Sermon for September 14, 2025

Scripture Reading: John 3:13-17 (New International Version)

“No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven- the Son of Man. Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness,  so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.”
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.  For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

---

          As I was looking for liturgy for today’s service, I noticed something that was strange enough that I had to walk out of my office and tell Cyndi about it. Today’s reading is from a conversation between Jesus and a man named Nicodemus. Nicodemus was a Pharisee. As I’ve mentioned before, Jesus and pharisees usually had a lot to talk about. They all valued their shared religious laws and wanted to teach people how to shape their lives according to God’s covenant. Nicodemus respects Jesus as a divinely inspired teacher. But, he also feels like he will be judged by his community for that respect. He’s afraid. When he goes to talk to Jesus, one on one, he goes under cover of darkness.

     Part of the conversation happens before our reading. In that conversation, they talk about what it means to follow God, to commit to living your life in a way that is so different that it feels like you have been born anew. They talk about the Spirit that is like the wind, you can’t see it, but you can hear it. And, it moves without you knowing where it comes from. Nicodemus said that “no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” Nicodemus has seen something in Jesus that has moved him. We are watching him try to figure out what to do with what his heart informed by his eyes is telling him to do. Who here hasn’t been in Nicodemus’ shoes, trying to figure out what it means to really change your life the way you’re starting to feel like you need to? You might have even had some late-night talks with Jesus about it.

     Jesus does appear to be surprised at Nicodemus’ moral and ethical quandaries. He was a Pharisee. Figuring out how to follow God was his life’s work! Jesus kind of tells him that he would have expected a teacher of Israel to understand things more clearly. “If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?” Ouch, right? The thing that comes after that part is what really catches my attention every time I read this. It is among the wildest, oddest references to the Hebrew Scriptures that I can think of in any Gospel. “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. What even is Jesus talking about with this serpent?

     It’s a story from the book of Numbers (chapter 21). That’s where Moses and the Serpent come from. Jennifer Garcia Bashaw gives a helpful, short description of that story in her commentary on this text. I’m going to try to shorten the description even more. It’s a story from the Exile in the Wilderness. God lets loose a plague of venomous snakes among the Israelites as punishment for their “grumbling and unfaithfulness.” Lots of people get bit and lots of people die. Out of fear and desperation, they repent and ask Moses for help. He intercedes with God, who directs him to build a big bronze snake for them to look at. When envenomated people look at the snake, they are healed.

     It is times like this that I feel some kindred spirit with the writers of the Gospel. I can see so clearly the writerly work of having an idea that is unclear and looking around for an example to explain a complicated idea. It is possible that this Numbers allusion came straight from Jesus. That being said, no Gospel is a direct transcription of Jesus’ words, and he doesn’t say this in any other Gospel. Whether this story was wrangled from the Hebrew Bible from a writer who wanted to add something to Jesus’ words to try to explain them or if Jesus himself pulled this metaphor out of his copious knowledge of Hebrew scripture, it’s still seems to me an odd choice. Of all the Moses stories, why this one?

     I once asked a rabbi friend about this story. She agreed with me: “It’s a weird story.” I asked her if she knew of any time when this serpent story might have been more important or shared more widely in Jewish circles. She didn’t. How many of you, when you think of Moses, think of this serpent? Unless you’ve heard the three other times that I’ve preached on this, I’m gonna bet this is not a go to Moses story for you! Once more, the “Jesus is like that bronze snake” never became one of the most important metaphors for how Christians understand Jesus.

     When I was looking for pre-written prayers and liturgy based on today’s reading for service, I notice that none of them mentioned the serpent. This is what I had to tell Cyndi about when I noticed it. While I didn’t study every piece of Christian liturgy ever written, I did look at a couple sites where pastors share things they write. I saw lots of references to the Spirit blowing like the wind, and to being born again. I saw lots of references to John 3:16, which is all over the place really (even, as Bashaw points out, on the bottom of some fast food hamburgers) and the cross. I saw nothing about this snake. The Spirit and the Cross. No snake in any one prayer or litany.

     But the snake is right there! How do you not talk about it? Interestingly, when I was looking for a recording of the one hymn that mentions the snake, YouTube started feeding me fundamentalist sermons on the Numbers text. It made me think that the people most comfortable with this story are people really interested in a God who punishes people. People who think of God as first a disciplinarian might not think twice about God using snakes to punish people. The Moses story is odd to me, in part, because it is so vindictive. It is also odd because it seems so.... magical, I guess. It’s different from a regular miracle. It seems like a magical snake talisman leftover from some very ancient tradition. Among Protestants especially, who get a little worried about art inspired by God being mistaken for art that is God, God’s odd behavior and remedy for annoyance with whiners is just easier to not talk about. Let’s skip to the salvation. The cross I understand.

     James Baldwin once said, “Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” It is often easier to pretend like something strange or upsetting doesn’t exist. The act of not-talking about something almost never makes it go away, be it your inner misgivings about the stances your closest confidantes are taking or the transformation that is happening in your soul because you saw something new that made you doubt what you previously believed. The snake is still here, even if we’d rather talk about the Spirit or the Cross.

     We are in multiple national conversations right now about the kinds of stories we tell and what to do about ones that make us uncomfortable. We have watched in real time this week as people have spun all manner of stories in response to political violence. In one day, there were multiple murders, two incidences of which usually make national news: the assassination of a Christian nationalist speaker by young man who also appears to be a different kind of right-wing fascist in Utah and a school shooting in Denver. Some people don’t even know about what happened at the school in Denver. Some people only know the wildest conspiracy theories about what happened in Utah.

     In a country that all too often has seen violence used as a political tool and where mass shootings, in particular, are often justified by violent political ideology, it seems clear that there is something that must be faced if we want to change it. We’ve got to talk about the snake, or we’re never going to understand it. Bashaw argues that the serpent in the book of Numbers is “a mirrored representation of the poisonous destruction [the Israelites] faced from the poisonous serpents. The source of their death became the agent of their healing and survival. So it is with the cross.” The Cross was a tool of torture wielded by Rome to punish people into compliance with their rule. It was also a spectacle that on-lookers observed and that people in authority participated in. The stories of the cross show us scapegoating and fearfulness and the sacrifice of innocence.

     Bashaw argues, then, that within the mirror of the cross, we can see reflecting back to us sacrificial love that is the opposite of the empire’s violence. Seeing the cross means recognizing that there is a cycle of blame and violence that we need no longer repeat. We have to see the cycle to stop it. The cross reminds us that we can stop it.

     Bashaw says, “We cannot be healed from a disease that remains hidden.” Let us not be afraid to speak clearly of the odd and uncomfortable stories we inherit. Our silence will not make them go away. And, as Karoline Lewis notes, Jesus was always willing to face hard conversations, even furtive ones in the dark. May we look to him to help us find healing.

Resources consulted while writing this sermon:
Jennifer Garcia Bashaw: https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/holy-cross-sunday/commentary-on-john-313-17-2
James Baldwin quote: https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780191843730.001.0001/q-oro-ed5-00000730
​Karoline Lewis: https://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=4693