PEOPLE'S CHURCH OF DOVER

Num. 21:4-9; Jn. 3:14-21                                              God, a Snake, and the World

Sermon March 22, 2009:  People's United Church of Christ, Dover, DE:  The Rev. Dan Griggs

 

            What a strange story:  "

 

 

That bronze snake on a pole stayed around for centuries.  When Solomon built the temple in Jerusalem, they housed this snake on a pole in the temple, and it was still there in 700 B.C. when young Hezekiah became the king of Judah and started a religious reform.  It was Hezekiah who ordered the bronze snake destroyed—by that time they even had a name for it, "Nehushtan," and they probably offered sacrifices to it.[1]  But as late as the time of the apostles the Jewish scholars were fascinated by it.  They collected the sayings of the early rabbis in a book called the Mishnah, and this is what the Mishnah says about the snake on a pole:[2]

 

 

Whatever else we may say about this story, we recognize that there are powerful forces at work here, surrounded by the rebellion and alienation of the people.  This snake on a pole is a sign displaying the realities of both evil and grace, and it's an invitation to respond to grace.  We find this invitation again in the Gospel:

 

 

This is what I want to say today:  The love of God provides us a way to find reconciliation, forgiveness, healing, renewal, hope and joy.  This is a sermon about God's love. 

 

            The problem is human alienation—we distance ourselves from God, from each other, and from our truest self.  This is the core meaning of the word "sin."  Her mother named her Heidi—such a sweet name:  she was beautiful, intelligent, sophisticated, loving; but her father was gruff, and he missed all Heidi's good qualities.  He was abusive both with words and with deeds; and in utter confusion about whether she was loveable, Heidi got deeper and deeper into drugs and eventually committed suicide.  The world would say her story is tragic; Christianity says it is a clear sign of our alienation. 

            Our family lived in suburban Indianapolis for a couple of years, in a school district where all the children wore designer clothes to school.  One day our daughter was talking about her classmates and said that she was the only person in her class whose mother and father were still together.  She was perplexed by this sign of human alienation.

            I once knew a man, a lay-leader and teacher in his church, a Mason, intelligent, a good salesman.  We had lunch together one day and talked about the economy, race, all the social issues of the 1970's.  Then he said something that caught me by surprise:  "I have the right to hate anybody I want to."  I didn't know what to do with that.  Do you?  It's amazing how deep alienation has burrowed into our own souls. 

            The U.S. treasury has come out with a new design for the twenty-dollar bill—it still has a picture of Andrew Jackson on it (although in my opinion it looks more like Henry Fonda).  A lot of Native Americans, especially in Oklahoma, refuse to accept or use a twenty-dollar bill, because it was Andrew Jackson who ordered the removal of five tribes from the Southeast to Oklahoma, in winter, without enough clothes or food—what's called "the Trail of Tears" when so many died of exposure, malnutrition and exhaustion.  They were forbidden from carrying out their traditional rites of mourning and burial—they had to bury them in shallow graves beside the road, and keep walking.  Alienation.  Most of us are so out of touch with that part of American history and others like it, that we don't think anything about the picture on the twenty-dollar bill. 

            How does God approach all our signs of alienation?  Not with greater alienation.  The Gospel says:

 

I believe God's judgment of sin is simply that we come to see clearly the truth about ourselves—that we really are alienated from God, from each other and from our true selves.  In the Moses story, the rebellious people were being bitten by snakes, and so God had a symbolic snake set up where they could see their own fault and turn back to God:  it wasn't the bronze snake that saved them, it was their seeing their alienation and returning to God.  You have to look at yourself, your behavior, your character, and be honest with God.  This is why we include in the church's worship service a confession of sins and words of assurance:  church is just about the only place in our time where people gather willingly and confess our wrongs—that awful honesty that God desires and that our hearts cry out for.  It's in the honesty that God condemns the sin, and it's in the honesty that God provides grace.  The love of God provides us a way to find reconciliation, forgiveness, healing, renewal, hope and joy. 

 

            This is what's going on in the parable of the prodigal son.  This is the meaning of the parable of the farmer who enlarged his barns.  This is the narrow gate.  God has given us the freedom to decide how we will live our lives, and so God has in effect placed a limit on God's own power:  no forgiveness unless I come clean, no reconciliation if I continue to live refusing to reconcile. 

            But the very moment I acknowledge my brokenness—my broken faith with God, my alienation from family or neighbor (or, shall I say it, from my enemy), my inner brokenness of character—in the very act of my coming clean, I discover that God has already welcomed me home.  The love of God provides us a way to find reconciliation, forgiveness, healing, renewal, hope and joy.  

            So in John's explanation of what Jesus was doing, he says:

 

 

            What was going on in the crucifixion?  Jesus came among us speaking the truth about how good God is, and the truth about how alienated we are.  We didn't like that.  He stepped on too many toes too often.  We have to get rid of somebody who does that.  But in the very act of getting rid of Jesus, killing him on the cross, we and all humankind show clearly that what he said about us is right—we were killing the Son of God.  Anybody with eyes to see can see that this is not a tragedy:  this is, rather, a sign in the center of the world, at the center of time, that we prefer ourselves to God. 

            I say "we," not "they," because every one of us is confronted with the same question as the priests and Pharisees and Pontius Pilate faced in their own time.  Will we come clean with God?  They, in their time, said no; and so God accepted the pain, the anguish, the destruction of truth, the heaping on of all the evils they conjured.  Why did God accept it? 

            Don't turn your face away from Golgotha:  look into the face of him who hangs on the cross.[3]  See his suffering.  He roils there, alone in the world:  "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"[4]  His blood runs down "from his head, his hands, his feet—sorrow and love flow, mingled, down."[5]  This is the reality of evil, and it crouches at the door waiting for every one of us.[6]  Look into the face of the suffering Christ.  This is how evil sin is; and this is how good God is, to accept the blow in order to plead with us. 

            I look into the face of the crucified one and I see the shadow of my own selfishness, my own hurt, anger, revenge and all that makes me less than God intended.  But I also see that the cross is an invitation:  turn, return, be healed, be cleansed by the truth and find fellowship with God, our Origin and our Destiny.  The love of God provides us a way to find reconciliation, forgiveness, healing, renewal, hope and joy.  

 

            Can you let the truth be truth and come clean to God?  Can you lift your eyes to the cross and find there a great gift?  Can you live your life under the sign of the cross?  Will you rejoice in the love of God?

AMEN