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Scriptures: |
Ephesians 2:1-10 |
Arguably, there is no more familiar verse in the whole Bible than “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.” Oh, there’s “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,” or “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth,” or that favorite of church school memorizers down through the years (since it’s the shortest verse in the Bible): “Jesus wept.” But all those John 3:16 placards you see at sporting events along with the many times you’ve heard it repeated make this verse from the gospel of John the odds on favorite to be the one you’re most likely to think of if someone asks you to recite one verse from the Bible. In the Review-Journal yesterday there was an article about the mayor’s race in North Las Vegas, and one of the candidates is a minister with the legal name of John 3:16 Cook. Doesn’t look like he has much of a chance, according to the article. (Sidebar: I don’t know of any Bible translation, including the New Revised Standard Version, that doesn’t use “he” and “his” for God in the first line of this verse; even though I would prefer to say, “For God so loved the world that God gave God’s only Son…”, that falls on the ears awkwardly enough that I’ll go with what the NRSV has written…..for now.)
We’ve been talking through these Sundays of Lent about God’s demands and promises. Now, as we come up to the fourth Sunday of Lent, here is just about the biggest promise of them all. “For God so loved the world…” – emphasis on that “so”. Recall how kids like to ask “do you love me this much” [arms a little bit apart]? “Do you love me this much” [arms further apart]? “How about this much” [arms all the way wide]? They never could get their arms out far enough to encompass the whole of what they needed you to affirm about your love. Well, imagine God’s arms surrounding that whole globe that I used with the kids for their sermon. It is indeed true, as the old spiritual has it, that God has the WHOLE world in God’s hands. That’s the promise behind this verse from the gospel writer. What are the demands? We’ll get to those in a moment.
The lectionary is making us do a jump shift today – away from the Gospel of Mark, the first to be written, which we’ve been following for most of the past few weeks, and toward the Gospel of John, the last to be written, and the one that’s been called the “beginner’s Gospel” because of its emphasis on salvation. As Jesus – and therefore us – heads toward his confrontation with the cross, God’s love for the world is what is on his mind.
At the beginning of our passage Jesus makes a rather arcane reference: “…just as Moses lifted up a serpent in the wilderness…..” This is a reference to the book of Numbers, chapter 21, where the Israelites have been wandering in the wilderness for awhile. Even though they had just been victorious over the Canaanites at a place which they called Hormah (or “Destruction”), still there was lots of complaining going around – especially about the food (manna) that they had to eat. “At least in Egypt, we could go to McDonald’s once in a while!” they grumble (well, OK, maybe that’s not quite a literal translation). As happens on more than one occasion during these 40 years of wilderness wanderings, they challenge Moses and infuriate God. God is so angry that the Lord decides to teach these smart-aleck Hebrews a lesson or two. And so God sends venomous snakes to bite them.
For how many of you are snakes one of your favorite things? I didn’t see too many hands go up. Now, it is the case that my father used to have snakes as pets while I was growing up – non-poisonous black snakes, garter snakes – and I learned to be friendly with them. But for most people snakes are lodged in the same prehistoric, fright-laden parts of our brains as cockroaches, spiders, bats, and rats. And so, we should not be too surprised when we find that, like most of us, the children of Israel have a deathly fear of snakes. God knew what God was doing by sending this kind of affliction to them. So, now they are repentant and run to Moses saying, “We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you; pray to the Lord to take away the serpents from us.” But when Moses prays God doesn’t take the snakes away. Instead, God tells Moses to make a serpent out of bronze and set it atop a pole in the midst of the encampment. Those who are bitten by snakes can look up at the bronze serpent, and they will live. God sends both the poisonous bite and the antidote. God offers life even to a people who gripe against God.
This is what Jesus is referencing when he responds to Nicodemus, “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up…..” Nicodemus, we are told at the beginning of this chapter, was a leader of the Jews, and so this wilderness wandering story from the book of Numbers would no doubt have been familiar to him. So, here’s an important image for Jesus to use with Nicodemus in order to establish that he also offers new life just as God offered life to the Israelites there in that desert when they thought they were going to be bitten to death. Jesus is offering himself as God’s antidote to sin.
We are used to thinking of Jesus as the Good Shepherd. In fact, later on in the Gospel of John (10:11), he specifically refers to himself with that term. And it’s a comforting image. Many a painting depicts Jesus as cradling a lamb in his arms, and we respond because we want so much to be cradled just like that. But Nancy Topolewski suggests that here in Chapter Three we are being offered the image of Jesus as the Good Snake. Now, there’s an image to conjure with! The venom that bites at us and slowly poisons us each day is our own sinfulness. But Jesus offers the serum that comes from the venom itself, turning it back on itself in order to make us well and whole once again.
Here’s how Nancy Topolewski puts it:
“This is what C. S. Lewis calls ‘Deeper Magic from Before the Dawn of Time,’ the power by which the great lion Aslan is saved from death in the first volume of Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia,…called The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe; the power that is able to overcome the supposed supremacy of Jadis the White Witch, which is called ‘Deep Magic from the Dawn of Time.’ This power shows itself in the Gospel according to John, where Jesus is revealed as both the Good Shepherd and the Good Snake…..
“We don’t know what it means, and maybe that’s the point: to bring us to the realization that we can’t transform God into a more pleasing image. We don’t know what it means, and so we are challenged to see Jesus as one who comes to us with not only good things, but also with biting words, to surprise us with the truth about ourselves.”
Lent is a time to repent, to turn in a new direction, to begin again. Time in the wilderness where we experience all of our snake bites. Time in quiet prayer and reflection (as the women of our church and the two other churches are doing on Monday evenings) as a way to help us to focus our thoughts and expand our awareness of God at work in our lives. Time in worship and learning, in hearing the story and joining in the song of praise and thanksgiving, which increases our awareness of God at work in the lives of the people in every age, the God, as Eugene Peterson translates this, who "rounded you up from all over the place, from the four winds, from the seven seas" (The Message). But that time in worship also offers us the opportunity to cry out to God, together, about our own individual and communal distress. And then to hear the promise.
So…..”For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life…” IS both demand and promise. It is the demand so to believe in Christ, who is both the Good Shepherd and the Good Snake, that we give our all to follow him. We are the ones who must do the work of God – to make that “Deeper Magic from Before the Dawn of Time” come alive for all those around us and across the globe – as we do with our One Great Hour of Sharing offering. We are the ones who must do the work of God. I think I’ve used this line before, but it’s so appropriate I want to use it again here; a wonderful Christian woman I met in France, by the name of Tanya Metzl, would often speak in aphorisms like this one: “God works, and we perspire.” This same theme is echoed in the song we heard from Godspell: “We plow the fields and scatter the good seed on the land; But it is fed and watered by God’s almighty hand.”
And this, believe it or not, is good news. It is the good news that Jesus goes on to announce following that oh-so familiar verse: “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” We are not condemned. That’s the first word that a new Christian – or, really, any Christian at any stage of their development – should hear. Lutheran pastor John Stendahl speaks about a parishioner of his who had been sinking, metaphorically, and someone had thrown her a lifeline when she read the Gospel of John. Again, this is why it’s called the “beginner’s Gospel” – it tells of what happens when you are sinking and need that lifeline. “When they were sinking,” Stendahl says, “the lifeline comes as the absolute distinction between life and death.” We hold on – we recognize that the snake bites are getting to us – we get up and plow that field – and all the time we are hearing the lovely words: “God so loved the world”; “God so loved the world”; God so loved the world” – this world right hear and now, which is all we need to know of heaven.
Martin Luther caught this vision and made it the centerpiece of what became the Protestant Reformation. He found it especially in Paul’s letters, like the passage we read today from Ephesians: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God…..” God’s grace is what we are being offered, each day of our lives – by the Good Shepherd, by the Good Snake, by God Godself. And our response is to do God’s good work in the world – not in order to effect our salvation, but in grateful response to this grace that we have been freely given. “For we are what he has made us,” Paul tells the Ephesians, “created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.” This is the way of life that is the way of the cross – the way that Jesus offered to a puzzled Nicodemus: “But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.”
“All good gifts around us are sent from heaven above; So thank the Lord, O thank the Lord…..” We really do want to thank you, Lord, for all your great gifts – but especially for your grace which saves and sustains us.
Amen.
Dave Pomeroy
First Congregational Church/United Church of Christ
Las Vegas, NV
March 22, 2009