A sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Lent, March 10, 2024. The scripture readings are Numbers 21:4-9, Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22, Ephesians 2:1-10, and John 3:14-21.
If you’ve noticed the windows of bars and restaurants around New York, you may have seen decorations for next Sunday. Though we will observe it as the Fifth Sunday in Lent, for many outside the church (and quite a few inside) it will be St. Patrick’s Day, all day long. People will wear green, decorate with shamrocks, fountains will be dyed green, and legends told again about Patrick, the 5th century bishop and missionary. A few years ago, at my church in Washington, DC, the Men’s Fellowship had a meeting in mid-March. There was a wonderful parishioner named Louis, who made special table decorations for the event, depicting some of the legends and stories about Patrick. The one I still remember was a poster that sat in the middle of a table. From one side, it had a view as though one were looking into the front windshield of a car. Behind the window, seated in the driver’s seat, was a man wearing a miter on his head. In the passenger’s seat was a large snake. And Louis explained the picture to anyone who didn’t immediately get it: This was (of course) St. Patrick driving the snakes out of Ireland!
Though it was long before St. Patrick came along, I think the people of Israel in our first reading would have really liked Patrick and Patrick’s reported power to get rid of snakes. Because there in the wilderness, God’s people had a serious snake problem.
Our first reading from the Book of Numbers is a strange old story. It’s one of a number of Old Testament passages in which the people of God are “murmuring.” They are impatient, restless, and whiney. They’re complaining against God and against God’s leader in their midst, Moses. They miss what was familiar back in Egypt—even though they had been enslaved, there had been a certain predictability about it all. And now, there isn’t much food or water at all, and when there is, the food is dreadful. But then it gets worse.
These poisonous snakes show up. The snakes bite the people, and many of them die. And so, the people pray to God, and ask God to forgive their murmuring, their whining, and their lack of faith. God hears them, and then God gives them a symbol of healing. God uses the very thing that has hurt them, and God turns that hurtful thing into a symbol of healing. This new, strange but powerful symbol is of a serpent raised up high on a pole. When the people look up at this image, they are healed.
In some ways this story has in it a kind of symbolic vaccination, like in modern vaccinations, when a little part of a disease is put into us. When things go correctly, our body’s immune system fights the intruder and we become protected from the illness.
In the Old Testament lesson, the image of the serpent reminds the people of risk involved in life, itself—especially in living a life that tries to be faithful to God. But the story also tells of God’s protection, of God’s promise to deliver them, and save them. It is this image of death that is converted to life, that foreshadows the salvation we have through the death of Jesus Christ on the cross.
In the image of the cross, there is suffering and pain. There is danger and death. But on the other side of Easter morning, there’s healing. There’s resurrection. There’s new life for ever. The very thing that has hurt (the cross) provides the means for helping.
The fancy, theological word for what happens on the cross is Atonement. The word implies that Jesus’s action on the cross is some way atones, or makes up for, or is the cure for, our sin. Some have defined Atonement as “at-one-ment” with Christ—it all comes from the idea of being at-one, of being reconciled, of being brought into harmony and friendship with God through Jesus Christ.
The cross can’t be explained scientifically. It can’t even be explained very clearly through theology. But the cross is understood (if one can use that word) by experience. What happens on the cross is a mystery that must be explored, experienced, and approached through faith.
I should say clearly, that I in no way mean to suggest that I understand the full power of the cross. I don’t. But what I do understand is that part of the mystery of the cross involves God turning pain into power. God uses wounds to bring about healing.
We experience this whenever people gather with others who have suffered as they have. When we meet others who share the same wounds—whether that be a traumatic event, a loss, an addiction, some experience of violence, or any other common hurt—we can begin to find healing in the experience of being with each other, of hearing others’ stories, of sharing others’ strength. If you’ve ever been a part of such a group, you’ll know that while the individuals differ and may not agree on anything else, the common suffering can create a kind of energy, a kind of power, and a kind of strength. Whether one calls it a higher power or something else, I believe that it’s God who is behind that power. It is God who is behind the conversion of pain into power.
We experience healing through the combined experience of pain, but we also come to understand it in ourselves sometimes. When we are able to be honest, to be vulnerable, again— we begin to move toward healing and toward being what Henri Nouwen and others have called “wounded healers.”
With the Academy Awards happening tonight, I’ve been thinking about movies a lot lately—especially the movies I’d like to give awards to, some of which don’t become all the well know. One of those movies came out a few years ago with William Hurt, called, “The Doctor” (1991). The movie begins by showing a heart surgeon, played by William Hurt, who’s at the top of his game. Dr. Jack MacKee is shown early in the film instructing his interns, “There is a danger of feeling too strongly for your patients,” he says. “There is a danger in getting involved. You have to be detached.” Dr. MacKee’s way with his patients is clinical. It is cold, objective, and detached.
That is, until the doctor, himself, discovers that he has throat cancer. Slowly, he begins to see what it is like to be a patient. He learns what it’s like to have to wait for hours in a waiting room, what it’s like to fill out endless paperwork, what it’s like to have all the important decisions made on your behalf, as though you—the patient—are not even a part of the process. You can probably guess the ending of the movie. It is Hollywood, after all. Dr. MacKee learns from his experience. He realizes that the very best healer, the one who can offer the most, will be the one who is aware of his or her own wounds, the one who is aware of one’s own pain.
Prevailing themes in our culture suggest otherwise, of course. Strength is admired more than weakness. We’re encouraged to bandage up wounds quickly, and to hide grief. How often do we hear someone who is grieving, “holding up well.” We say this as though there is some shame in crying, grieving, or showing emotion. In our heart, behind closed doors, in the quiet and at night, we know that real grief is messy. We know that suffering, disease and illness are disorganized, unpredictable and can almost get the best of us. There are tears, emotional outbursts, confusing physical effects— in short, as long as there is life, there is life with all of its untidiness.
There is pain and heartache in life, but God promises to be with us. Today’s Gospel reminds us that God SO loved the world that he entered into it at a fully human level, to walk beside us, to experience what we experience, to know love and heartbreak, and pain, and suffering.
But then, God-in-Jesus goes through the pain of death. Some theological traditions imagine that sometime between his death and resurrection, Jesus even went into hell and freed everyone who might have been bound there, opening the way for all to be born again into new life.
When the people of Israel were making their way through the desert, they were healed when they looked up a the serpent on the pole. As Christians, we find healing when we look up at the cross of our crucified Lord, but when we walk in the way of the Cross.
There are many images of the cross for our gazing, but one of my favorites is the San Damiano Cross, often called the cross of St. Francis. Tradition says that when Francis heard God’s initial call, he was looking at a particular crucifix in the church of San Damiano. I love this particular cross because it neither ignores the suffering of Jesus, nor glorifies that suffering. On the St. Francis cross, Jesus is not alone. He is surrounded by all kinds of people. The crucifix is a kind of icon, including the friends of Jesus and even outsiders. It includes Mary and John the Baptist, but it also includes Peter and John running from the empty tomb on Easter Day. There are angels and patriarchs. There are saints.
The great thing about the St. Francis cross is that there is also room for you and me. The cross of Saint Francis reminds us that even in our darkest times, we are never alone, just as, even on the cross, Jesus was never totally alone. The cross reminds us of many things, but among them it reminds us of God’s power, God’s intention, and God’s promise of healing and resurrection. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
