The readings
Numbers 21:4-9
From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go
around the land of Edom; but the people became impatient on the way. The people spoke against God and against
Moses, "Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?
For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable
food." Then the LORD sent poisonous
serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites
died. The people came to Moses and said,
"We have sinned by speaking against the LORD and against you; pray to the
LORD to take away the serpents from us." So Moses prayed for the
people. And the LORD said to Moses,
"Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is
bitten shall look at it and live."
So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever
a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and
live.
Ephesians 2:1-10
You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you
once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the
power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are
disobedient. All of us once lived among
them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses,
and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else. But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the
great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our
trespasses, made us alive together with Christ--by grace you have been
saved--and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places
in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable
riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through
faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God--not the result of
works, so that no one may boast. For we
are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God
prepared beforehand to be our way of life.
John 3
And 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. "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.
"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. Those who believe in him are not condemned;
but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not
believed in the name of the only Son of God.
And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and
people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not
come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. 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."
The message
From time to time growing up, I would do something that
people were not supposed to do. Nothing
too bad but there were times when I could have been in real trouble or been
seriously hurt. I am not going to get into any details, (although my mom is
here today and she’s the one who often had to take care of these things, so
maybe she feels like talking). Each time I did one of these, for lack of a
better phrase, very dumb things, there were honestly never any lasting
consequences. If I was in trouble at school, there would be a meeting with the
principle or teacher and they would note, I was doing great academically and
was never a problem before, so I would go with a warning not to do it
again. If I was hurt, I would heal up in
the next few days and be fine. After a while, I started to believe that
punishments and consequences were only for bad people who did just terrible things
all the time. Everyone else was basically okay and the full rules about
consequences didn’t really apply. Things
that could harm your life like having a criminal record, being suspended or
thrown out of school, or being seriously hurt, were things that only happened
to other, much worse people.
As I grew up, I started to meet and hear about people who
did get in trouble, people who were seriously hurt doing the same things we did,
people who were actually arrested and had records, which ruined their chances
at getting their lives right and people who were thrown out of school and had
their access to a good education limited.
I learned that my views of the world, where full consequences were only
meant for the very bad and where everyone is entitled to a few warnings or get
out of jail free cards, were all wrong. No one is entitled to avoid
consequences and no one deserves to be burdened by them for a lifetime.
As we look at our readings this morning and the state of our
faith in the world today, it seems like a lot of people are making the same mistake
I did. People of faith seem to think we are not like those bad people who will
face the consequences and end up in hell. There
are dangers here:
First, we can stop being amazed and thankful. We start to
feel like we are entitled to being saved, like God’s grace is a reward for
being good and believing what we are supposed to, like the cross is a little
thank you gift from God for trying our best to follow the law. We forget that
God could send us snakes
Second, we can start to believe that membership has its privileges,
that these groups have doors between them and it is up to us to decide who can
enter and leave. We try to hoard God’s
grace, as though there is not enough for everyone. To be blunt, we almost seem to enjoy when
other people get bit by the snakes, since it makes us feel better, that we are
not like them.
Third, we can actually re-write Romans 3 “all have sinned
and fall short of the glory of God” and we start to believe “some have sinned
more than others and those people fall short of the glory of God”. We start to
believe we don’t really even need saving from sin and death, we can handle it
ourselves. We forget that the consequences of our actions should be sin and
death, that all of us deserve those snakes.
In some ways this ideas can come from today’s readings, if
you take them out of context and pick and choose your verses you can find a
focus on the separation of people, There is the division of those in the light
and those in the dark, the saved and the
condemned, those alive in faith and those dead in sin, the ones who call out
“we have sinned” and look at the snake, and those who take their chances
against the poison, those who know the joy of God’s life and the ones who are
slaves to the flesh, the ones joined to Christ’s death and resurrection and the
ones trying to earn God’s favor by being good. We can very comfortably believe
that as long as we maintain our membership in one of these first groups, we’re
fine and our work is over.
The truth is the texts this morning, read together and
completely all pull us away from these dangerous ideas. The strange and
uncomfortable story of the poison snakes in the wilderness, Paul’s words to the
people of Ephesus about being saved by God’s work of grace, not our own work of
being decent or good hearted people, and the part of Jesus’ conversation with
Nicodemus where Jesus shares one of the most well-known verses in the bible,
for God so loved the world that he gave his only son so that everyone who
believes in him, will not perish but have eternal life, all work together to
carry us to Jesus and the life giving cross.
Our first readings, the one from numbers about God sending
poisonous snakes upon the people as punishment for their complaining and lack
of faith. It is one of many stories in the bible where God tries to drive the
people back to faith by famine, plague, illness, destruction, defeat and other brutal
and harsh ways. I would have changed it
this morning, except for the fact that Jesus actually references this obscure
and really odd story right before talking about God’s love for the world. This
reading sits with us, showing us what the consequences of sin could be and what
alternatives to the cross might look like. We do not always live as God asks,
we do not always follow the law, we do not always keep the faith. We deserve
snakes and we receive snakes.
In Paul, we are reminded that faith is not just something we
do in our free time, it is a new life.
We go from being dead in sin to being alive in God. By the cross and
only by the cross, by Jesus suffering, death and resurrection, we are set free
from the brutal consequences of sin and death. This is God’s work, God’s act of
love, God’s decision for us. To be honest with ourselves, we should spend every
moment of this new life overcome with thanksgiving, well aware that we deserve
snakes and we receive grace.
Finally, in our reading from John, we deserve snakes and we receive
“for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, so that whoever
believes in him will not perish, but have eternal life”. Amen
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