March 3, 2024, Lent 3
John 3:11-21
Text Introduction
Our scripture reading is part of a larger conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus, a Pharisee, who is making a sincere effort to understand who Jesus is and how he can perform miracles. But Jesus doesn’t make things easy for Nicodemus. Each time Nicodemus asks a question, Jesus responds with a convoluted answer. At the point where we begin our reading, Jesus is trying to explain eternal life by referencing a story from the Hebrew scriptures about Moses.
Introduction
The story Jesus is referring to comes from Numbers 21:4-9. The Israelites are still wandering in the desert after decades of travel, and they get to a point where they are done. They’ve had it. They’re tired, hungry, thirsty, and sick to death of eating manna—the only food they’ve had for years. They complain and accuse God and Moses of bringing them into the desert for the sole purpose of killing them.
And what is God’s response to their complaining? A watery oasis with lounge chairs and fruity drinks with little, tiny umbrellas? A food truck perhaps? Nope. To God’s chosen people who are floundering in the desert God sends poisonous snakes to bite the people. And consequently, many of the Israelites die. Which motivates the people to issue quick apologies and requests for immediate deliverance from the snakes—to which God complies.
And this deliverance comes by God instructing Moses to make a poisonous snake of bronze, place it on a pole, and anytime someone is bitten by a snake, they need only make their way to the bronze snake on a pole, look it in the eye, and they will be healed.
Jesus uses this story from the Hebrew scriptures to reference his impending crucifixion and resurrection. He explains that in being “lifted up”, in hanging and dying on the cross—he will be like the serpent on the pole—through him, the world will be healed.
Just as the Israelites must look at the pole to be healed from the snake bite, Jesus is now saying to find healing from the bite of death today, people need only go to him to be healed from sin and have eternal life. This statement is so important that Jesus repeats it in one of the most famous and revered verses of the entire Bible: “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.” (John 3:16, NRSV)
This verse, so well known, and so often repeated is an invitation to healing. We are invited to believe in Jesus so we can be healed of that which we will die from, and find new and renewed life, and then one day, eternal life.
We are not being passively herded into God’s kingdom. Rather we are being invited, encouraged to take an active role in our salvation. But to take an active role in our salvation means also, like the snake bitten Israelites, we must take an active role in our healing.
Move 1
This invitation tells us something important about being beloved. We are God’s beloved; that’s our truth, and we cannot change it. No matter what, we always have been, are, and always will be beloved. However, we will enjoy our belovedness when we believe it, when we own it, and when we live into it. The more we recognize our belovedness, the more we will experience its benefits—benefits like healing, gratitude, compassion, grace, forgiveness, and love. We play an active role in owning our belovedness; we choose whether to accept it and how to live out of it.
But what happens if we don’t accept it?
When we deny we are beloved there are a multitude of snake bites that threaten our lives. And perhaps the deadliest is the snake bite of judgement. Expand the vernacular of verses seventeen and eighteen and we hear Jesus explain this truth, ‘Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world—to judge the world—but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned—not judged—but those who do not believe are condemned already—are judged already—because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”
Often this is believed to sound harsh because Jesus begins talking about judgment, evil, and wickedness—statements we are familiar with— often used by “fire-and-brimstone” preachers to scare people into going to church and “getting saved” because God is going to rain fire upon us in judgment if we don’t believe in Jesus. But that’s not what this passage is saying. Jesus is describing what happens when we don’t believe Jesus’ message of our belovedness. Without the healing we find in him, without the confirmation of our belovedness, the snake bites are fatal. When we don’t believe we are beloved, we open ourselves to self-loathing, fear, and anxiety.
As many of us have experienced, such adverse emotions and self-perceptions can lead to a whole host of problems: broken relationships, violence, addiction, alienation, apathy, suicide, murder, poverty, war, ecological devastation, and so on.
So contrary to those “fire-and-brimstone” preachers, judgment and suffering come not from God but from ourselves. We judge ourselves when we determine we are not worthy of being beloved. We cause our own suffering when we live out of this place of un-belovedness. And that is why it is vital that we believe Jesus. Our very lives—and the fate of all creation—depend upon it.
Move 2
For us to care about ourselves, others, and the rest of creation, we must recognize and claim our belovedness. But as we’re learning through this study, owning our belovedness is a process, and a significant part of that process is healing.
To recognize and claim our belovedness we need to find healing—healing from pain and trauma; healing from the lies and messages we’ve received and internalized; healing our relationship with our bodies; healing our relationship with others; and, perhaps most importantly, healing our understanding of God.
When it came to healing from the snake bitten Israelites, God could have chosen anything for Moses to craft and put on a pole for the people to look at. God could have had Mose make to focus a flower, a rainbow, a fluffy bunny.
Instead, God chose a snake. And God chose the snake because snakes represent so much for us: the serpent that tempted Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden; an animal that is threatening and can inflict great pain, suffering, and even death; an animal that will try to fool us with cute and innocent sounding names like “garter snake” even though all snakes slither directly out of the depths of hell.
Ok, perhaps I’m letting my personal proclivities toward snakes influence that last point, but nonetheless the snake is an appropriate symbol for talking about healing because while we all want to be healed, few of us are eager to go through the process of healing.
Healing is difficult, painful, and messy. Whether our healing requires surgery, multiple rounds of radiation, casts, and physical therapy or working through traumatic memories and long-repressed emotions— healing takes time and effort and, most of all, healing takes a lot of courage.
By having Moses make a snake, God is telling us we will need to face our pain to be healed. It’s the only way. God is asking us to be brave. But God is also reminding us God will be with us in our healing. In the person of Jesus, God is lifted up on the cross for all of us to see, bearing our fears and our heartaches and our sin. And what we see when we look is that God will bear all of this for us and with us so healing and belovedness are discovered. When we focus on the God who brings us to the place of our belovedness, that is when we will be able to heal.
Move 3
Healing will always look different for each person, so I can’t offer a prescription. But I can say that healing begins with stillness in the presence of God. And if I sound like a broken record, it’s with good reason. Recovering the truth of our belovedness begins and ends in stillness because that is where we break through the noise, find God, and discover our truth. That is why stillness is the way to awareness, to listening, and now to healing. Healing from trauma and loss. Healing from broken relationships. Healing from betrayal—maybe committed against us or one we committed. Healing from trying and failing—or from failing to even try.
And this is why we return to stillness again and again—to be with Jesus and hear and see again his truth and promises. To sit with God and allow God to redeem our pain, and remind us we are beloved. Because from that place of stillness, we can begin, and begin again, living as one who is beloved.
Conclusion
There is no doubt God could have simplified all of life by having us born knowing we are beloved. But if that were the case, we would likely take our belovedness for granted and the snakes of judgement and death would still bite us. We’d miss out on the journey and the opportunity to discover and question and test and own and revel in our belovedness.
Our paths in life all include judgement and brokenness. But when we walk any path, aware of our divinely given belovedness, our paths all include healing. And healing leads to gratitude, compassion, grace, forgiveness, and love. And love leads to eternal life.
So when we believe we are beloved and live as beloved people, that is when we are healed. And when we achieve this healing, we can then help others begin to understand they are beloved, which will put them on a path of healing and not of judgement.
This is how the world can be healed. And this is how we are called into healing. We are participants in God’s act of healing the world. May we never forget this. Amen.
Pastoral Prayer, March 3, 2024, Lent 3
Beloved God, whether we can begin to understand the analogy between Jesus on the cross, and the serpent on a pole from Moses, we know we are still invited—invited by you to take an active role of accepting and owning our belovedness and then helping guide others to know theirs as well.
And for this invitation we give thanks because we live in a world that surrounds us with judgment. Judgment is a natural consequence of just getting out of bed every morning and deciding what we will eat, what we will wear. In everything there is judgment. We are judged by our driving, by the work we do, by who we vote for, whether or not we go to church on Sunday morning, and if we do what kind of church do we go to?
And if our cultural judgment wasn’t already enough, we heap upon ourselves self-judgment where we tell ourselves we are not enough good enough, not smart enough, not rich enough, not enough to measure up to others.
God of love, help us to see Jesus, your beloved son, lifted on the cross, laid in a tomb, but then lifted again into new life so that judgment would never ever keep us from finding healing, wholeness, and our belovedness.
Help us to see judgment as a sign of needed healing. Help us to see where we experience self-judgment, or judgment of others, so that in the stillness of your presence, we let go of this cold and harsh practice that only takes away that which is good. Help us to reach a point in our belovedness where we are able, and confident, to guide others to recognize their belovedness, helping them to find healing from their brokenness, and to know too, they are your holy and beloved child.
For this is how true healing comes to your world and to all your children.
We ask that you listen now to the prayers we lift to you in this time of stillness and Holy Silence.
All this we pray in the name of your only begotten Son, Jesus the Christ, who taught us to pray, saying, “Our…”