Reflection: "New Lives in Christ"Even in a time when many people don't know much about the Bible, there's a verse that most of them know by heart.
Sometimes we don't even have to recite it; just the bible reference will do: "John 3:16" You may have even seen it held up on painted signs at sporting matches. It suggests the heart of the Christian message, summarizing what God did in, and through, 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." Or in short form: "God so loved the world." That pretty much says it all - doesn't it? It's the good news in a nutshell. On this Fourth Sunday in the season of Lent, let’s go deeper into this familiar passage from John. To do that, we have to go on a journey into the distant past - all the way back to the Old Testament book of Numbers. The people are in the Sinai desert, following Moses on a circuitous trek, out of slavery, toward the land that God has promised them and they’re following Moses half-heartedly because, after such a long journey, they’ve begun to doubt their leaders and even wonder if there is a promised land at all. This rag-tag band of pilgrims have begun to murmur - that is, they’re complaining about the hard life of the desert. The strange, God-given diet of manna and quail, and the uncertainty of their serpentine route, aren’t pleasing them.And it was serpentine in more ways than one! In the 21st chapter of Numbers, somewhere out in this seemingly God-forsaken desert, God sends a plague of poisonous snakes. The snakes were plentiful, they were poisonous, and people began to die. The people went to Moses, suspecting that the snakes were a form of divine retribution for all their complaining. They asked Moses to intercede for them with God - and he obliged. God tells Moses to fashion a serpent of bronze and put it on a pole. Then, if any of the people are bitten by a poisonous snake, they should be told to gaze at the bronze serpent so that they will be healed. Interesting concept, isn't it? Look at a snake and be cured of snakebite. But God’s suggestion worked and those who had been bitten were healed after gazing at the bronze serpent. End of story? Not really. Turning to the book of Second Kings, Chapter 18, we read that for 500 years after Moses, we haven't heard another word about this bronze serpent. By now the people have settled in the Promised Land and they decided to have kings, as other nations did. Many of those kings were disappointing and corrupt, but one king came along who was different. His name was Hezekiah and he cleaned things up in the land by removing the high places, breaking down the pillars, and cutting down the sacred poles. In effect, what he did was destroy the pagan worship places, which had cropped up around the land. Then we read that he: “broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until those days the people of Israel had made offerings to it." Do you see what had happened? Five hundred years after Moses had made the bronze serpent as a means of healing the people, they still had it - and it, too had become an idol. That is, what had been a means to an end, had become an end in itself! Instead of pointing toward the God who had ordered it made, it now pointed toward itself - and the people worshiped the serpent, instead of the God to whom it was supposed to point. I wonder what the people's reaction was when King Hezekiah smashed that five-hundred-year-old bronze serpent - after all, it had been made by Moses himself, a precious antique, a part of the nation's history. Sometimes, we Christians begin to worship what is old, but is no longer precious. We have our traditions, and we rebel against change. These two Old Testament passages about the bronze serpent illustrate a necessary point. What had been helpful and healing in one era had become an idol in another. I wonder: how many things in the life of our churches used to be helpful and healing but have outlived their usefulness? How many old traditions have we turned into idols? There is much discussion these days about the church's failure to attract and engage young adults. The census shows that the most rapid growth in religious following is among the "Nones" - that is, those people who answer the question of religious affiliation as: "None." I can't help but wonder if those who try our churches find us gathered around various prized bronze serpents that we should have smashed long ago. Now that I'm in my late-sixties and have been involved in churches for most of that time, I must confess that I’ve been exposed to many such serpents. People like me must challenge ourselves, asking which among these objects are no longer helpful or healing. What means to an end have we turned into ends in themselves? Good King Hezekiah smashed the bronze serpent, in spite of what I'm sure were numerous complaints from the Hebrew Historical Architectural Review Board. And in so doing, he proved to be an example of the spirit of reform. But that wasn’t the end of it. The bronze serpent has come back in the New Testament, in today’s gospel reading! That old bronze serpent - made by Moses and smashed by King Hezekiah - has come back at the end of this serpentine story. Jesus is not saying that a serpent on a pole can heal you; he’s saying that, just as the serpent was lifted up in the wilderness to heal, so he, Jesus Christ, the Son of Man, must be lifted up on a cross to be able to save us. Just as he told Nicodemus, we must be born from above. We must discover the incredible world of the Spirit. Do you see where this serpentine, meandering story of the snake has taken us? From the desert wanderings of Moses' rag-tag band, to the hill of Calvary. And there, we hear the call to lift up our eyes and see the one who saves us and gives us abundant life. Now the snake of Moses has led us to that favourite verse, that "gospel in a nutshell": "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." And it is followed by this great, final word in verse 17: "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." In Jesus we find new life - so lift up your eyes, lift up your hearts - the story has come down to this: Because God loves us, we can have new lives in Christ. Halleluiah……………Pastor Rick
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