Pastor Detweiler’s sermon from Sunday, March 22, 2009:

“In Christ, death leads to life: salvation for all.”

Numbers 24:4-9; John 3:14-21

In one of his old comedy recordings, Bill Cosby has a routine about his childhood fears of getting out of bed during the night. The reason: he thought there were snakes under his bed that would reach out and bite him if he got out of bed.

So before he got out of bed he talked to the snakes: “Snakes, hey you, snakes! Can you hear me? I have to go to the bathroom. You leave me alone. You stay under the bed. Don’t you come out!”

Of course there were no snakes under his bed, but at a young age darkness and snakes were connected, both symbolizing what is to be feared, the unknown, the uncontrollable – evil.

Snakes and darkness are linked and figure prominently in today’s first lesson and gospel. The gospel begins with Jesus’ reference to the snakes in the first lesson: “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert so must the Son of Man be lifted up …”

Jesus is speaking to Nicodemus who has come out of the darkness to see Jesus. After their brief encounter in which Jesus does most of the talking, Nicodemus goes back into the darkness.

The first lesson is the end of a story about the impatience and complaining (murmuring”) of the people of Israel against God and Moses. They had been starving so God sent them food from heaven – manna – white stuff that looked like hoar frost that they picked up every morning. It was free but they were tired of it. So they complained and called the bread of heaven “miserable food.”

Sending poisonous snakes among the people for complaining about the food seems drastic, unless, of course, like my mother, you have worked in a middle school cafeteria. I know that there were days when putting just one poisonous snake on the other side of the counter would have seemed like justice.

Some scholars explain away the plague of snakes as a common desert affliction. God didn’t really send the snakes to bite the people, they just happened to have come to a place where there were a lot of snakes, near a water source or an ancient snake route.

But that misses the point of the seriousness of their taking God’s gift – the bread of heaven – for granted and complaining about it. The ancient rabbis, writing in the “Targums,” describe the snakes as the perfect ironic retribution. In the story of Adam and Eve being cast out of the Garden of Eden, the snake is cursed and will crawl on its belly and eat the dust of the earth for the rest of its days. From its cursing at the very beginning the snake has eaten only dust, and yet has done so without complaining. Therefore, says the “Targum Neofiti,” “Let the serpent which does not murmur concerning its food come and rule over the people which has murmured concerning their food.”

Notice that God does not remove or cancel the plague of snakes when the people repent. Instead he tells Moses to make a bronze snake and put it on a pole, that the people are to look at this image when they are bitten, and then they will be saved.

Forget about the dangers of idolatry they were warned about in last Sunday’s reading of the Ten Commandments. When the problem is a plague of snakes, the cure is another snake, this one lifted upon a pole for all to look at. Of course it isn’t the snake that saves, but what it represents and what looking at the snake lifted up causes them to do. Looking up at it was submitting themselves to the Lord of heaven and earth.

The people of Israel looked upward to discover the source of their healing. But to us the snake is so repulsive that it is difficult to see beyond it to recognize the work of God. In the same way, John tells us, the Son of Man is lifted up so we can see the passionate love of God. But his lifting up on the cross is so repulsive that we have difficulty recognizing that this is how the glory of God appears in our world: confronting the darkness with darkness, death with death, hidden in suffering. Nothing less can heal us. In Christ, death can lead to life.

Gerry was occasionally depressed. He fought it by trying to be upbeat. If you said “Hello, Gerry, how are you?” he would answer “I’m great, just great.” Often it seemed a little much. You wanted to respond “Oh, really?” but didn’t because by doing so you might crack the façade of “upbeatness” that was important for him to maintain.

After his father died he found himself saying the words “I’m great” but not meaning them at all. He started seeing a counselor to try to sort out some things in his relationship with his parents. It was apparent to the counselor that Gerry was depressed, and after a few weeks, that he was not getting any better. The counselor recommended an anti-depressant and reluctantly Gerry began to take it. He started to feel better but was concerned that the drug was relieving the symptoms but not the root problem.

He later said, “My counselor helped me see it was only when I could accept my depression as a part of me that it started to be less of a problem. I had to be able to look at the darkness and into the darkness and deal with it. When I could accept the darkness as part of me I could begin to be healed.”

A widow said about his story. “That’s how it was when my husband died. I couldn’t run from it or make believe it hadn’t happened. But I found I could look into the darkness because I knew I was not alone. God was with me.”

• The cure for snakes is a snake.
• The cure for darkness comes from facing the darkness.
• The cure for human life is one man’s life.
• The cure for death is death. Nothing less will do.

In Christ, death can lead to life.

Those who look at the Son of Man as he is lifted up can see God’s healing of the world. The sight may be repulsive, but he is our only hope. In John’s gospel it is not the cross itself but what it stands for that restores us to wholeness. Hidden in the crucifixion – in Jesus’ lifting up – is the exaltation of the Son of Man and God’s desire to heal the world. We may wish the solution could be less painful, but nothing else takes seriously the reality of human life. In Christ death can lead to life.

So, John tells us, we are saved from the overwhelming darkness by Jesus’ lifting up on the cross, and his lifting up in the resurrection and ascension. That is the source of our hope, the goal of Lent, the goal toward which God in Christ is moving our lives.