Don’t look away

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Lent (March 10, 2024) at St. James’ Episcopal Church in Hyde Park, NY. View the scripture readings and the Collect of the Day.

Colored light bathes the interior of Saint-Julien in Brioude, France., from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=47117 Original source: Image donated by Jim Womack and Anne Richardson.

Listen:

Like what you hear? You can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Jesus said, “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.” from John 3:14-21

Edited Transcript

May only truth be spoken here and only truth be heard. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Please be seated.

My friends who are from down south, Georgia or Texas, tell me that this Gospel today contains what they know as the "billboard verse." John 3:16. "God so loved the world."

"God so loved the world that God gave the only begotten son so that whoever believes in him would not perish but have eternal life."

 And like any billboard verse, it has this incredible power and it's also really easily misunderstood or misused. One of the ways that this can be misused is to focus on our failures: our failure to believe, and the resulting condemnation, right? It becomes very easy to say, well, if you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you're good. And if not, woe to you, condemnation and judgment to you!

As usual, what Jesus is doing is something much more complicated than a black-and-white separation of people from people. Jesus, God, came into the world not to condemn the world. Jesus, God comes into the world out of love for the world!

Today we have Jesus saying to us that it's out of love that God comes into the world. And out of love for the world, the son of humanity must be lifted up—just as the snake is lifted up by Moses in the desert. So in order to understand what Jesus is coming into the world to do, and what is he talking about when he says, just like the snake, the son of man must be lifted up.

So we have to go back. We must go back because we can't not talk about this story from Numbers, which I feel that Russell read with precisely the right tone.

So: here's people of Israel in the desert, having been liberated from slavery, now they're wandering around, they're complaining about the food. Also, there's not enough food.

It reminds me of this joke where a couple kind of a crotchety couple goes into the diner and they order their dinners and they're eating their dinners. And one of them says to the other, this food is terrible. And the other one says, Yes, and such small portions!

This is kind of the Israelite attitude. This is the attitude of the people of God. And God says, I'm going to give them something to actually complain about here. And so suddenly their camp is filled with these poisonous serpents and the serpents are biting the people.

This is so frightening. I mean, I am a hundred percent petrified of snakes. When camping, I'm definitely a camper who checks my shoes, even though I've never gone camping anywhere except upstate New York where snakes and scorpions are not a big deal.

But the idea that this place where they've settled down for camp suddenly is infested with these poison snakes and people are just falling and dying all over. And so the people are like, oh man, we shouldn't have been complaining. Moses, we're sorry. Can you please ask God to help us?

And so Moses prays and God says, make an image of a poisonous snake out of bronze. Hold it up for the people. And Moses does. And God says, whoever's bitten needs to look at that image and they'll have life. They'll live. And the people do. And everyone who looks on it lives.

And we think, boy, this is really mean-spirited of God. To have the people look at an image of the thing that has been hurting and killing them.

But this story tells us a deep truth about human life. It's one of those truths that we dwell in during the season of Lent, which is that when something is wrong, when something is hurting, you can't deny it. You have to look at it. You have to acknowledge what's hurting you. That's where the healing begins. If a poison snake is biting me, I can't just be like, I'm fine!

But don't we try to do that, so often?We try to deny a wrongdoing. We look away from injustice. We kind of have to get on with our lives.

But every year for Christians, the season of Lent brings us back. Lent says, not in a mean-spirited way but in a gentle sense: turn, and look at the poison. Look at the pain that surrounds us all the time. The snakes that hurt, not only us but our neighbors.

We take this time in Lent to look, to turn our heads and look at what we would rather look away from and to acknowledge what we would rather avoid, which is sin. Sin: all the forces of evil that would corrupt and destroy the creatures of God.

And when we take that look, wouldn't we ourselves condemn the world? The wars, the vengeance-seeking that's destroying the lives of children and innocent people. The fact that people are starving even though there's more than enough in God's world for everybody. The fact that we treat each other as human beings constantly with contempt, with disregard.

And then worst of all, we're constantly tempted to look away. And God is saying, gently, Look. Behold, lift up the suffering and the violence and the pain. Don't look away.

In Lent, we look and we ask for forgiveness. Our hearts are full of sorrow for our own sins, the things we've done or left undone. And for all the collective sin that seems to rule this world and that we somehow cannot untangle our individual selves from.

God lifts it up just as the snake is lifted up in the wilderness. When God comes into the world to wear, and to bear, and to be humanity, God is lifted up on the cross.

When we look at Jesus on the cross, what do we see but the triumph of human sin, of violence, of all the forces that oppress and corrupt and destroy what God has created?

And when Jesus is lifted on the cross, and when we get to Good Friday, when we hear the Passion read with the people saying, Crucify him! It seems that what is being lifted up is the condemnation of the world, the condemnation especially of us and our violence and our sin.

But God is saying, don't look away. Because somehow this lifting up is life.

The crucifixion is where Jesus is lifted up. But it's not the end of the story.

After Jesus is crucified and dies and is buried, on the third day, he rose again in accordance with the scripture and then ascended into heaven so that he might fill all things. The lifting up begins with an honest look at the violence and the condemnation. But it's so easy to forget—like we've been hearing the disciples forget—that the crucifixion is not the end, but it is a beginning of God's story, a story that ends not in condemnation, but in the triumph of love.

Because we thought that our violence and our sin was the end of what God is doing in the world. We thought God created this world and all we can do is make a mess of it. And when we get stuck there, we're like people surrounded by snakes. We're terrified. We can't move forward.

But if we gaze on that cross, if we look at Jesus—look at Jesus—it's transfigured. The very thing that has been lifted up, which is our humanity and our condemnation, is transfigured—by the power of God's love, by the God who came into the world—because God loved it. And love appears where condemnation had seemed to triumph. And love renews, rehabilitates, redeems the world. Jesus rises again, and love ascends into heaven so that it might fill all in all.

So the invitation for this week is think about the poisonous snake landscape that you might find yourself in when you turn on the news. Think about what is it that God would be lifting up before your eyes as that thing which would condemn us and all this world. Then allow yourself to see that condemnation in the cross of Jesus Christ, in his crucifixion.

And don't look away, but keep looking at Jesus. Keep looking at Jesus.

And know that by the power of love, the condemnation that you see is ,and has been, and will be transfigured: into hope and new life, by the power of love. Amen.