03-14-21 Sunday Sermon

First Congregational Church
March 14, 2021
Fourth Sunday in Lent
John 3:14-21
“The Light of the Cross”
Rev. Dinah Haag, preaching

In the interest of time, someone actually had a great idea about Daylight Savings time moving to 4:00 Friday afternoon….  I wake up at 6AM everyday - in someone else's time zone. It was a busy night at Stonehenge last night as the workers moved all the stones forward one hour. Q: What do you get when you cross a clock and a chicken? A: A cluck. Q: Why did the boy put an alarm clock in his shoe? A: He didn’t want his foot to fall asleep. Q: Why did the clock get sent to the principal’s office? A: It was tocking too much.

Last week’s scripture passage dealt with Jesus clearing the temple and how it defines John’s Gospel in direction and intent. This morning’s passage goes on sometime after last week’s, a meeting of Jesus and Nicodemus, at night. At the beginning of John’s third chapter, it says that Nicodemus was a member of the Jewish ruling council and then Jesus points out that he was also “Israel’s teacher.”

These two “jobs” indicate that Nicodemus was a well-known individual in the community, and his approach to Jesus at night may - may - suggest that Nicodemus didn’t necessarily want a whole audience of people knowing about his meeting. While that scenario may or may not be true, the fact that Nicodemus went to Jesus suggests that he had a searching heart that wanted to know the truth of the matter, from the horse’s mouth.  

John 3:14-21
14 Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up,[a] 15 that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.”[b]
16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. 19 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. 20 Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. 21 But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.

Thank you, Julie. This is another case where Jesus demonstrates his teaching credentials - using the cover of night and darkness to make his points to Nicodemus - people loving darkness over light because it can hide indiscretions and truth, exposing evil for what it is.

I wonder, if some many of us get mentally pulled to the John 3:16 part - God so loving the world - that we forget what we just heard about Moses and the snake. It might be even easier to miss them if it’s been a while since we reminded ourselves about that which comes from Numbers 21. Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised if there are some of you, like myself, that could use a good - quick - review of Numbers. For those who may be entertaining thoughts of eyeballs checking out the insides of your eyelids, bear with me.

Numbers describes two census - censi - censuses - of the Israelite people with a forty year gap between them. In that gap, the people complain about God’s rules, God punishes them and then God gives them new rules by which to live. It’s a pattern that repeats itself a “number” of times in Numbers.

Numbers 21 is the description of one of those times, when the people were again complaining about manna pancakes, manna sandwiches, manna pudding, lack of water, the fatigue of continually packing one’s bags every morning, not to mention all the probable dust and stink that would accompany 2 million people moving across a desert for forty years. In this particular instance, God said, “Fine,” and sent poisonous snakes to bite people - of which many died.

So then the people whined about those who were dying, so Moses prayed for them, and God said, “Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.” 9 So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, they lived.” (Nu 21:8-9)

This scene is one of the reasons that the painting by Simon Vouet took center stage on this week’s bulletin front. If you have a chance later on, I encourage those in person here to check out the colorized version of this on the web page, because it so much richer.

The Bible doesn’t say that Moses used a cross shaped pole, but it makes a whole lot of sense when elevating a snake to use one. True or not, it is interesting - a snake being a symbol of death from the Garden of Eden, becoming a symbol of life on a pole - one that Jesus would mention in a positive light. One snake acts contrary to God’s will, the other acts on conjunction with God. Former evangelical, present Catholic, political commentator Steven Beale drew back the veil. “While it may have been the snake that they saw, it was really the power of God behind it that saved the ancient Israelites.”

The cherry on the whipped cream of this Numbers sundae is that the word for serpent in chapter 21 is saraph - as in seraphim - as in the particular angels that guard God’s throne in Isaiah 6. “Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.” Slightly different colored horse.

Calvin theologian, Scott Hoezee, in his commentary on John’s gospel passage mentions the medical idea of “like curing like,” which really began with 18th century Dr. Edward Jenner discovering that “injecting a person with a small amount of the fairly benign cowpox virus somehow made that person immune to getting the highly deadly smallpox disease.” How stunningly coincidental as there are so many arms being injected with what I imagine to be bits of covid-19 these days.

The extra, extra whipped cream and this whole thing is that today’s passage is the gospel section from the lectionary, which was “revised” in 1992 - nearly thirty years ago. Who would have guessed back then - where we would be today? God couldn’t possibly have anything to do with this passage being set for today, she said tongue in cheek.

There is no question but that Christianity, all sorts of faiths and religions, have struggled with authenticity and being pragmatic. Fire and brimstone sermons, clergy abuses of various and sundry sorts, holier than thou parishioner attitudes have all contributed to the skulking away of hurt worshipers. Even the most holy Christian cross has been used as a club in beating hope to death.

But then we get Jesus in John 3, harking back to this tiny nugget of the Hebrew Scriptures in his conversation with Nicodemus. Jesus compares what he is going to do in getting “lifted up” with that bronze serpent being lifted up by Moses. Even as the people of Israel had to look at an image of what ailed them to be cured of it, so in the end the whole earth would need to look at a dead Son of God as the first step in getting finally inoculated against our most vicious enemy: death itself. Like cures like.

Opinion writer to the New York Times, Peter Wehner, wrote in 2018, “In his book “What’s So Amazing About Grace?” Philip Yancey describes a conference on comparative religions where experts from around the world debated which belief, if any, was unique to the Christian faith. C.S. Lewis happened to enter the room during the discussion. When he was told the topic was Christianity’s unique contribution among world religions, Lewis responded: “Oh, that’s easy. It’s grace.”

When we bring together 1.) all that lies underneath this morning’s scripture passage, and 2.) all that has transpired over the course of time, if you bring those two humungous things and superimpose them on each other, the light of the cross that shines through all that - is God’s grace and love.

God so loved the world that God gave God’s one and only - a child, born human and divine, who grew into a man - God’s Son. And whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. God didn’t sent that Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. There is no condemnation for those who believe. Those who don’t believe, there is so much loss. The final decision is that Light has come into the world, even though people love darkness instead of light because darkness hides evil so easily. Everyone who does evil hates the light and truth and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly - that what they have done - has been done in the sight of God.

In tweaking Stephan Garnaas Holmes, if there is something in you you have kept hidden, bring it into the light. The judgment is not condemnation, but light: clarity, truth, warmth, life. If there is something ugly in you, something you don't dare reveal, bring it into the light. Let the light bless it. Let it become transparent to grace. If there is something fragile in you, something beautiful, bring it into the light. Let it strengthen and grow, a sapling in sunlight. If there is something dark in you, not bad, just mystery: unseen, unseeable. Bring it into the light. Let the light fill the darkness with light. You don't even need to see it; just know there's light in it. Like a stained glass window, when you let in the light, what you see is the light.

I haven’t spoken to her about it for a long time, but Sandy Campbell used to talk about her studies in how churches incorporated large pieces of stained glass to heal people of different issues - red healing one condition, blue healing a different one, green yet another. The idea was that the sick were brought to the church and laid in the light - until it moved and then the person had to move. In this day and age, no one really doubts the reality of seasonal affective disorder - sad for short - depression for long - and the role light plays in good mental health.

Mr. Wehner wrote on: “Lewis is right. No other religion places grace at its theological center. It is a revolutionary idea; as Mr. Yancey put it, grace “seems to go against every instinct of humanity.” We are naturally drawn to covenants and karma, to cause and effect, to earning what we receive.

Grace is different. It is the unmerited favor of God, unconditional love given to the undeserving. It’s a difficult concept to understand because it isn’t entirely rational. The cross defeating death is not entirely rational, either. More often than not, we’re good with wearing a cross around our necks, but not so good at looking at its horror. Except that looking at the cross - in all its dimensions - there’s a light or glow that comes to emanate from it and we begin to appreciate - even marvel - at how God defeats death through death - which seems like a good place to pray.

Holy and Great God, your ways are truly beyond ours, and yet, you are not a dead god, but a living God who cares about each of your creations and beings. Thank you for the gift of reason and thought and understanding - that even if imperfectly - we begin to appreciate the grandest wonder of them all tphat is salvation through the death and resurrection of Christ, that death does not have the last word. You said, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me will live even if they die.” And then you asked, “Do you believe this?” Help us to believe it more deeply, more richly, that we come to see the light of the cross for all we can. For this season of delving and diving and peering into the life of your greatest gift, all your people say, Amen.