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4 Lent 2009
John 3: 14-21
Salvation on a Stick
Pastor Chris Enstad
Brothers and sisters grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
Well, I’m pleased to report that I survived my first week at Mt. Olivet with most of my hair. This is only my second call so this is only the second time I’ve stood in a pulpit for my “first” sermon to a community of brothers and sisters and it’s kind of strange feeling because we’re only just starting to get to know each other and now here I am to preach to you the Good News of Jesus Christ. Elizabeth reminded me on Thursday that a lot of people would be showing up to see what I’m all about so, you know, no pressure.
So, in some ways, a first sermon is kind of the raw unblemished sermon. I have little idea of just what is going on in your lives that this Word is addressing, I can guess what your prayers might be about, I can see from walking around this building what your hopes and dreams are as a congregation, but specifics? Not yet. And so I am here today to get out of God’s way and preach to you this beautiful, strange, true Word and my hope and prayer is that this is the beginning of a long and fruitful relationship.
Are you ready?
A few days before I officially started here I stopped in to the office to say hello to everyone and two of my co-workers, who shall remain nameless and blameless, were discussing our texts for today and one of them said to me, “You know, every time this story of Moses in the wilderness holding up a serpent on a stick for the Israelites to look at, I can’t help but think about the state fair.” And that was it. I was lost in my own wilderness as I fast forwarded from the chilly late winter morning to those late-August memories of the Minnesota State Fair and all of the really good for you but not good to you things that one might find put on a stick. And it really sidelined me for most of this last week in between meeting all of these new people and getting to know all of these new faces every time I came back to this story I started thinking about snickers on a stick, pickles on a stick, Twinkies on a stick, how in the world was I going to write this sermon without adding 10 pounds?
But let’s pause a moment and remember this story from Numbers that John refers to in the Gospel. The Israelites were traveling from Mount Hor to Edom, God had just caused the Canaanites to be defeated by Israel when they prayed to God asking for his help, and now they had started to complain that things on the journey just weren’t good enough. God and Moses why did you bring us out of Egypt, even in our slavery we at least were fed and had water and here we have no food and no water, well, we don’t have any good food. And God sent poisonous serpents among the Israelites and they bit the people and many of them died. Now there is nothing like the threat of death to focus the mind on what is important and realizing their sin against God they repented and asked Moses to pray that God would take the serpents away. And then, listen to just what happens here, rather than take the serpents away God instructed Moses to make a serpent out of bronze, put it on a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone that person could look at the bronze serpent and live. God did not take the serpents away, the cause of pain and death was still there, but when someone was bitten they were given a way to live by looking at the bronze serpent on the stick to live. Now, of course, what the text doesn’t tell us it that later on that serpent on a stick has to be destroyed because just as human beings usually do when God gives us a tool to help us in our worship of God they Israelites began worshipping the stick and not God. Just an aside, I think we do the same thing with the Bible and make the mistake of worshipping it and not the God to whom the Bible points us… but that’s just me.
And so we arrive at today’s Gospel lesson, which is a continuation of the discussion Jesus had with Nicodemus, a Pharisee who came to Jesus at night to say look, we know you are a great man because no one can do the things you can but how are you doing it? And Jesus then talks to Nicodemus about being born from above, from which the idea of being born again comes from. But that conversation went on, as we are want to forget, it is easy to get hung up on the idea of being born again and we can then set up a whole bunch of things we have to do in order to get born again and then we again mistake the tools for our salvation… but Jesus goes on to remind us that our salvation depends on God through the death of Jesus Christ. We might want to know how to be “born again” but Jesus wants us to believe in him, and by believing in him believing in his death and resurrection.
“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,” Jesus tells Nicodemus.
And then those most famous of all Bible verses, John 3:16, the Gospel in miniature according to Martin Luther, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”
Now in the text it appears that Jesus continues to speak but most scholars of this text have come to believe that rather than Jesus speaking this appears to be John meditating on the meaning of Jesus’ prior words. Why was Jesus born? What was the crux of Jesus’ ministry? How does who Jesus have anything to do with us? Some of the most basic questions of faith are rooted in these very words.
In the reading from Numbers this morning we heard about a problem, snakes on the ground, and solution, if the snakes on the ground are getting you down cast your eyes upon the serpent on the stick and you will be saved.
Is it little wonder that Jesus calls us back to that point when talking about his own life and how he would come to die? Jesus reminds us this morning that he has come not only to live but also to die. Where are the snakes in your lives brothers and sisters? Are there things going on in your lives that are poisoning your relationship with God and each other? Are there things that have their teeth sunk so deep in you that you feel like they might just win the day?
In times when things get rough or when things don’t quite go our way it is easy to blame other people or even to blame God. But in remembering the story in Numbers today Jesus points out that the problem is not God, it is not even your neighbor, it is you. It is because of the problem of human beings on the ground that it took a human beings death on the cross to save us… do you see what I mean?
There are so many times in my life when I find myself looking around and judging my neighbors or even looking in the mirror of my own life to judge myself. But Jesus directs our eyes this morning back to the cross. It is precisely when we feel that pain in our lives that is like death itself that we are pulled back to the foot of the cross where Jesus died for you and for me. In Christ God did not promise to remove all of the pain and suffering from our lives but in our baptisms we were joined not only to Christ’s life but to his death. All of those things that threaten to overwhelm us, even death itself, have all been reduced to the status of anklebiters.
We have been freed from our fear of life and death to move into the light and do good works for our neighbors not in order to gain God’s favor but because Christ won that freedom for us already.
One final word about sticks. When we put something on a stick we then have control over it don’t we? That thing becomes ours, it is mine or it is yours. The reason we nailed Jesus to a tree was in an effort to reject his power by putting him to death using our power. But that open tomb on Easter morning was God’s Good News that not even death has power of Christ, and that even today, God is establishing his kingdom in you and me in all of us here.
My prayer is that we live our lives together exploring what it means to be free from the power of sin and death, living lives of service and love each to one another.
Thanks be to God.
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