after week?  Because we forget (people mess up) that God has brought us here, that God is the one who has never left us, that God will bring us to the promised land at last.  

But there’s a cross coming into view.  For Christians, gotta go past the cross to get to the empty tomb.  

Anyone who’s gone through surgery knows that pain comes before the healing.  (By the way, the serpent on the pole, of course, is the medical symbol.)  Those who look to the serpent will be healed.  It’s not an idol.  If the people think that the snake itself (or the cross itself, for that matter) is the cause of the cure, then it becomes an idol.  But if they look to it as a reminder of the mercy and providence and presence of God, then it becomes a holy symbol.  If they look through the bronze serpent, just as we look through the cross of Christ, then it is healing.  In even and especially the most gruesome and strange symbols—a snake on a pole, a bloody cross—God’s love is poured out, and not just for us, but for all, as John 3 tells us:  “God so loved the cosmos.”    

The cross is coming into view!  It gets harder before it gets easier.  In that truth there is grace, there is relief, there is healing.  There is salvation.  

And even here in the wilderness, friends in Christ, Jesus is our rock.  AMEN.

March 7 -- Theological Spring Cleaning (Lent 3B)

Sisters and brothers, siblings and friends in Christ, God is always doing a new thing.  God is always moving us in the direction of change, evolving us toward greater faithfulness, deeper peace, fuller grace.

That’s true in this exciting story as well.  All the Gospels have a story about Jesus in the temple overturning the tables.  But interestingly, this one in the Gospel of John comes right at the beginning of his ministry.  Chapter 2!  Matthew, Mark and Luke all have Jesus driving out the money-changers not until the week before his crucifixion, at the end of his earthly ministry.  It’s part of what fuels the chief priests and scribes’ fire to have him arrested and finally crucified, remember?  But here Jesus does this at the beginning of his 3 year ministry.  What’s happening here?  Did John forget to mention him doing it again a few days before his passion, death and resurrection?  

Whatever conclusion you come to, what is going on here, it’s something different in terms of what this means.  John’s Gospel, as I think I’ve shared before is very different!  

For one thing, Jesus doesn’t show much emotion.  He doesn’t call names — he doesn’t call them “robbers”.  I don’t even think he seems all that angry, like in the other Gospels.  In John, it’s not an indictment on financial corruption, economic inequalities, social injustice.  Jesus just says, “Don’t make this a marketplace.”  In John, it’s always a deeply spiritual matter...which can arrive us at those other issues.  But what’s happening here first is a radical theological spring cleaning and replacement.
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See, the people were used to buying cattle, sheep and doves when they arrived in Jerusalem for the Passover.  That’s what you did as part of the ritual sacrifice, that’s how the people celebrated Passover.  First, they sacrificed by traveling all the way to Jerusalem every year...specifically to the temple, the only place where God was believed to dwell.  And then, when they get there, after walking all those miles, they’d buy an animal to sacrifice.  Like Professor Karoline Lewis said, “You’re not gonna schlep a sheep from Galilee.”  

So everyone was used to seeing this mall of animals, like a farmers market, in the inner walls of the temple.  

And as for the “money changers” — by the way — this very well could have been their livelihood...  I have a friend who used to act out this scene, from the perspective of the money changers:  Jesus knocking over everything: “Man. That’s my dinner tonight, man.  How am I going to feed my family this month.  Who is this guy?” I think his is an interesting commentary on this story in Matthew, Mark and Luke.  That’s a good entry point.  But here in John, Jesus is doing something radically theological (as opposed to political in the other cases).
 

Jesus is throwing out ritual sacrifice.  He is throwing out the idea that you have to buy something to earn God’s favor.  I’d even say, as a Lutheran, he’s throwing out the idea that you have to do something to earn God’s good graces.  Radical theological replacement, you see.  Theological spring cleaning.  Out with old — that is, the old idea that God only lives in the high temple, in the holiest of holies, there in Jerusalem.  Out with the old — that is, the old idea that you have to buy a sheep or a goat or an ox and sacrifice it  in order to get this inaccessible God to notice and bless you (like so many other religions, btw)...  

What’s happening here, already in chapter 2, is that we’re getting to see that God is breaking out, God — i.e. Christ himself — is breaking beyond the walls and the rules of the temple and the tradition.  In fact, Christ himself is the temple now!  There is no one place to go where you can visit God.  God is out there on the road. 

We see again that in John as Jesus just. keeps. moving!  Holiness is everywhere now, not just in temples (or churches).

And because it’s everywhere we’re no longer chained to a checklist of sacrifices and journeys we have to make.  Jesus becomes the temple.  And this temple, that is his body, is nothin’ but love.  Nothing but abundant life and peace and forgiveness and grace!
            Overflowing, all-encompassing holiness.

That’s what we’re offered now.  Here.  Friends in Christ.

When holiness shows up everywhere, when we’re covered by Christ, then we do start to act differently, we do start to see differently, we do start to use our money differently, vote differently, speak differently, serve differently.  We don’t change our ways because there’s some kind of reward at the end!  That’s the old ritual sacrifice transaction:  I’ll give you this, God...so that will will give me that.  

We don’t barter with God!  We already have this reward!

We only respond to God...who through Christ, always acts first in LOVE and generosity.  God always makes the first move, all we can do is respond (great statement of faith!).  Danker: “Jesus did the work, we just get to do church.”

When people are doing cruel things, or when members of the family are clearly burdened — church people, or people that say they’re Christians — it always makes me sad because it’s like they’re reading the Bible but not understanding it.  They’re reading something, and at the same time not seeing/getting/receiving that this God is pouring out love and forgiveness FIRST.  Not after we make some kind of sacrifice or do some kind of ritual or good work to earn this.  
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Dearly departed (regardless of political party) Rep. John Lewis of Georgia:  John Lewis was a Freedom Rider, marched with Dr. King and participated in those famous sit-ins in the Deep South, where he and other African Americans would walk into a diner and just sit quietly, waiting patiently to be served. People would spit on them because they were black, they’d pour hot coffee and syrup on them, call them all kinds of horrible names…

And as John Lewis talked about this and other forms of non-violent resistance he said at the heart of it all was love.  “You have to love your enemies and those who persecute you.”  (I wonder if he was reading Howard Thurman and the Gospel of John too.)

And then he told this story from just a couple years ago, when a former KKK member requested an audience with Lewis because he wanted to apologize.  And with tears in his eyes this now-very-old white man says to the late great John Lewis, “I’m sorry for what I did to you, those many years ago.  My heart was filled with hate.  Not anymore.  Will you accept my apology?”  And John Lewis said, “I accept your apology,” and then reflects calmly in this interview, “See, that’s the power of radical love, the love of Jesus.  It’s the most powerful force in the world, and it has the power to overturn the tables.”
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Friends in Christ, Jesus in the temple, this “cleansing” is breaking us out of old, oppressive, tit-for-tat ways and systems.  And inviting us again — “come and see” — that’s how it begins!  The Holy Spirit is inviting us again down the road of discipleship, down the path of Jesus.  This is a radical theological replacement!  Love not law.  No more burdens or chains.  Freedom is walking the way of compassion and forgiveness.  New life.

This love, grace, mercy and cleansing healing is for you.  It’s right here and now.  Take a deep, Johanine breath today, in this Hallelujah Anyhow Lent: soak it up.  Chew it down, drink it in.  Taste and see that God is great.  Feast on this abundance that Christ offers freely to you today.  The old has been replaced with AGAPE — unconditional love — and so we. have. been. made. new.  Greater faithfulness, deeper peace, fuller grace.  Thanks be to God.  Hallelujah.  AMEN.