Read the Lectionary Texts

A few weeks after my wife and I moved into a new house we had a surprise visitor. We were returning home from running some errands. As we pulled into the driveway, I hit the garage door opener, and watched the door begin to rise. We noticed something fall from the bottom edge of the door. I thought it was a part of the door. But I was wrong.

It was a snake!

Turned out to be a copperhead. About three-feet long. The serpent slithered into the garage, looking for a place to hide. I tried coaxing him out with the wooden handle of an ice chipper I had brought with me from New England. The snake struck at it. Twice. Then it rattled its tail at me. Although he had no capacity for making noise that way, it occurred to me that he was not interested in a negotiated settlement. Clearly, only one of us was going to come out of that garage alive. And I had the ice chipper!

That snake encounter haunted me for a long time. Every time I pulled into the garage – even months later – I found myself looking around – just in case any of that snake’s relatives had come to look me up!

Snakes are not my favorite things.

And so it gives me the willies when I read today’s Gospel text where Jesus recalls how Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness. The story Jesus is alluding to is found in the 21st chapter of Numbers. The context is the journey of the Israelites through the Sinai desert. And the precipitating event is that they have come to the borders of a country called Edom. Moses sends emissaries to request safe passage through the country. But the king of Edom refuses.

Now, the Israelites have recently scored a military victory over some local Canaanites. Feeling flush with the power of victory, they want Moses to declare war on Edom so they can just push their way through the country.

But Moses decides it will be better to go around Edom. The people don’t like that decision. They’ve been on the road for a long time. They do not want to take the scenic route anymore. And the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.

So the people bitterly complain. They gripe about Moses’ leadership. They gripe about the difficult conditions. They gripe about the food. Moses has a mutiny on his hands!

And finally, God has had enough! God’s been patient long enough with their rebellious and thankless griping. So God sends a judgment upon them. God sends them a plague of snakes. Ohooooooooo! And, all at once, the desert comes alive with poisonous snakes whose bites feel like fire!

And as these fiery serpents slither into the camp the Israelites decide that maybe Moses isn’t such a bad guy after all! Maybe a leisurely hike through the desert wouldn’t be so bad! And even that miserable manna they’ve been eating all these years is starting to look like French cuisine!

So they call out to Moses. “Moses! Get God to lift this judgment!! Pray for us!”

And Moses does. And God answers. God tells Moses to make a symbol – a bronze serpent. God tells Moses to put it on a stick and lift it up. And God promises that those who look at the snake on the stick, and trust in God, will be healed.

And it works!

This bronze serpent, Roland McGregor points out, is a kind of amulet, sort of a magical antidote. Get bit by a snake? Look at the snake on the stick! Get well!

In other words, healing comes when you look into the very face of the judgment upon you, and believe that God’s grace will overcome the judgment!

Now listen to this. The way Jesus uses this familiar story of Moses lifting up the serpent is by saying that his death on the cross will function in the same way. He says, “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.”

When you look at the cross, it matters what you see! There, lifted up before us is the one who bears the sins of the world. There is humanity judged. There is the deadly result of a world broken away from God. When we look upon Jesus on the Cross, we are seeing God’s judgment upon ourselves and others!

But, as we look fully into the face of this awful judgment, God dares us to do something that takes tremendous faith!

God dares us to believe that judgment can be overcome by grace!

And then the Gospel lesson continues with a familiar passage that becomes even more meaningful than ever before when we read it in this context. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him – that is to say, that whosoever looks at him on the cross and believes that his grace can overcome judgment – should not perish, but have everlasting life!”

Oh, it matters what you believe about Jesus and the cross! Like the serpent lifted in the wilderness, Jesus death is a picture of grace overcoming judgment!

I love listening to people tell stories about how God lovingly intervened in their lives. We are a congregation of answered prayers, and wonderful healings of body, mind and spirit. So many people here today can bear witness to moments when God’s power touched them in life-changing ways, when they received strength beyond themselves to face a difficult time, when in the face of hurt and loss they experienced the loving hand of God.

This is especially true when we share our stories of coming to faith. The crossroads experience of my own life – when God encountered me in a dormitory room during my sophomore year at college – changed the direction of my life forever, spinning me toward the work of ministry. But what amazes me about it all, is that it began as an overpowering experience of overwhelming guilt. I knew my life was not right! I knew I was living far away from God. There was a profound inner loneliness that seemed to imprison me, and deep interior pain that no one else was able to ease. I was living in the land of fiery serpents, and I didn’t know how to get out!

And one day, when the inner turmoil was at its highest, and my own capacity to do anything about it was at its lowest, I began to cry to God. And, in that moment, when I stared into the dark abyss of my own well-deserved judgment, something shot across the deep chasm between God and me.

And it was love! The most powerful love I’ve ever known! Undeserved! Unearned! Unmerited! Unexpected love!

It was grace overcoming judgment. And over these many years, that grace has been slowly – but surely – transforming the way I live my life. I’m by no means the best student of grace, but I’m learning.

Most especially in this way: having received grace in my life, I’ve discovered that God now asks me to do something daring with it. God asks me to never relate to other people again without seeing the cross as the promise of grace overcoming judgment. God asks me to never again look at another person the way I used to look at myself. God asks me to look at those who are suffering under judgment, at those in whose lives evil prevails, at those whose lives are misdirected, irresponsible and wasted, at those who are far away from God…

…and see them not for the fiery snakes biting their lives…

…but for the grace reaching out to overcome the judgment!

And then God asks me to do one more thing. God asks me to devote my life to becoming more and more creative and generous in distributing grace to others!

And its hard to do. It takes tremendous faith. More faith than I often have.

If you are like me, you probably find it easier to look for snakes in others, than to identify the possibility of grace.

Some years ago a letter circulated on the internet. It was about a minister opening the new session of the Kansas Senate. Everyone was expecting the usual generalities, but this is what they heard:

“Heavenly Father, we come before you today to ask your forgiveness and to seek your direction and guidance. We know Your Word says, “Woe to those who call evil good” but that is exactly what we’ve done. We have lost our spiritual equilibrium and reversed our values. We confess that we have ridiculed the absolute truth of Your Word and called it Pluralism. We have worshipped other gods and called it multiculturalism. We have endorsed perversion and called it alternative lifestyle. We have exploited the poor and called it the lottery. We have rewarded laziness and called it welfare. We have killed our unborn and called it choice. We have shot abortionists and called it justifiable. We have neglected to discipline our children and called it building self-esteem. We have abused power and called it politics. We have coveted our neighbors’ possessions and called it ambition. We have polluted the air with profanity and pornography and called it freedom of expression. We have ridiculed the time-honored values of our forefathers and called it enlightenment. Search us, Oh, God, and know our hearts today; cleanse us from every sin and set us free. Guide and bless these men and women who have been sent to direct us to the center of Your will. We ask this in the name of Your Son, the living Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.”

Friends who sent me this story – which was reported by Paul Harvey – sent it because they feel it truly expresses our Christian faith.

Hate to disappoint my friends. But I disagree.

This is a prayer that’s long on snakes, and short on grace.

Why according to the prayer, Jesus sinned by welcoming into his company people like Mary whose sexual sins are well-documented, people like Levi whose political corruption was onerous in the sight of the people, people like Peter whose selfish materialism put himself before everybody else, and couldn’t accept the idea that sometimes you have to give up your life for your friends. All of the people railed against in this prayer are the very people Jesus gathered about himself and welcomed with love.

And let me comment on the prayer’s criticism of welfare as a reward for laziness. I once received in the mail, a little card from a young woman I got to know in my last parish. She was just eighteen when I performed her wedding to a young man who was nineteen. She is white. He is black. Their two children attended them at the wedding.

He was a hard worker, but unskilled and uneducated. Working for minimum wage at Burger King did not pay enough money to support the family. That created tremendous tension. Having little children while still children themselves created more tension. Their interracial relationship added to the stress. Soon, there was violence. Finally, there was divorce.

For the next several years, the mother and her children lived on welfare. We from the church also tried to help. And even now, every year at Christmas time, I receive a thankful card from the mother with a photograph of the daughters. It amazes me how they are growing into beautiful young women. I don’t think they have a clue that, for most of their lives, Santa Claus was their church.

The note the mother recently sent me was a change of address card. After working hard to put herself through college, she works in the public schools now as a literacy aide. She also works part-time at a department store. She is no longer dependent.

The card told me she and the girls have moved into their first home that is all their own. She worked hard to save the money to do it.

Now, I think if Jesus himself was speaking to the State legislature he wouldn’t pray that prayer that was prayed by that minister in Kansas. In fact, I think he’d probably say something like this to the legislators:

“On behalf of all my little ones who can’t make it on their own, I thank you for helping. I know the system you’ve developed isn’t perfect, but it brings help to many.“

And then, I think Jesus just might lift his heart in prayer. “Heavenly Father,” he might say, “here I am with all these politicians – tax and spend liberals and extremist conservatives alike! I pray that some day, my Church, my people, and my ministers will show just a tiny portion of the grace that I find in this chamber.”

Friends, its easy to point out the snakes.

Far more difficult to believe that grace can overcome them all!

“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 begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent his son into the world not to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.

Dear friends, what do you really believe about Jesus?

I believe he is grace-overcoming-judgment.

So I challenge you today to become an advocate for grace. Let’s work together to model grace within our church.

Oh, there are plenty of people who’ll exhaust themselves pointing out and cheering on the snakes in the desert.

But what God is looking for are people who’ll lift high the cross – of Jesus!