Year B
Numbers 21:4-9
Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22
Ephesians 2:1-10
John 3:14-21<\/p>\n\n\n\n
May the words of my mouth\u2026 O God\u2026 speak your Truth\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Like a lot of kids in the summer\u2026 I sometimes caught and kept a garter snake or two\u2026 small\u2026 manageable\u2026 pretty easy to catch\u2026 and most important\u2026 not poisonous\u2026 and what I thought was so cool\u2026 is that they smell with their tongue\u2026 but at a county fair one time\u2026 I was handed\u2026 and held a rattlesnake\u2026 defanged and reasonably safe\u2026 but noticeably heavier\u2026 I didn’t yet understand the danger they posed in the wild\u2026 and while there’s some disagreement about exactly how high the percentage is\u2026 a significant number of people\u2026 women and men\u2026 are afraid of snakes\u2026 some of this may go back to the story about the snake and the apple\u2026 and like some of them\u2026 I eventually saw enough movies about how quickly rattlesnakes\u2026 and cobras\u2026 and other venomous snakes can rear up and strike\u2026 so much so\u2026 that my willingness to get too close\u2026 to too many snakes\u2026 has diminished\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
W. Sibley Towner\u2026 professor of Biblical Interpretation at Union Theological Seminary\u2026 summarized the narrative of complaints the Israelites made after their release from slavery\u2026 they didn’t like the bitter water of Marah (Ex. 15:22-25) and so God showed Moses how to sweeten it\u2026 they complained about the lack of food (Ex. 16:2-3) and so God gave them manna\u2026 they complained that they were thirsty (Ex. 17:3) and at God’s command Moses struck a rock and water gushed forth\u2026 when their march resumed after Sinai they were again asking for meat\u2026 and a wind from God brought them quails to eat (Num. 11:4-6)\u2026 but the complaint in today’s passage from Numbers is different\u2026 did you notice\u2026 this time\u2026 the ungrateful people complained not only against Moses\u2026 but against God too\u2026 God who had sustained them for more than four-hundred years in slavery\u2026 and who was now guiding them to the land that had been promised\u2026 ungrateful people for whom God had done so much\u2026 and God had had it\u2026 and so God sent snakes\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If there’s any foreshadowing of the Cross in the Jewish scriptures\u2026 the clearest but perhaps most confusing passage might be today’s poisonous bronze snake on a pole\u2026 in so many images\u2026 like that on our bulletin cover\u2026 the snake on a pole resembles the Cross\u2026 but a poisonous bronze snake on a pole\u2026 isn’t like Jesus on the Cross\u2026 is it\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But there may be more to the story\u2026 just what did the people do\u2026 that provoked God into sending snakes\u2026 they sinned by speaking against Moses and God\u2026 they sinned against God and neighbor\u2026 it was their sin that brought death on themselves\u2026 and they must have continued to sin\u2026 because even after Moses made the bronze serpent and put it on a pole\u2026 the text says\u2026 and whenever a serpent bit someone\u2026 that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live<\/em>\u2026 part of an ongoing human condition perhaps\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n One commentator put it this way\u2026 the bronze serpent represented sin\u2026 and on the Cross\u2026 Jesus took on the sin of the world\u2026 or to put it another way\u2026 we can consider that the serpent is a symbol<\/em> of death… and in order for Christ to save us… he must become “death” on the Cross\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now many of us are familiar with the passage from 1Corinthians 13:4-7\u2026 it’s often read at weddings\u2026 about how love is patient and kind\u2026 not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude\u2026 how it doesn’t insist on its own way\u2026 isn’t irritable or resentful\u2026 doesn’t rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in truth\u2026 and how it bears all things\u2026 believes all things\u2026 hopes all things\u2026 and endures all things\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n What a lovely sentiment this is\u2026 but it recently occurred to me that this isn’t human love\u2026 it can’t be\u2026 I really can’t ever hope to achieve love in all of these ways\u2026 not all at once\u2026 I’m too broken and selfish and ungrateful\u2026 no\u2026 this love\u2026 the love that’s described here\u2026 this is divine love\u2026 it’s how God loves us\u2026 always and forever\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n As a convert to Christianity\u2026 I used to think that sporting-event signs that referenced John 3:16\u2026 embodied a shortsighted and fundamentalist perspective\u2026 but I’ve come to believe that it’s the love described in the passage from 1Corinthians 13\u2026 for God so loved the world\u2026 indeed\u2026 God did not send Jesus to condemn the world\u2026 but to love it\u2026 everything\u2026 else\u2026 flows\u2026 from this\u2026 God’s love for God’s creation\u2026 and God’s love for every one of us who ever was\u2026 or is\u2026 or ever will be\u2026 in it\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Jesus’ love\u2026 God embodies how we are called to be\u2026 and what we are called to become\u2026 and in order for us to become more loving\u2026 we must face how we are not loving\u2026 and love is hard\u2026 all of you who are married know this\u2026 all of you who have children know this\u2026 and any of you who love me know this\u2026 but in order for us to become what we deeply want to be\u2026 we can’t “go around” we can’t bypass\u2026 what we are not yet\u2026 we must face our own culpability\u2026 we must name our own dis-ease\u2026 or sin\u2026 and we will sin and need to look at the bronze serpent\u2026 and we will sin and need to look at Jesus on the Cross\u2026 and die to the ways that are bringing us death\u2026 and every time\u2026 our demise will be transformed into a source of our salvation\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n I used to think\u2026 that in John 12:32\u2026 when Jesus said\u2026 And I… when I am lifted up from the earth\u2026 will draw all people to myself<\/em>\u2026 that he meant when he was crucified\u2026 but if the incarnation and crucifixion were all there was\u2026 that would just be Jesus joining us in our condition of sin\u2026 but resurrection is Jesus exalted from sin\u2026 and the ascension is Jesus making a way for us to the Father\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n I’ll say it again\u2026 this was a four-part oratorio\u2026 <\/em>and not one random afterthought after another\u2026 so I have to think that ascension was the lifting up he meant\u2026 because he also said in John 14:2\u2026 in my Father\u2019s house there are many dwelling places\u2026 if it were not so\u2026 would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you<\/em>\u2026 prepare a place\u2026 for us\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n Out of love\u2026 God could not help but incarnate to save us\u2026 from pandemic\u2026 from racism\u2026 from climate change\u2026 from division\u2026 from ourselves\u2026 and God’s love is not procured on the Cross\u2026 but is revealed on the Cross\u2026 and how much we need this Jesus\u2026 for we do need saving\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n In some families\u2026 Jewish or not\u2026 there are traditions of kvetching<\/em>\u2026 complaining against each other\u2026 and what God has or has not done for us\u2026 but a more hopeful tradition is called the Perennial Tradition\u2026 and if you’ve never heard of it\u2026 it recognizes recurring themes in all of the world\u2019s religions and philosophies\u2026 which say that there is a Divine Reality underneath and inherent in the world of things\u2026 that there is in the human soul a natural capacity… similarity… and longing for this Divine Reality\u2026 and that the final goal of existence… is union with this Divine Reality\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n And if you’ve seen the movie\u2026 The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel\u2026 Dev Patel’s character Sonny Kapoor\u2026 has one of the most theologically-true lines I’ve ever heard\u2026 that in some ways reflects the Perennial Tradition\u2026 he said\u2026 “Everything will be all right in the end… and if it’s not all right\u2026 then it’s not yet the end.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n But this is the end\u2026 of my homily\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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\u2026 O God\u2026 speak your Truth\u2026 Like a lot of kids in the summer\u2026 I sometimes caught and kept a garter snake or two\u2026 small\u2026 manageable\u2026 pretty easy to catch\u2026 and most important\u2026 not poisonous\u2026 and what I thought was so cool\u2026 is that they smell with their tongue\u2026 but at a county fair one time\u2026 I was handed\u2026 and held a rattlesnake\u2026 defanged and reasonably safe\u2026 but noticeably heavier\u2026 I didn’t yet understand the danger they posed in the wild\u2026 and while there’s some disagreement about exactly how high the percentage is\u2026 a significant number of people\u2026 women and men\u2026 are afraid of snakes\u2026 some of this may go back to the story about the snake and the apple\u2026 and like some of them\u2026 I eventually saw enough movies about how quickly rattlesnakes\u2026 and cobras\u2026 and other venomous snakes can rear up and strike\u2026 so much so\u2026 that my willingness to get too close\u2026 to too many snakes\u2026 has diminished\u2026 W. Sibley Towner\u2026 professor of Biblical Interpretation at Union Theological Seminary\u2026 summarized the narrative of complaints the Israelites made after their release from slavery\u2026 they didn’t like the bitter water of Marah (Ex. 15:22-25) and so God showed Moses how to sweeten it\u2026 they complained about the lack of food (Ex. 16:2-3) and so God gave them manna\u2026 they complained that they were thirsty (Ex. 17:3) and at God’s command Moses struck a rock and water gushed forth\u2026 when their march resumed after Sinai they were again asking for meat\u2026 and a wind from God brought them quails to eat (Num. 11:4-6)\u2026 but the complaint in today’s passage from Numbers is different\u2026 did you notice\u2026 this time\u2026 the ungrateful people complained not only against Moses\u2026 but against God too\u2026 God who had sustained them for more than four-hundred years in slavery\u2026 and who was now guiding them to the land that had been promised\u2026 ungrateful people for whom God had done so much\u2026 and God had had it\u2026 and so God sent snakes\u2026 If there’s any foreshadowing of the Cross in the Jewish scriptures\u2026 the clearest but perhaps most confusing passage might be today’s poisonous bronze snake on a pole\u2026 in so many images\u2026 like that on our bulletin cover\u2026 the snake on a pole resembles the Cross\u2026 but a poisonous bronze snake on a pole\u2026 isn’t like Jesus on the Cross\u2026 is it\u2026 But there may be more to the story\u2026 just what did the people do\u2026 that provoked God into sending snakes\u2026 they sinned by speaking against Moses and God\u2026 they sinned against God and neighbor\u2026 it was their sin that brought death on themselves\u2026 and they must have continued to sin\u2026 because even after Moses made the bronze serpent and put it on a pole\u2026 the text says\u2026 and whenever a serpent bit someone\u2026 that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live\u2026 part of an ongoing human condition perhaps\u2026 One commentator put it this way\u2026 the bronze serpent represented sin\u2026 and on the Cross\u2026 Jesus took on the sin of the world\u2026 or to put it another way\u2026 we can consider that the serpent is a symbol of death… and in order for Christ to save us… he must become “death” on the Cross\u2026 Now many of us are familiar with the passage from 1Corinthians 13:4-7\u2026 it’s often read at weddings\u2026 about how love is patient and kind\u2026 not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude\u2026 how it doesn’t insist on its own way\u2026 isn’t irritable or resentful\u2026 doesn’t rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in truth\u2026 and how it bears all things\u2026 believes all things\u2026 hopes all things\u2026 and endures all things\u2026 What a lovely sentiment this is\u2026 but it recently occurred to me that this isn’t human love\u2026 it can’t be\u2026 I really can’t ever hope to achieve love in all of these ways\u2026 not all at once\u2026 I’m too broken and selfish and ungrateful\u2026 no\u2026 this love\u2026 the love that’s described here\u2026 this is divine love\u2026 it’s how God loves us\u2026 always and forever\u2026 As a convert to Christianity\u2026 I used to think that sporting-event signs that referenced John 3:16\u2026 embodied a shortsighted and fundamentalist perspective\u2026 but I’ve come to believe that it’s the love described in the passage from 1Corinthians 13\u2026 for God so loved the world\u2026 indeed\u2026 God did not send Jesus to condemn the world\u2026 but to love it\u2026 everything\u2026 else\u2026 flows\u2026 from this\u2026 God’s love for God’s creation\u2026 and God’s love for every one of us who ever was\u2026 or is\u2026 or ever will be\u2026 in it\u2026 In Jesus’ love\u2026 God embodies how we are called to be\u2026 and what we are called to become\u2026 and in order for us to become more loving\u2026 we must face how we are not loving\u2026 and love is hard\u2026 all of you who are married know this\u2026 all of you who have children know this\u2026 and any of you who love me know this\u2026 but in order for us to become what we deeply want to be\u2026 we can’t “go around” we can’t bypass\u2026 what we are not yet\u2026 we must face our own culpability\u2026 we must name our own dis-ease\u2026 or sin\u2026 and we will sin and need to look at the bronze serpent\u2026 and we will sin and need to look at Jesus on the Cross\u2026 and die to the ways that are bringing us death\u2026 and every time\u2026 our demise will be transformed into a source of our salvation\u2026 I used to think\u2026 that in John 12:32\u2026 when Jesus said\u2026 And I… when I am lifted up from the earth\u2026 will draw all people to myself\u2026 that he meant when he was crucified\u2026 but if the incarnation and crucifixion were all there was\u2026 that would just be Jesus joining us in our condition of sin\u2026 but resurrection is Jesus exalted from sin\u2026 and the ascension is Jesus 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