Don't Give Up!

I am deeply indebted to the scholarship and thoughts of Kathryn Matthews Huey, D. Mark Davis, Meda Stamper, and David Kalas.

Nothing pithy or humorous to say. Just encouragement: Don't give up...

LUKE 18:1-8

Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. He said, "In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, 'Grant me justice against my opponent.' For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, 'Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.'" And the Lord said, "Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?"

This is the Word of the Lord.

There are some beautiful representations of prayer in classic art. No doubt when I say the words “Praying Hands,” either a painting or sculpture of hands pressed together in an attitude of prayer comes to mind – we've all seen it, haven't we? Or the familiar painting of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, kneeling at a rock, face turned toward heaven. Or an elderly gentleman at a table, clasping his hands, a loaf of bread in front of him.

There's nothing at all wrong with these kinds of representations, any more than there is anything wrong with these kinds of quiet, dignified prayers. Our Gospel reading today has nothing to do with these kinds of prayer, though.

We begin with a picture of a judge who isn't much of a judge. When you and I hear the word “judge,” we picture a man or a woman in a black robe, gavel in hand. As I understand it, for people in Judea the time of Jesus, the leader of the synagogue was called upon to mediate disputes among people in their village. The priests of the Temple in Jerusalem were judges as well, many meeting together in the Great Sanhedrin to hear and decide matters of religious and civil importance.

And yes, injustices abounded with these different judges – the High Priest owed his job to the Romans – in fact, Pilate kept the priestly garments under lock and key, and if the Roman Prefect didn't like what the Chief Priest was doing, he simply replaced him. Even so, scholars and historians note that the priestly class in Jerusalem lived sumptuously off the proceeds from the Temple tax, and was thus quite dedicated to keeping the status quo.

By stark contrast, the widow had, quite literally, nothing. John Pilch writes that the “word for 'widow' in Hebrew means 'silent one' or 'one unable to speak.' In the patriarchal Mediterranean world males alone play a public role. Women do not speak on their own behalf.” Women could not own property or work to earn a living. Without a husband or a male child to support her, the widow was dependent upon the kindness of the synagogue or Temple for her basic daily needs.

Now, of course, we don't know who this woman's opponent was, or what the person had done against the widow, all we are certain of is that (a) this judge doesn't care, and (b) the widow doesn't care that this judge doesn't care. She has a need, the judge can address that need, so she is by cracky gonna get her need addressed!

\You can just see this widow waiting at the judge's door every morning, first in line. Maybe she interrupts him again at lunch, and maybe every time she is turned away she gets back in line again, so by the end of the day she has been turned away by the judge several times. Maybe she knocks on his door during supper. Maybe she makes a point to sit in the front row at they synagogue and stare at him the whole time...

After awhile, the judge gets heartburn every morning because he knows who is gonna be there when he opens his door. He hears her voice in his dreams, he is beginning to lose sleep – the Greek for where the judge says “...so that she may not wear me out...” has, as its primary meanings, “to beat black and blue, to smite so as to cause bruises and livid spots.” He is feeling verbally beaten up by this widow's constant haranguing! So for the sake of his own health, he gives in and answers the widow's request.

Perhaps the first time this widow stood before the judge, she did so properly, following decorum. Once he turned her away, though, she was faced with a hard choice: give up, and let her opponent keep whatever she had taken from the widow, or keep fighting for her rights.

One of the principles I taught in sales is that, most times, people will take the easiest option given to them. That's why the best salespeople give only the illusion of choice: So would you like the red one or the green one? And when faced with opposition, either real or imagined, the easiest option for humans is to give up, find a better way, or settle for no way at all.

But if Moses had given up after that initial, disheartening encounter with Pharaoh, the Hebrews would not have been freed. If the children of Israel had given up marching around Jericho after five days, the walls would not have fallen. If the Syrophonecian woman had given up when she received no response — or a negative one — from Jesus, her daughter would not have been healed. If, following the coming of the Holy Spirit, the apostles in Jerusalem had given up at the first sign of opposition, the church there would have floundered while they cowered. If Paul had given up his missionary efforts as soon as he encountered difficulty, untold numbers of individuals and communities would not have heard the good news.

So yes, maybe surrender is easy, but giving up is the easiest, quickest way to lose. And not giving up is a basic key to victory in any sense of the word.

At the point in time Luke was writing his Gospel, people were probably starting to feel discouraged. Everyone expected Jesus to be coming any day now, but time wore on and no Jesus. They were tired of waiting for the deepest hope of their hearts, and it just wasn't happening. They were tired of being persecuted as a tiny little minority in a great big, powerful empire. They were anxious and suffering.

So this parable is most decidedly not about how to nag God with our repeated requests so, eventually, we'll wear the Almighty out and God will give in and give us what we want. Rather, today's passage is about waiting and not being discouraged, not losing heart.

Society may have told the widow that she was a nobody without a voice, but she knew otherwise, and her persistence helped her hold on to that knowledge: Barbara Brown Taylor says, “She [was] willing to say what [she] wanted – out loud, day and night, over and over – whether she got it or not, because saying it was how she remembered who she was.”

One of the doctrines of Calvinism, which serves as the basis for our Reformed theology in the Presbyterian Church USA, is “Perseverance of the Saints.” This doctrine has been taken to mean a lot of things, like “Once Saved, Always Saved,” or evidence that people who may fall away from the faith were never “really saved” in the first place. But I rather see the idea of “Perseverance of the Saints” as an encouragement, reassurance that, for the Christian, staying the course is worth it.

Our New Testament Lectionary reading, from Second Timothy, follows on this theme of persistence, not giving in or giving up. Paul writes to Timothy, “In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I solemnly urge you: proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable; convince, rebuke, and encourage, with the utmost patience in teaching. For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths. As for you, always be sober, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, carry out your ministry fully.”

Do you hear how those words stand out? Proclaim, be persistent, with the utmost patience, endure, carry out...

Don't give up. In the face of prayers that continue to go unanswered, and we don't know why, don't give up. When justice is slow, when good things happen to bad people and when good people just keep getting bad things, don't give up.

Jesus ends the parable with a question: “...when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

Faith is not about our doctrines, faith is not about what we believe. Marcus Borg puts it best: “you can believe all the right things and still be in bondage. You can believe all the right things and still be miserable. You can believe all the right things and still be relatively unchanged. Believing a set of claims to be true has very little transforming power.”

Rather, faith has to do with relationship. With giving your heart and your trust, your radical trust, to God. Soren Kierkegaard says that “faith as trust is like floating on a deep ocean. Faith is like floating in seventy thousand fathoms of water. If you struggle, if you tense up and thrash about, you will eventually sink. But if you relax and trust, you will float.”

Faith as trust is trusting in the buoyancy of God. Faith is trusting in the sea of being in which we live and move and have our being.

In this sense, then, persistence in prayer has very little to do with what we pray for. Sure, the content of our prayers is important, but part of what we learn as we grow in relationship with God as we pray, and pray, and pray, is how to pray. Prayer is one of the ways we remind ourselves of who we are, and prayer shapes our hearts in a way that reflects the heart of God.

It bears repeating, then: don't give up. God, who is not at all like the unjust judge, doesn't move in our time frame, no, and sometimes the answers to our prayers don't come, or they seem to come in ways that make no sense.

Don't give up. We are promised the Holy Spirit, we are promised justice, and we are promised the now-and-coming Kingdom of God. We are precious to God, and these are the best gifts that God can give to us.

Don't give up.

The Silent Apostle

Inspiration for this sermon comes from David Kalas of SermonSuite.com. I am quoting Bruce Laverman from his post on Evangelism Connections.

The audio from this sermon:



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Acts 1:15-17, 21-26

In those days Peter stood up among the believers (together the crowd numbered about one hundred twenty persons) and said, “Friends, the scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit through David foretold concerning Judas, who became a guide for those who arrested Jesus — for he was numbered among us and was allotted his share in this ministry.”

So one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us — one of these must become a witness with us to his resurrection.” So they proposed two, Joseph called Barsabbas, who was also known as Justus, and Matthias. Then they prayed and said, “Lord, you know everyone’s heart. Show us which one of these two you have chosen to take the place in this ministry and apostleship from which Judas turned aside to go to his own place.” And they cast lots for them, and the lot fell on Matthias; and he was added to the eleven apostles.

1 John 5:9-13

If we receive human testimony, the testimony of God is greater; for this is the testimony of God that he has testified to his Son. Those who believe in the Son of God have the testimony in their hearts. Those who do not believe in God have made him a liar by not believing in the testimony that God has given concerning his Son. And this is the testimony: God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.

I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.

John 17:6-19

“I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them. And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one. While I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me. I guarded them, and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost, so that the scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to you, and I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves. I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth.”

This is the Word of the Lord.

When I was preparing for today’s message, I came across a quote about our Gospel reading from Bruce Laverman: “Here Christ is praying not just for the Apostles Peter, James, and John.  But He is praying also for Jerome, Augustine and Bernard.  He is interceding to the Father for St. Francis, John Hus, and John Wycliffe.  He brings Calvin and Zwingli, Wesley and Whitefield before His Father, as well as Graham and Peale and Martin Luther King, as well as John XXIII, and Bishop Leslie Newbigin.  Here Christ is praying for you and for me, and for all his disciples who would follow Him into the lost and broken world of the 21^st Century so loved by Him.”

There is a lot of truth in that statement. Think of all the stories we’ve heard, all our lives, about the great people who helped shape Christianity. Think about people who, because of their faith in the risen Christ, changed the world. If there are names he mentioned that we don’t know, there are other names we can use to replace them: Mother Teresa, Corrie ten Boom, Deitrich Bonhoeffer, C.S. Lewis, John Knox, Karl Barth… not to mention the people alive today who, when you say the word “Christian,” spring immediately to mind.

It’s easy for me to imagine Jesus praying that prayer to include those men and women who personified the courage and conviction of faith in the risen Christ, who so often suffered ridicule, persecution, imprisonment, and even death for the things they believed.

Reverend Laverman’s last sentence, “…here Christ is praying for you and me, and for all his disciples…” is harder for me to imagine for myself. I can’t mentally place myself in the same league as Augustine or Calvin or ten Boom or Bonhoeffer or King.

That’s why I really enjoy our reading this morning from the Book of Acts.

The reading from Acts takes place in that time just after Jesus has ascended to Heaven. The disciples return to Jerusalem, and spend their time together in the Upper Room, along with the women and Jesus’ brothers, all praying.

At some point, Peter stands up and declares that someone has to take Judas’ place among the Apostles. I don’t know why Peter was so dead-set on filling the vacancy right then; it wasn’t like they were overworked, or falling behind on whatever it was that Peter thought they were supposed to be doing. Perhaps he thought that by filling the spot they could erase the memory of the evil that Judas had done. Most likely Peter was just being pre-Pentecost Peter: headstrong, opinionated, rushing into things half-cocked.

Our reading skips a pretty important part, the twentieth verse, where Peter uses Scripture to make his case – “For,” said Peter, “it is written in the Book of Psalms: ‘May his place be deserted; let there be no one to dwell in it,’ and, ‘May another take his place of leadership.’”

Perhaps that alone was Peter’s motivation: making sure that the Scriptures were honored.

Whatever the case, nominations were made, then they prayed for God to choose one – Joseph called Barsabbas or Matthias. They did the Biblical equivalent of flipping a coin, yes, but this was done with the firm belief that God determined the result, which, when it was all said and done, was Matthias.

And that is the first and last time we ever hear anything about Matthias in the Scriptures.

Imagine that – brought in to the inner circle, rubbing shoulders with the biggest names in Christianity, Simon Peter and John and James and Andrew and Matthew and even Thomas, and we never hear another peep about the guy!

Volumes have been written about Apostles – even Paul, who wasn’t anywhere near them when the Resurrection or the Ascension happened, but who went on to wrote most of the New Testament. Their individual biographies may be sketchy, but they are the most famous people in Christianity. These are the guys who get churches and schools and hospitals and cities and millions and millions of people named after them. But not Matthias.

Now, he didn’t just take his membership plaque and go home. There are several theories and conflicting traditions about what all he did before his death, though many of the ancient sources can’t even agree on what his name was.

While the third-century historian, Hippolytus of Rome, claims Matthias died in Jerusalem of old age, another tradition has Matthias being stoned, and then beheaded, in Jerusalem. Yet another tradition holds that Matthias began preaching in Jerusalem, then going on an evangelistic mission to the barbarians and cannibals in what we know today as the former Soviet Republic of Georgia, where he was crucified around 80AD.

But none of that is certain, because Matthias wasn’t one of the big names.

You know, if we all sat around for awhile and thought about it, we could probably come up with a pretty lengthy list of famous, influential Christians throughout history. Depending on the particular theological branch, we might include everyone from Harry Emerson Fosdick to Smith Wigglesworth to Bishop Fulton Sheen to Gustavo Gutierrez and Andre Trocme, and we could go on and on. The list could be hundreds of names long, encompassing two millennia, but it would represent only a tiny fraction of all the men and women and children who have placed their faith in the risen Christ.

And not only is that OK, that’s actually the preferable place to be, even if you’re like me, where the most dangerous place in the world to stand is between me and an audience.

For most human beings, when asked about the people and events that have influenced their lives, their beliefs, their minds and their spiritual journeys the most, the names and faces that come to mind are not the big names. In fact, I think it’s safe to say that, in the context of the greater portion of humanity, it’s the people of Christianity who don’t have TV shows or write books or give great sermons who truly change lives.

Oh, sure, we could argue that Peter and Paul and John and James were, and are, responsible for changing untold billions of lives, and it isn’t that they were the exception to the rule; rather, they weren’t all that well-known in their lifetimes, outside of their own circles of influence. Only as Christianity continued to grow, and their writings were circulated among the churches, did they become household names. Like many well-known Christians who came after them – Corrie ten Boom, Mother Teresa, Saint Francis of Assisi, Martin Luther, their reputations grew not because they had good PR and marketing, but because they served God faithfully, even in the face of adversity.

While Peter’s sermon on Pentecost resulted in thousands came to believe in Christ, this serves, for most Christians, as the exception rather than the rule. The most effective example for most of us is Peter, stepping out of his comfort zone to visit Cornelius and bring the Gospel to the Gentiles. The most effective example is Phillip with the eunuch. The most effective example is Paul, reaching out to small groups of people in the cities he visited, establishing communities of worship that grew and thrived long after he had moved on.

You see, while words spoken to tends and hundreds and thousands are all well and good, the greatest good is done not within the context of the pulpit, but within the context of relationship.

We never know if Matthias preached a sermon. But we know that Matthias had been with the disciples since the beginning. He had seen the healings and the exorcisms; he’d taken part in the feeding of the five thousand. He had watched Lazarus come out of the tomb. He had witnessed the risen Christ, standing right there in that very room, and had watched the sky until his neck was sore as Jesus Christ ascended to heaven.

He was there the whole time, but we never see his name mentioned in the Gospels. He doesn’t pipe up and ask Jesus to clarify a parable, or step out on the water with Peter, or raise a ruckus when the woman breaks open the alabaster jar; he isn’t listed as one of those who fell asleep in Gethsemane when Jesus prayed, or ran away when the Temple guard marched in.

Yet he had been there. Quietly, actively, faithfully… and chosen by God.

Over the millennia, Saint Matthias has become the patron saint of alcoholism, carpenters, smallpox, tailors, and the cities of Gary, Indiana as well as Great Falls and Billings, Montana. And I want to add one more patronage to the list: I want to suggest to you that Matthias is the patron saint of the vast majority of Christians: the not-famous ones.

Matthias is the patron saint of our parents’ good advice, of long talks over coffee, of mutually shared hopes and dreams and prayers. Henri Nouwen wrote, “The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing… not healing, not curing… that is a friend who cares.” Matthias is the patron saint of friends who care. Matthias is the patron saint of relationships.

Matthias is the patron saint of doing the right thing even when no one is looking, of giving up lunch to feed a hungry person, of speaking up for the rights of someone who can’t thank you, even though it’s unpopular, of giving someone you barely know a ride, even though it’s inconvenient. Matthias is the patron saint of faith in action, one-on one.

Though he was chosen by God after the rest of the Apostles, this silent Apostle, Matthias, was no less chosen by God than Abraham, or David, or Peter or John.

And you and I are no less chosen by God to join in fellowship, in worship, in relationship, and in service

So You Wanna Go Back To Egypt?

The title's a nod to the late Keith Green, whose music and ministry helped shape my early days in the faith. His song of that name was playing in my head the entire time I was writing this sermon.

I appreciate the writing of David Kalas, and the joke I "borrowed" from the Rev. Dr. Delmer L. Chilton, in helping me write this week's sermon. And yes, I "borrowed" "bamanna bread" from Keith Green.

The very idea that I could hope to unpack the depth of Jesus comparing his crucifixion to Moses' lifting of the bronze serpent in the wilderness is sheer folly at best, and deadly hubris at worst. I barely scratched the surface, and likely bungled some bits even at that. Happily, the congregation is good at forgiving me when I do that. They've had a lot of practice, y'see...

Here's the audio of the sermon:



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Ephesians 2:1-10

You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient. All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else. But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved — and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God — not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.

John 3:14-21

“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.

“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.

“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.”

Numbers 21:4-9

From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom; but the people became impatient on the way. The people spoke against God and against Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food.” Then the LORD sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died. The people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned by speaking against the LORD and against you; pray to the LORD to take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. And the LORD said to Moses, “Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.” So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.

This is the Word of the Lord.

It’s a pretty safe bet that, if you open up the book of Numbers at random and put your finger down on a page, you’ll be pointing to a passage where the children of Israel are worrying, doubting, and/ or complaining. Honestly, I don’t know how Moses put up with it all those years.

Especially in this instance! They complain about having no food… and in the same sentence say they hate the food. Um, what?

Well, yeah, there was food, enough to go around. Manna. Every day.

For breakfast, manna waffles, with a side of manna eggs and manna sausage, washed down with a nice hot cup of manna coffee. For lunch they had manna sandwiches: manna between two slices of manna. Or you could get real adventurous and have a manna club sandwich – three slices of manna! For dinner, manna pot roast. Maybe for dessert, manna pound cake or bamanna bread…

Yeah, manna. Lots and lots of the same old thing every day.

And instead of the monotony pushing the people to look forward with hungry anticipation to where they were headed, the Promised Land, a land flowing with milk and honey, they grumbled about what they’d left behind, back in Egypt.

Sure, they’d been slaves. Yeah, they’d had to work constantly on the Pharaoh’s building projects, backbreaking labor that drove them to an early grave. But man, remember the food? Olives as big as your fist! And the bread! So soft you could use it as a pillow. Oh, how we miss the food…

Imagine: God had brought them from slavery in a foreign land, through the Red Sea, had provided for their needs, protected them in battle, and was sending them (or, well, their children, anyway) to a glorious new land of abundance, full of fields they had not plowed, homes they had not built, orchards they had not planted…

It reminds me of the story about this company that had fallen on hard times. There wasn’t enough work to keep the people busy, but rather than lay everyone off, the owner told the employees, “I am sure things will improve soon. In fact, I’m going to keep everyone on full salary; just come in on Wednesdays to maintain the machinery and keep the place clean.”

From the back of the group, someone said, “Do we have to come in every Wednesday?”

The children of Israel wished they could go back to Egypt, undo all that God had done for them, even if it meant being captive again. So the Lord sent serpents. Poisonous snakes.

Now, I’ve read a lot of preachers and bloggers and commentators who are very uncomfortable about this passage. It brings up a lot of questions about the nature of God, and causes people to struggle to reconcile our idea of a loving, New Testament God with an angry, vengeful and capricious Old Testament God.

And what does it say about a God who would send snakes? Real, live, poisonous snakes, the kind that like to kill people? After all, they were just doing some whining, for crying out loud! Isn’t that like burning down a house to kill a mosquito?

I want to suggest to you that if God’s intention had been to kill the children of Israel for their doubt and complaining and unbelief, for wanting to go back to familiar slavery, comfortable servitude, the soothing routine of the crushing burden and the cracking whip to their backs, then God could have – would have – simply killed them. All of them. Instantly. Or, if God’s plan was for the children of Israel to die slowly, in terror and agony, God could have simply offered no remedy, ignoring Moses when he came to plead on the people’s behalf.

So, was God simply looking for an apology? For repentance? Well, if that was all there was to the story, then the serpents would have disappeared the moment they all ran to Moses, admitting they’d been boneheads and begging him to intercede. Asking, in fact, that God take the snakes away.

No, the snakes don’t leave, and people didn’t stop being bitten, but God does provide a cure. A strange, counterintuitive cure.

The cure had nothing to do with raining antivenin down on the encampment, or teaching the people how to extract the venom from the bite, the way the old Boy Scout’s first aid manual did.

The cure was another snake. A metal one. On a pole. When someone got bitten, they had simply to look at the metal snake on the pole, look at the image of the thing that was causing them to die… and they would live.

God did not want the people to die, you see. God wanted the people to trust.

In the dark of night, something like eight hundred years later, a figure emerges from the shadows in the narrow streets of Jerusalem and knocks on a door. A young man answers, wiping sleep from his eyes, and a few minutes later the shadowy figure steps into the courtyard of the house, and settles next to the fire to speak with Jesus.

Nicodemus was a man with questions. I imagine him as a fellow who had spent his life following the rules, keeping the rituals, playing the game the way it was meant to be played. But lately, he’d seen the edges of his carefully woven tapestry beginning to fray. He saw his fellow Jews who, just like him, were doing all they knew to keep the Law, make the sacrifices, pray the prayers, but things just kept getting worse. Food was scarce, all the money went to the foreign occupiers, the leaders of the very Temple of God were in collusion with the Romans, and there was no end in sight.

Perhaps Nicodemus had been in the Temple the day Jesus had overturned the tables of the moneychangers, had heard him yelling about making the house of God into a Super Wal-Mart, and had known, deep in his heart, that this dirty, nondescript rabbi from some Podunk town in the middle of who-knows-where was right.

But there in the courtyard, warmed by the fire and the cups of wine, Nicodemus grows ever more confused by the things that Jesus says. Being born all over again? Born of water and the Spirit? What does it all mean?

I wonder if it all clicked for him when Jesus referred to Moses’ snake on a stick? After all, hadn’t Nicodemus been thinking that the world was a sick place, snakebit with corruption and greed, dying beneath the crushing force of Roman occupation?

All of Judea prayed for the Messiah to come, to re-establish the throne of David, drive out the oppressors, and institute the eternal, perfect, but earthy, Kingdom.

They’d asked for God to send the Roman snakes away, but God hadn’t, and every day it all seemed to get worse and worse, and it wasn’t hard to imagine that God really had forgotten the Jewish nation, or worse actively wanted to destroy them, kill them all.

“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.”

Perhaps, Nicodemus thought, God didn’t want them to die. God wanted them to trust.

Crucifixion had been perfected by the Romans over the centuries as a way to not simply kill their prisoners, but to humiliate their enemies and terrify their subjects. Crucifixion was doubly terrifying to the Jewish people, because the book of Deuteronomy says that anyone who was hung on a pole was cursed – so not only did they endure the pain of death, those that believed in life after death knew that their afterlife would be doomed as well. All in all it was an exquisitely slow and painful way to die, and the Romans made sure and did it on a hill, on a cross big enough that everyone could see the suffocating, naked body of whatever cursed soul had crossed the Roman governor that day.

“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.”

What does this mean to you and I, today?

It doesn’t take long to come to the conclusion that the world we live in is cursed, even today. While much of the world struggles to find enough food to eat, other parts of the world deal with an epidemic of obesity. While part of the world woke up this morning dealing with the after-effects of too much to drink on St. Patrick’s Day, in other parts of this same planet there isn’t enough clean water to drink. While part of the world worries that the video games our children play are too violent, in parts of Africa children are kidnapped in the night and forced to fight and kill on behalf of armies rebelling against a government not much better, in practice, than the kidnappers themselves. Power and wealth protect and enrich themselves, while the middle class disappears and the poor grow ever poorer.

Even when we don’t struggle to feed our families, even when clean water is as far away as the nearest tap, even when our children can sleep in their own beds, knowing that Joseph Kony won’t sneak in during the night and steal them for his army, there’s plenty enough curse to go around: the curse of resting our self-worth on the things we own, where we live, our race or our gender.

We are snakebit, and we die a little more from the poison of greed, affluence, and self-absorption every day.

The image of the snake saved the children of Israel from death. All they had to do was look to it. All they had to do was trust… to have confidence… to believe.

In Galatians we read that Christ became the curse, in order to redeem us from the curse of the law.

Christ became the curse, became the image of the very thing that is killing us.

“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.”

We who live under the curse must look to Jesus, who became the very image of the thing that is killing us, and far from simply keeping that poison from destroying us, looking at the Son of Man lifted up brings us the promise of the Kingdom, the assurance of eternal life.

And please understand, this is not an exclusionary event, something done to separate the “good people” from the “bad people,” to offer a way of quantifying “us” and “them.” I have said this before, there is no such thing as “us” and “them.” All of us, left to our own devices, will move immediately as far from God as possible, will wallow as deep in the poison of the curse as we can get, and do so as quickly as we can. In the language of this cursed world, we are all “them.” And, as the book of Romans reminds us, God demonstrates God’s love this way: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Or to use the words of Jesus, “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. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” And later in the Gospel of John, Jesus states, “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”

So we who have looked upon Christ, lifted up, the image of the curse, we who have been brought from death into life in Christ, have a choice to make.

We can continue living as if we are under the curse, letting the advertisers and the infomercial producers tell us what to buy and how much to spend on it so we can be better than the other people who didn’t buy this or spend that. We can continue letting the politicians and pundits and talk show hosts tell us whose fault everything is, who to hate, who to distrust, who to fight… or we can lift Jesus up, in doing the things that are true, and draw everyone – everyone – to Him.