Year B
 Numbers 21:4-9
 Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22
 Ephesians 2:1-10
 John 3:14-21

May the words of my mouth O God…  speak your truth…

So we’ve got this curious little passage from Numbers…  that after some more time in the wilderness…  the people became impatient…  and complained…  and spoke against God and Moses…  again…  negating their release from slavery…  and diminishing the promises which lay ahead for them…  and apparently…  God had had enough…  and so God sent poisonous serpents…  and they bit people…  and many died…

Now in Hebrew…  the serpents are the Na-ha-sheem… which are winged members of an angelic order…  of fiery Seraphim…  and not just your garden variety of snakes…  not like from the Garden of Eden…  so its no surprise that their bites were fatal…

But when the people set their gaze on the bronze serpent on the wooden pole…  and acknowledged their sins…  and repented…  they were cured and lived…  so we can say that the very thing which caused death…  now gave life…  but it wasn’t as simple…  as the physics…  of light bouncing off of that bronze snake and landing on their retinas…  I believe that what saved them was a shift in perspective…  kind of in the way we become able to face our brokenness…  instead of continuing to make excuses for it…  it’s in the way we stop brushing God’s Word aside…  and start living by it…

And so we might also begin to consider what things bite us…  and we still remain blind to the deaths they cause…  and consider the kinds of poisonous attitudes or behaviors that infect the systems in which we function…  so we know more about how can we heal them… 

On February 18, 1965…  in Marion, Alabama…  at a voting rights rally…  in which tensions boiled over…  state troopers clubbed protestors…  and fatally shot 26-year-old Jimmie Lee Jackson…  an African American demonstrator…  who was simply trying to protect his mother…  who was being struck by police…  ]  Life magazine photographer Flip Schulke…  stopped taking pictures…  and started helping them…  and caring for others…  but Martin Luther King, Jr. admonished him…  and said No!…  you need to photograph this…  you need take pictures of this…  you need to show this…  ]  and afterwards…  in response to this brutality…  civil rights leaders made it known that they would take their cause directly to Alabama Governor George Wallace…  on a 54-mile march from Selma to the state capital in Montgomery…  ]  but Gov. Wallace ordered state troopers to use whatever measures were necessary…  to prevent that march…

Approximately 600 voting rights advocates set out from the Brown Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church on Sunday, March 7…  fifty-nine years ago…  and headed across the Edmund Pettus Bridge… which was named after a Confederate general who was the Grand Dragon of the Alabama KKK…  and across the bridge…  counter-protestors and police waited for them…  and the marchers were sprayed with tear gas… and beat with billy clubs…  and rubber tubing wrapped in barbed wire…  but this time…  television cameras captured the entire assault…

It took hours for the film to be flown from Alabama to network headquarters in New York…  but when it aired that night…  Americans were appalled at what they saw and heard…  and a local protest was transformed into a national civil rights event…  and helped lead to passage of the Voting Rights Act…

Jesus said…  For all who do evil hate the light…  and do not come to the light…  so that their deeds may not be exposed…  and part of the outrage which the news coverage brought forth…  was that the violence was exposed…  the light exposed what was happening…  because let’s remember…  injustice operates best when no one sees it…  and those who hate the light…  usually don’t want to talk about the sins of the present…  no less the sins of the past…  because it might make them feel bad…  or hold us all accountable…  but not talking about sin…  by pretending that it just isn’t there…  only exacerbates it…

Jesus said…  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… 

In the First Nations translation of the Gospel that we’ve been reading in our Lenten Bible study…  about this being lifted up…  Jesus says…  this is what will happen to the True Human Being…  so people will put their trust in him…  and have the life of the world to come that never fades away…  full of beauty and harmony…  Creator did not send his Son…  to decide against the people of this world…  but to set them free from the worthless ways of the world… to set us free from what is worthless in this world…  to set us free from what is counter to God’s will for us and for creation… 

And again…  it’s not simply the physics of looking at the Cross and at the crucified Christ…  and having that reflected light land on our retinas…  that sets us free…  it’s when the power of Rome…  or any Empire…  is exposed…  when the violence and the destruction and the injustice of any kind is exposed…  that we can see what the power of evil can do…  when we can see what sin does… and it’s not only when we see its abject violence…  when we come face to face with how it opposes God’s will for all of creation…  but when we’re willing to be changed…  that we can be changed…  that we can be redeemed through the truth of what sin does… 

And this judgement is implicit… because sin is its own judgment against us…  and the basis for judgement…  is whether we’re living in darkness or living in light…  whether we take an honest look at systems which crucify…  as the sins of the world crucify goodness…

The mistake we make…  is in not talking about the sins of the world…  by deciding that it’s politically incorrect…  or might necessitate making inconvenient changes… 

And it’s the sin of the world that killed Jesus…  Jesus dies not to pay a bloodthirsty God…  who needs recompense for our sin…  but to show us the way of nonviolent love and resistance…  even unto death on the cross…  and looking on the cross exposes the very thing…  the sin of the world…  from which we want to be redeemed…  redeemed from a corrupt Empire which wants to maintain its power and authority and wealth at all costs…  an unscrupulous political system which resists sharing its excess food and prosperous ease with the poor and needy…  which is what the prophet Ezekiel named as the sin of Sodom…

And so the Cross…  a thing which can take life… can also give life…  when we’re willing to come to terms with the unspeakable violence it inflicts…  when enough of us can again feel horrified by things like razor wire across the Rio Grande River…  and a humanitarian crisis in Gaza…  and others around the world…  when collectively…  we’ve had enough of it…  and we can be moved enough to finally and fully reject it…  when we recognize that the Son didn’t come into the world to condemn it…  but instead…  that he came so the world could be saved through him…  be saved…  when in response to the brutal ways we treat each other…  we can repent…  and turn back to God’s Word…  and treat each other…  only with love…  Holy God…  help us to make it so…