Sermon by Reverend Dr. John W. Mann | March 10, 2024

John 3:14-21

We live in a dangerous world. From the big picture of global conflict to the personal snapshots of our everyday lives, we cope with peril on a daily basis. Most of the time we put the thought of danger out of our of minds. For some, the stress from the traumas we live through stays with us.

The odd thing about our Christian religion, or one of the odd things about our Christian religion is the idea that God loves this world. God loves this violent playpen we call home. The bible says this many times, but it never really says why God would be this way – loving that is. God is love and love just is.

Today’s reading from the story of Jesus according to John is part of a classic story. Jesus and the religious leader named Nicodemus had a conversation about the meaning of life. It was a conversation like so many between Jesus and religious leaders, even today.

Jesus was talking about the Spirit of God and the religious leader is hung up on “how it works.” When Jesus said in order to experience life in the Spirit, one must be “born again,” the religious leader imagined the impossibility of returning to the mother’s womb and coming out again. In that supposed confusion is idea in many religions of control. The idea that if we do all the right things, live the right way, then God owes us for that and we get what we want from God.

It was a conversation that is still being spoken today between Jesus and religious leaders. Jesus is saying, “God wants you to have eternal life. Come alive to what God offers!”

And religious leaders get hung up on bodily functions; who’s doing what with whom and all the ways that folks are displeasing God by misbehaving. And they take this story of God’s love for all creation, so much so that God becomes a part of creation in the form of a human being, and they turn it into a twisted little formula of fear in which they have God saying, “You had better love me or you’re going to burn in hell.” 

When we tell this story we tend to jump right to the “For God so loved the world…” part. But there’s an introduction to the story; on odd introduction that goes, “And 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.”

This mention of the serpent is from the story of when the Hebrew tribes had escaped from slavery in Egypt and spent 40 years wandering around the wilderness. As for time and distance, they could have made their journey in a month. On the surface it would seem to make sense. But with a quick journey they would have arrived in the Promised Land as slaves. A cultural mind-set built up over generations doesn’t change in a month. Sometimes it takes new generations to change a mind-set. It took 40 years in the wilderness to change their identity.

In the wilderness there was a time when the people were afflicted by snake bits. At least that’s how it seemed. Someone was bitten by a snake. Or someone saw a snake. In any event word got around that snakes were on the prowl. One story led to another and soon it was a plague of snakes. The people cried out to Moses to save them.

What did Moses do? Did he organize snake hunting teams to go out and find the snakes and kill them? Did he set up snake safety classes? Did he send out snake spotters?

What he did seemed counter-intuitive. He had an artist make a snake out of bronze. He tied it to a stick and he lifted it up so that people could see it. He told people that as they journeyed to keep their eyes on the snake and they would be safe. It was really nothing more than a lucky charm.

What he seemed to know was that there was really no factual basis to let their journey be halted by snakes. The snakes were not a real threat. But the fear of them was very real. The fear was paralyzing the people’s forward progress as effectively as any venom. So what Moses did was to deal with the fear. And it worked. It worked because people believed in the solution. With the snake on the stick there were no more snake bites.

What the story is saying that in order to overcome your fear you must face it. You can’t pretend it doesn’t exist. You can’t really get rid of it by getting rid of the source. There will always be more snakes, or whatever the source of the fear is. Face your fear, embrace it even and listen to what it is telling you. In that way you make the journey toward being stronger than your fears.

In that way, Jesus was lifted up. Not as a lucky charm, but as one who defined the way through life, as one who defined the truth of life, as one who made possible a relationship with God; eternal life. God so loved the world as the world is. God loves us even though life is at times like treading on serpents and we suffer the outcomes. Eternal life is life lived with a sense of God being present. God doesn’t get rid of the snakes. Our knowing God is there gives us what we need to live with the snakes.

In its most basic guise, the serpent represents death. The serpent is a familiar presence.  The challenge in trying to remind folks of God’s unconditional love is that they don’t feel it in their lives.

I remember a guy named Andrew. Andrew spent his 37^th birthday in prison. His mother showed me the letter he wrote to her a month before he got out. It was full of hope. He was going to find the pieces of his broken dreams, put them back together and make something of his life. This time for sure. When he got out of prison Andrew stopped by the bookies. His old haunts; his old friends. The snake showed up and bit him. He died in the toilet stall of a heroin overdose.

At the funeral for Andrew, one of his brothers was there in shackles. The prison guards on either side of him allowed the man’s young son to sit on his lap. And afterwards the boy had to be pulled away in tears as his dad was led back to the prison van.

That’s just one story; one glance at the snake-pit that some folks know as life. About the only thing we can do is remind ourselves that God loves us –

God loves us beyond our ability to measure. We are born as children of God, we live as children of God, and we die as children of God. Even when we forget who we are, God remembers. Either in life or in death, God’s love does not condemn us. Whether in life or in death, Love redeems us. Some people will try to tell us that God is angry and that we’re rotten sinners and if we don’t believe in just this way or that way, we’re doomed. They’re wrong. God is love. 

It’s in all the stories that Jesus told about God. He described his Father as a shepherd who goes out looking for the one sheep that wanders off. Or as a woman who sweeps out her whole house looking for one lost coin. Or as a father always watching the road to see if his wandering son will show up. God never gives up on his children.

We might give up on ourselves. We might lose hope in life itself. Even when we do, God never gives up on us. No matter how far down we might get into the pit of despair, we can’t get lower than the depth of God’s love. Nothing can ever separate us from the love of God. We affirm that none of us lives in vain, labors in vain, gives or receives love in vain. Within the eternal purpose of God each of us are worth more than we can ever calculate.

Why? Because he descended into Hell ….

And when God raised him again his first words were, “Fear not!”

“Don’t be afraid,” is a hopeful thought. “I’ve been there,” it implies. And it’s not as if it’s not so bad in hell, but rather, there is no place even in the deepest reaches of hell, where God is not willing to go.

Whom would he have met there? All the souls probably who thought they were lost, but weren’t really. The prodigals who needed a nudge down the road to home; the lost coins who got wedged into a corner of no return; the lambs who wandered a bit too far from the flock.

I like to think that no matter how deep a lost soul might travel into the far corners of hell, there in the most darkened corner of abandonment, carved on the wall are the words, “Jesus was here.” Because of that hell is someday going to be an empty place.

For God so loved the world. The world needs to see it. Maybe the world can see it in us. Amen.