Sermon from March 10, 2024: Saying No to Condemnation based upon John 3:14-21

Image credits:
Cross with serpent: Fantoni, Giovanni. Brazen Serpent, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=55664 [retrieved March 7, 2024].
​Original source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brazen_Serpent_Sculpture.jpg.
Moses and serpent: West, Benjamin, 1738-1820; Hall, John, 1739-1797. The Macklin Bible -- Moses, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=54084 [retrieved March 7, 2024].

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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 judgement, 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.’

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Every three years, today’s reading from John shows up in the lectionary cycle. And, every three years I notice that this scripture contains one of the strangest metaphorical explanations of who Jesus is in any Gospel as well as one of the most well-known verses in American Christianity. When we see a verse that is as immediately recognizable as John 3:16, it is tempting to gloss over it because we think we know what it means. I’m going to invite us to not read over the familiar too quickly today. So, let’s start with the less familiar part of this reading and work our way to what we know and see if we can learn something new. Let’s start with the thing about the snake.

The story of Moses and the bronze serpent is in Numbers 21. I don’t blame you if the Exodus stories of Numbers is not as familiar to you as the Exodus stories of, well, Exodus. Numbers is mostly set in the wilderness travels of the Exodus. Within the wilderness stories, a reader will also find lots of descriptions of Jewish religious laws beyond the 10 Commandments and lots of descriptions of Moses acting as a mediator between God and the people.

The story about the serpent starts out similar to the more familiar story about manna in the desert, which means it starts with people worrying that they won’t have enough to eat and even wondering if maybe they weren't better off in Egypt. The thing is, the snake story is not at the beginning of the Exodus. It comes after 40 years of God tending to them in the wilderness. You would think that would have been enough to show them that God would provide for them.  And, yet, Numbers tells us that the people became impatient and afraid. So, they did what impatient people often do... they complained.

While Cameron B.R. Howard points out in her commentary that the scriptures don’t specifically say God sent the snakes to punish the complainers, it sure looks like God did. Especially since the book of Exodus talks about plagues of critters God sent after Pharaoh. I am inclined to think that this whole “God sent the snakes” thing says more about how people try to explain away difficult events than it says about the actual character of God. Nevertheless, we should pay attention to how the people in the story explained a weird and scary thing that happened in their community. The people in the desert thought God sent down a bunch of poisonous snakes. 
 
Having tons of venomous snakes around seems like an accident waiting to happen, which is an unusual kind of plague, largely because snakes don’t typically hurt people unless we are messing with them. Typically, when you live with something so dangerous as this plague of snakes, I’d think you’d develop a habit of vigilance. Even with vigilance, though, people are still bitten. Enough people were being bitten that the whole community grew afraid. This time, though, they blamed themselves for the problem, not God.
 
They said that they had messed up by speaking against God and against Moses. They begged Moses to intervene with God and get rid of the snakes. Moses, true to his role in Numbers, intervened on their behalf. God does help, but not in the way the people expected. God doesn't take away the snakes, but God does give the people a way to be healed when they do run afoul of a snake. God had them build a bronze serpent and mount it up on a pole. When they looked at the serpent, they were healed.

This is a wild desert story, right? And, as best as I can tell, one that isn’t cited often in other parts of the Bible. Stories from the Exodus that carry a lot of weight in a community, like the manna and quail or the golden calf and the Ten Commandments, are regularly referenced beyond their original telling. Aside from the Psalms and other prophetic books referencing the fact that the people got angry or scared and complained to God, which, frankly happened a lot of times in Exodus and Numbers, there are only two references to Moses and the bronze serpent outside of Numbers: one in 2 Kings 8:14 and the other in John 3:14. If the snake on a stick story is one that is not referenced broadly across Jewish scripture, isn’t it interesting that the author of John has Jesus describing the Son of Man, a phrase he uses to reference himself, this way. What a strange choice.

Cheryl Lindsay reminds us of something useful in her commentary on this scripture. Today’s reading isn’t from a big speech Jesus is giving a whole crowd of people. It’s from a conversation he is having with one person, a pharisee named Nicodemus. In his notes on this chapter, Obery Hendricks says that the Pharisees observed Jewish purity laws more carefully that all other groups of Jewish believers. I think Jesus and the Pharisees founds themselves arguing so frequently because both he and they took living out their religious obligations seriously. If either of them cared less, they might not have so frequently found themselves in opposition.

Perhaps Jesus references an obscure story about Moses precisely because it was from the book of Numbers. Numbers is a book about, at least in part, the instructions for shaping your life according to love of God and love of neighbor. When speaking to someone who cares deeply about the Law, you demonstrate that you, too, know the Law, even the weird parts of it, as a way to build trust and affinity. Maybe that’s why Jesus’ uses this story while talking to Nicodemus.
 
Nicodemus visits Jesus in the dead of night because he is afraid someone will see him. The story of the serpent plague is certainly a story about fear, particularly about the ways that fear can push you back into modes of behavior based on scarcity. It can keep you from embracing the walk to freedom through the desert and settling the certainty of slavery with the Pharoah. It can even make you hide away at night, rather than approach new understanding in the light of day.

Nicodemus is afraid of being condemned for even entertaining the idea that Jesus will bring insight as to how to live according to God’s covenant. And, yet, even in his fear, he seeks Jesus out. In the verses just before today’s reading, Nicodemus asks Jesus questions about where his power comes from and for clarification on some of his more metaphorical teachings about the nature of faith. Today’s reading is part of Jesus’ response. And, part of his response is that he believes that his mission is to be an instrument of healing, not condemnation.

One of the most well-known parts of this passage is verse 16. I’ll share Wil Gafney’s translation of it: “For God so loved the world that God gave God’s only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” I am quite familiar with readings of this verse that hold Jesus up as a grand arbiter who is quick to send people to eternal damnation. If those who believe will have eternal life, some argue, the subtext is that those who don’t believe will be condemned to eternal suffering. In a commentary on this passage, Karoline Lewis encourages us not to stop at 16, but to keep reading. The rest of the passage has a more complex view of condemnation. And, it is clear that Jesus is to be held up as a passageway for divine healing, not condemnation.

​It may not be the kind of healing people expected. Certainly, the bronze serpent was not what the Israelites expected in the desert. Dr. Lindsay argues that verse 17, which says, “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,” makes it clear that condemnation is antithetical to ministry of Christ. If we are using Jesus’ words primarily to condemn other people to poverty, isolation, and suffering, we are operating outside of his mission. If we allow our fear to limit us to hidden, creeping encounters with Jesus, we will find ourselves like Nicodemus, with a glancing awareness of God’s radiant love, but an inability to fully step into it. What the world sees in Jesus is healing, not condemnation. What the world should see reflected in Jesus’ followers is healing not condemnation. We never see Nicodemus again in John, or in any other Gospel, with the subtext being that he was too afraid to live in faith in full view of those who judge him. How sad that is for him. May we make a different choice and hold up Jesus’ love for the world to see. And, may the world be changed by it.

Resources consulted while writing this sermon:
Cameron B. R. Howard’s commentary on Numbers 21:4-9: http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=3606
Karoline Lewis: http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=5075
Cheryl Lindsay: https://www.ucc.org/sermon-seeds/sermon-seeds-condemnation/
Obery Hendricks’s notes on John in The New Oxford Annotated Bible: The New Revised Standard Version with Apocryphya, ed. Michael Coogan (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001)