Re-Symboled

Sermon- Year B-4 Lent-March 22, 2009

The Cloud of Unknowing, "O God, our great companion, lead us ever more deeply into the mystery of your life and ours, that we may be faithful interpreters of that Life to each other, through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Amen.
A few miles south of the Irish city of Kilkenny lie the ruins of a once great medieval monastery Jerpoint Abbey. As you walk around the abbey full of wonderful stonework and carved figures, something will strike you-all the images of snakes that are there with the pictures saints and biblical scenes. I asked our guide, “why so many snakes?” And she said, “well, these are symbols for Christ.” I told her that I always thought that snakes were symbols of evil-the archetype being the serpent in the Garden of Eden. “Well, yes,” she said, “you will see snakes carved into many of the scenes representing sin and evil. Those snakes will have a knot in their tail so that you know that they are bad and stand for Satan. But in the middle ages, animals that could become new or different, were often shown as representations of Christ-like the caterpillar becoming a butterfly, or the unicorn, or the snake-since it sheds its skin and becomes new. So on the walls of Jerpoint Abbey, visitors are always surprised to see as a symbol for Christ, the symbol we always assume means the devil.
Few Bible verses are more familiar than today’s. In the 1980s if you watched a professional football game you saw every week Rollen Stewart, “the Rainbow Man”, holding up a sign a sign that said, John 3:16. But it’s the verses around that verse that explain it-and very few of us know those passages.
This is how this week’s gospel begins: 14And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness. This is how the Rev. Bethany Hull Somers,( Preacher's Magazine, 2006) describes it in a sermon:
“You know how Moses led the Hebrew people out of Egypt into Israel? But first they had to spend 40 years in the wilderness? While in the wilderness the Hebrews constantly turned their back on God and told Moses that they wanted to go back to Egypt. They were having what we would term, a tantrum. And yet, they were understandably frustrated. It was hot, they were tired, but rather than turning to God in their dismay, they turned against Him. Because of their rejection, they were plagued with poisonous snakes. Many [of the Hebrew people] were bitten; many died. Not surprisingly, as they saw their family members and friends begin to die from snake bites they cried out to Moses to entreat God on their behalf.”
Phyllis Tickle in a sermon takes the story from there: “And the Bible says that those who believed Moses, those who stopped looking down at the snakes, who stopped trying to pull them off of themselves and their children, but looked up instead at the brass snake[that Moses had made out of bronze]…those men and women did not die, but they were saved. This does not mean that they were not bitten, but simply that those who looked up and not down did not die of their wounds. Eighteen months later, it was these men and women who saw the Jordan[River] part before them and who walked across its dry bed to claim the land of milk and honey promised them by God.”That’s how this morning’s gospel begins-with Jesus trying to explain how something that seems to be one thing-can become something different. A bronze serpent on a pole was a chance for the Hebrew people once lost, to reclaim their faith. And the cross, a symbol of shame and death would be the tool God would use to save his people. Nicodemus knew the story of the bronze serpent and the Hebrew people, but he could not understand the story of the cross. So Jesus spells it out for him-God loves us so much, and calls us to a faith so new, that he uses something that is completely wrong and bad and scandalous, to break through and change our hearts.
Two weeks ago I was explaining to you how hard it was for Jesus to get people to understand who he was-and what he was about. They wanted him to be a healer, a wonderworker, a man of miracles, but he kept trying to bring them instead, into a new faith and relationship with God.
That journey continues. Today it’s Nicodemus, the man who comes by night, the man who struggles in darkness. Jesus continues his mission of finding the right symbol, the new message, that will somehow break through to show who he is, and why he’s here. It is not easy-that’s why Jesus uses all these references to darkness and judgement. We struggle with understanding, we strain at comprehension. We know the world one way, and Jesus is constantly trying to get us to see things, to see him, in a new way.
That’s the news we hear today.
There are a lot of people in the world right now, who feel as though they, like the Hebrew people, are lost in the wilderness-and so we preach faith. There are a lot of people in the world right now who feel as though they are surrounded by snakes, and are afraid to look up, desperately looking down-afraid that they will be bitten again-and so we preach hope. There are a lot of people in the world like Nicodemus-groping
around in the darkness of their lives, confused, baffled, questioning-and so we preach truth. There are a lot of people in the world right now who feel lost, alone, and fearful. And so we preach Christ. It can be a tough world, it can be a difficult life. For a lot of people right now, walking in dark wildernesses, beset by dangerous serpents, it is a tough time. We don’t read them Bible verses, we show them Bible truths. God takes what is dangerous and frightening and turns them into signs of hope and symbols of salvation. If God can do this with snakes and crosses-imagine what God can do with flesh and spirit? If God can use what is perceived as evil and scandalous-imagine what God can do with us? Amen.