4th Sunday in Lent

Jesus said, “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.”

 Today’s gospel is part of a larger conversation that Jesus has with Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. He senses that Jesus is ushering in the kingdom of heaven, and he wants to know more. Jesus tells him that he must be born again if he wants to experience the kingdom of heaven. He explains how this will take place by reminding him of what God told Moses to do to prevent his fellow Israelites from perishing from a mortal snake bite. God instructed Moses to make a snake out of bronze, attach it to a pole, and lift it up so that it could be seen by anyone who might slowly but surely die from the lethal venom of a snake bite. Anyone who followed God’s directions, looking up at the bronze snake, believing what God had promised Moses, would be saved. They would not die. It would be like being born again. It would be like being in heaven. In an even more profound and permanent manner, Jesus promises that anyone who turns his or her eyes upon him when he is lifted up on the cross and believes that what he is doing there is rescuing them from the poison of sin and death will not perish but have everlasting life, even now, this very minute.

 The apostle Paul tells the Ephesians the same thing in his letter to the church there, but using different words. He says that we are saved by grace through faith. The cross of Jesus is the source of grace for all those who are perishing. Grace is God’s love for us, unearned and undeserved. Grace covers a multitude of our sins, enlightens our minds, stirs our hearts and strengthens our wills, to quote our prayer book catechism. Grace preserves us from perishing, and, in the end, makes us imperishable. We receive this amazing grace of God, the ultimate preservative, through faith, by believing that the death of Jesus on the cross is an act of love that will make you and me and all of God’s original creation new, even better than before.

 We’re all familiar with the so-called placebo effect. The placebo effect, in the context of today’s lessons, affirms the importance of faith, of believing that God’s grace exists in a habitual and general way, like the air we breathe, and that it is always available, quite apart from whatever means may be used to convey that grace.

 When the Covid vaccines, for example, were being tested to make sure they were safe and effective, that they were channels of God’s grace, some people got the vaccine, and some did not. Those who got the vaccine were protected from the virus, even if they had their doubts about the efficacy of the vaccine. They were protected despite any doubts, hesitation, or lack of faith. Those, on the other hand, who got the injection of saline solution did not receive any actual grace, but even the fifty-fifty chance that they had received the vaccine would prompt the placebo effect, because of their underlying faith in the goodness of God’s creation as the basis for all medicines and the touch of a caring and knowledgeable physician supported by scientific research. This placebo effect would make them less prone to infection than the rest of us in the general population, who did not participate in the trials. Even deadly snake venom, I am told, can be the gracious means to life-preserving ends in certain medical situations.

 Jesus explains to Nicodemus the tragic fact that there will be those who will not believe in the grace of God to preserve them and make them imperishable. Sigmund Freud, for instance, in his book, The Future of an Illusion, suggests that such faith can be childish, a kind of magical thinking that must die if a person is to reach maturity as a human being. We see this in the case of the Israelites, who were so impressed with being saved from deadly snake bites by looking at a bronze snake of a pole that they treated the bronze snake as a kind of good luck charm. They thought God’s healing power was in the bronze snake and not in God who used the snake as an instrument of his grace. It would be like thinking a hypodermic needle or a pill is inherently life-giving, and not the doctors and scientists blessed with the brains that God gave them. King Hezekiah, hundreds of years later, finally had to destroy the bronze snake on the pole to quash such immature and superstitious thinking.

 Nonetheless, when our circumstances become desperate enough, it is the mark of genuine spiritual maturity to turn to God in faith, apart from whatever means he may use to convey his saving grace, as was the case with the Israelites in the wilderness. They knew they were facing a slow and agonizing death. They even realized that they had invited a lethal disaster on themselves by complaining to God and to his appointed servant, Moses, grumbling and challenging the goodness of the One who had delivered them from their bondage in Egypt. “There’s no water here. We’re sick of eating manna day in and day out! Why have you led us to this god-forsaken place? Why is this journey taking so long? Why is the promised land so far away?”

 They came to their senses and repented, apologizing to Moses and to God. This prepared them to receive God’s grace when he offered it. All they had to do, if they got bitten, was look on the bronze snake on the pole. They had to obey God’s simple instructions and believe that it wasn’t too late for them, even though they had made a fatal mess of their lives. In retrospect, we can even begin to understand that God did them a favor by sending a plague of snakes on them, because otherwise they may never have understood the fact that God is gracious, that he loves us despite what we say and do, despite our rebellious and impatient heart. [To use the strawberry analogy,] it may only be when we recognize how spoiled, rotten and bad we have become, and we know we are perishing, that we find the faith to believe there is still light, not only at the end of our dark tunnel, but even right where we are, if we would just look up to the one who is lifted up on earth’s darkest day and recognize and receive the saving light of his love shining gloriously through the darkness of sin and death.

 The cross of Christ saves us, even when we are perishing, even on that day when our mortal bodies lie in death. Until then, Jesus has given us the sacrament of his Body and Blood, commanding us to take it and eat it, as the sure and certain means of receiving his grace until he comes again. Unlike the bronze snake, which God used in one crisis that was meant to anticipate the cross of Christ, the bread and wine will always be instruments of his grace when we offer them in remembrance of his broken Body and the Blood flowing from his side. If we receive the Bread and Wine with that faith, Christ will indeed preserve our own souls and bodies unto everlasting life, as he dwells in us and we in him. Christ is offering us his life-saving medicine, activated by his love on the cross. Let us receive him with grateful and imperishable hearts. AMEN.