The Crisis is the Cure

First United Presbyterian Church

“The Crisis is the Cure”

Rev. Amy Morgan

March 11, 2018

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Numbers 21:4-9

4 From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom; but the people became impatient on the way.

 5 The people spoke against God and against Moses, "Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food."

 6 Then the LORD sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died.

 7 The people came to Moses and said, "We have sinned by speaking against the LORD and against you; pray to the LORD to take away the serpents from us." So Moses prayed for the people.

 8 And the LORD said to Moses, "Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live."

 9 So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.

John 3:14-21

14 And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up,

 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

 16 "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.

 17 "Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

 18 Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.

 19 And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.

 20 For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed.

 21 But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God."

My dad knew there was a crisis. All three of his children were running down the hill from the road to the house, screaming at the top of their lungs. It turned out that a rattle snake had curled up in the middle of the road to sun itself on the warm, black tar. We had been heading to the neighbor’s house to go swimming, bare legged and wearing flip-flops, when we encountered the serpent that sent us barreling down the hill and back into the safety of our house.

But our house was not always safe from snakes. One day a few years later, my sister opened the front door to see the white belly of a giant snake climbing up our screen door. We found snakes in our hot tub. We were warned, many times, to look out for water moccasins as we played by the creek and to listen for rattle snakes in the tall grass.

Where I grew up in the Texas hill country, snakes created a crisis. Not just because they were slithery and creepy. They were also deadly poisonous.

The people of Israel encountered a similar crisis in the desert wilderness. What we heard today is the last of 5 stories in the book of Numbers with a repeated pattern. They are called the “murmuring” stories because the people of Israel “murmur,” they grumble, whine, and complain about God dragging them out into the desert to die. Maybe slavery in Egypt wasn’t so bad. It was certainly better than this, they say.

Their ungrateful murmuring gets God angry, and there’s the threat that God will smite them. Moses intervenes, and God gives them what they want. This is more or less the pattern of these stories.

But this time, God is fed up. God will no longer tolerate Israel’s lack of faith. If they can’t trust God after all that God has done for them, then God is through with them. God has rescued them from slavery in Egypt, guided them through the wilderness, providing water and food, and still they complain that God has brought them out here to die. And so, God sends venomous serpents to bite the people and kill them.

The Hebrew word for these serpents is nehashim seraphim, translated as “poisonous serpents,” the rattle snakes and water moccasins of my youth. Or, more likely, the black adders and vipers of the Sinai desert.

But the roots of these Hebrew words reveal much more than literal venomous snakes.  Nehashim can mean “serpent” in Hebrew, and in other places in the Old Testament it refers to something more like a crocodile or a dragon. But this word also shares a root with the word for copper or bronze, which becomes important later in this story. It is also related to the word for oracle or divination, which adds another layer of complexity.

Seraphim is translated here as poisonous, but the word literally means “fiery.” Every other use of this word in the Old Testament relates to fire or burning, except in Isaiah’s vision of the heavenly throne, where seraphim refers to the six-winged serpents attending the throne of God.

So the crisis encountered by the Israelites is more than simple venomous snakes. It’s a crisis of mythic proportions. Their repeated lack of faith, their deficit of trust, is met with an attack from something akin to a fire-breathing dragon, at least in the imaginative sense.

The story continues to carry a mystical tone as the people repent and beg Moses to intercede with God. God instructs Moses to create a replica of the serpent, which he makes out of bronze. He lifts it up on a pole, and whoever is bitten and looks at it will live.

Snakes create a crisis for the people that leads them to repentance. And a snake is the cure for their crisis, their healing and salvation and life. The crisis is the cure.

And this is what the Gospel of John alludes to in Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus. When this passage talks about Jesus coming not to condemn the world, that people who don’t believe in Jesus are condemned already, about judgment for those who love darkness – the word in Greek that is used for judgement and condemnation is krinow, from which we get the English word: crisis. Jesus is the crisis that leads us to repentance. Jesus, lifted up – on the cross, from the grave, and into heaven - cures our crisis, heals and saves us and gives us life now and always. The crisis is the cure.

John 3:16 is familiar to most of us, if for no other reason than it is often displayed at public sporting events or features prominently with sidewalk prophets. This text expresses God’s expansive love for all creation, for God so loved the world. At the same time, it expresses the exclusive claim of Christianity, everyone who believes in [Jesus] may not perish but may have eternal life.

We wrestle in the tension of this inclusive love and exclusive salvation. If God loves the world so much, why can God only save those who believe in Jesus? Isn’t God all-powerful? Why do we have to intellectually agree to some propositional statements about something that can’t be scientifically proven in order to receive the eternal life God wants for us? Why do we have to give our lives to Jesus or ask Jesus into our hearts, as many interpret this text demands of us, in order to be saved?

My dad has a prominent tattoo on his forearm of a rattle snake. I’ve been trying to convince him since he got it to add John 3:14 to the tattoo. It would be entirely appropriate, and it would be a great conversation starter. “John 3:14? Didn’t you mean John 3:16? That’s a bummer. Getting the wrong verse permanently inked on your body.” “No way, man. Don’t you know John 3:14? Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up?” “Nope, never heard of it. That’s cool, man. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

That’s how I imagine the conversation going, anyway.

Because no one pays attention to John 3:14, to this obscure reference to a difficult-to-interpret episode in the Old Testament. But without this introduction, John 3:16 makes no sense.

God loved the people of Israel. God chose them. God saved them from slavery. God provided for them. God protected them.

But the people could not learn to trust God. With each new miracle, instead of their faith increasing, their complaining got louder, their desire to go back to Egypt grew stronger. God couldn’t save them from their own slavery mindset, their trust in old patterns of life, old certainties, even if they were harsh. And so, out of love, God created a crisis that confronted their sin and called them to repentance. God gave them a way through the crisis to healing, wholeness, and life.

God loves the world. God created humanity in the divine image and has been working out our salvation throughout history. God chose the family of Abraham to be a blessing to all the nations, and God gave that family a law to order our life with God and one another. God provided prophets to call us to live God’s law of love more faithfully.

But we could not learn to trust God. With each new miracle, instead of our faith increasing, our complaining got louder, our desire to go back to the slavery to sin grew stronger. Old patterns of life, old certainties, even if they were harsh, held us captive. And so, out of love, God created a crisis that confronts our sin and calls us to repentance.

That crisis is Jesus. God so loved the world that God gave us Jesus, a crisis of mythic proportions. And God lifted Jesus up – on a cross, from the grave, and into heaven – so that when we look to him we might find a way through our crisis to healing, wholeness, and life.

We might cringe at the exclusivity of this path to salvation, this mystical remedy to a mythic crisis. We are reasonable people, after all. Logical. Educated. If God loves the world so much, why do we have to believe in Jesus to be saved?

Let’s say you are suffering from some physical ailment. Knee pain, perhaps. Or strep throat. Or maybe appendicitis. Something painful, something that inhibits your full enjoyment of life. It creates a crisis of sorts. It diminishes your activity, your relationships, the full expression of your humanity.

And it is entirely treatable.

First, you must trust, you must believe, that the treatment will work. If you don’t believe physical therapy will increase your range of motion, why would you do it? If you don’t believe penicillin will cure your strep throat, why would you take it? If you don’t believe surgery will take care of your appendicitis, why would you have it?

Belief, as I’ve said before, is not intellectual assent to propositional statements that can’t be scientifically proven. It is not blindly, unquestioningly following some supposedly inerrant and unwavering truth claim.

Belief is trust. Belief, particularly in the Gospel of John, is an active verb. It requires a response. Not a decision to believe. A response that exhibits your trust.

To return to our analogy, if you trust that physical therapy, or medication, or surgery will make you well, it’s reasonable to expect you to follow through and act on those prescriptions. If you don’t, then it’s reasonable to assume you either don’t really trust those remedies, or you do not want to be made well.

In this season of Lent, this season of self-reflection, I would invite us to consider where in our lives we are encountering the crisis that is Jesus. Where do we feel the fiery sting of our sin, our turning away from God and neighbor? Where in our spiritual body to we experience an ache, a soreness, a disability? What are we hiding in the dark from the light of God’s love in Jesus Christ?

And I would invite us to trust, to believe, in the remedy that is Jesus Christ, lifted up – on the cross, from the grave, into heaven. I pray we would believe as an active verb, belief that requires a response. The prescription is obedience – moving in a new direction, adding a healing element to our spiritual chemistry, removing the thing that is causing us pain. Look to Jesus, and be healed, be whole, be fully alive. To the glory of God. Amen.