Just As Moses Lifted Up the Serpent

Crucifixion 
Paul Chester

John 3:14-21  4 Lent March 11, 2018

 

The Book of Numbers is a book which shows

to its readers or hearers how God was present

with the Israelites even during 

their 40 years in the wilderness.

 

In this time in the wilderness, God is an unpredictable

and sometimes dangerous character, 

and in this early stage 

of their relationship between the Israelites and the 

all-mighty and powerful creator of the universe,

the people aren’t really sure how to handle this new relationship.

 

Some people have likened dealing with God in this time

to dealing with a nuclear reactor.

If everything goes well, things are wonderful and 

great power is harnessed. But if one piece is forgotten or overlooked,

it’s disaster for everyone involved.

 

It’s main character in the book is Moses.

The one with the direct link to God.

God and Moses and the people had a complicated relationship.

God would talk to Moses, Moses would tell the people what God said.

The people would talk to Moses,

and Moses would tell God what the people said

 

In churches we were told to avoid triangulation as much as possible.

Having a conversation with someone through another person

to try and influence their behavior is not a good idea.

But right at the beginning, our first biblical hero is caught in the worst one.

 

By the time of Numbers, the Israelites

had been out in the wilderness for a few years.

The miracle of the Red Sea was a distant memory to some of them.

And the people were cranky and frustrated.

“Why did we ever leave Egypt” they said over and over.

“Oh, we should have stayed in Egypt.  

Things were so much better there.”

Meaning while they were slaves to the Egyptians.

The people turn on Moses and his brother Aaron repeatedly.

Then God would threaten to do something horrible to the people

and then Moses would beg God not to do it.

And God would usually give in.

And this would be repeated over and over.

It was not a healthy relationship.

In Chapter 21, which we read today,

Moses and the Israelites find themselves again by the Red Sea.

Where it all started, where God had done such amazing things for them.

But instead of remembering God’s saving acts,

the people again start whining and crying,

“Why have you brought us up out of Egypt, to die?

We used to have food there.

We hate this manna that you’ve given us.”

In other words, we have nothing to eat . . .

and we don’t like it anyway. Like toddlers.

 

Finally, the story says, God had had it.

The people had forgotten about what he had done at the Red Sea.

And they insulted food that God has made them.

The nuclear reactor was springing a leak.

So God released poisonous snakes and the people

were bitten and many of them died.

The people begged Moses to go back and tell God they were sorry

and they asked Moses to ask God to take away the serpents.

 

Now, I always ask, “did God actually send snakes to them?

Or were God’s chosen people having such a terrible time

and they reasoned that God’s anger with them was the cause?”

This is something I debate whenever we read the Hebrew Scriptures.

Regardless  --  Where the snakes came from

is not the most important part of this story.

The remedy is the most important part.

 

After the snakes, Moses went back to God and,

asked God to take the snakes away and of course, God gave in.

But the remedy was unusual, a paradox really, a mystery.

The people wanted God to “take away the serpents from us”

But God did not just take the serpents away.

God doesn’t even make the serpents stop biting them.

Deliverance does not come in the way that they expected.

 

The remedy was this:

God tells Moses to make another poisonous serpent --  

a permanent reminder of this episode with the snakes --

and set it on a pole and raise it up in front of the people.

Moses did it, he made the serpent out of bronze and put it on a pole.

It doesn’t go into any detail about how Moses established 

a bronze workshop in the middle of the desert.

Regardless, he made this bronze snake on a stick and

Whenever those who were bitten and destined

for death looked at the serpent, they would live.

 

God didn’t take the serpents away.

The snakes didn’t stop biting,

the remedy wasn’t to remove the evil.

The remedy was to look at the evil,

see the problem, remember the pain, and then they would live.

The only remedy was for them to look at the snake that bit them.

 

In the John story, Jesus tells Nicodemus

that he will be like that snake, he will be lifted up

so that we can look at him.

Jesus, on the cross, is lifted up, so we can look at the snake of violence

and in the same way, we will live.

 

We have lived with Jesus death and the cross

as a symbol for so long, and we have tamed and 

domesticated it so much, that many people forget what it was:

it was an instrument of torture, capital punishment, 

a public display of the power which some people have

to control and subdue, to silence, and oppress others.

The cross is a symbol of our violence towards others.

 

It’s violence that still used today to the same ends.

Like in war, when we dehumanize others in order

to feel good about killing them.

In the systemic racism that has existed in our country

since its foundation and still drives our economy and function.

In mass incarceration of large portions of our population,

in our stubborn refusal in this country to join most of the rest of the

developed world and abolish the death penalty,

In our neglect and suspicion of the poor around us.

In our hatred of immigrants, which seems to rise

to ugly levels during election years.

In our worship of guns and when we turn our head 

and shrug our shoulders at the gun violence in this country 

as if there is nothing we can do about it an we just have to live with the killing.

This is the same violence that we see represented

in the cross of Jesus: violence that dominates and oppresses.

 

And like the Israelites blamed God for the poisonous snakes,

The church has often said that Jesus died on the cross

to satisfy God’s anger at us for our sins.

That makes it easier for us to take, as if it was all God’s

idea and doing.

 

But the cross was not God’s invention, it was our invention.

Humans made this method of torture and have made

other, countless methods of torture too.

God did not kill his son to satisfy God’s wrath,

God heard our wrath. God heard our constant 

request for someone’s blood --  And gave us his own blood instead.

God said, “You want someone to die? I’ll die for you!”

 

God’s remedy for all this violence and blood lust was

not to just take it away and pretend it wasn’t there.

Instead, God lifted it up, made it the central symbol of our

religion, a constant reminder of what we are capable of.

 

Like that serpent in the wilderness,

the remedy to our evil is to look at it, recognize it

deal with it, acknowledge it as a society,

as a country, as a whole species.

To look at the violence that we cause, aid, abet,

demand, ignore, and avoid.

And maybe one day, we will put an end to it.

 

As Moses lifted the serpent in the wilderness,

Christ has been lifted up on the cross for us.

Look at the cross, look into the snake of human violence that bites us all.

Because deep in that cross is also God’s power of resurrection,

God’s power to make life again.

 

Because, in spite of all we can do and have done to each other,

in spite of the violence, in spite of the hatred,

and cries for blood, and apathy, and greed, and unchecked privilege,

in spite of our comfort with other people’s suffering,

 

God still so loved this world that he gave his only son

to die for us, in front of us, at our own hands.

In order that one day, we, as the human race,

will really learn the lessons of the cross,

and maybe, one day, the world might choose life instead of death. 

Jesus is Angry

 John 2:13-22

Lent 3

March 3, 2024

Jesus is Really Angry in the Temple
Dinah Roe Kendall

 

I think we mostly lie to think of “nice” Jesus.

The Good Shepherd Jesus,

the one who welcomes children Jesus, 

the healer Jesus.

But todays Jesus is not that nice Jesus.

This week he’s angry Jesus.

I mean he was also angry Jesus

just last week when yelled at Peter,

“Get behind me Satan.”

but we don’t like to remember that Jesus.

And this week he’s demonstratively angry Jesus.

 

They often call this the “cleansing of the temple”

and I’ve never liked that term.

Cleansing seems more innocuous,

like Jesus was giving it a nice scrub and polish.

And that’s not what Jesus is doing here.

 

And cleansing of the temple gives me the impression

that it was once and done. Now the temple is now

clean and the problem is over.

 

But what I think Jesus was doing here would better

be called “Jesus having and angry protest at the Temple”.

He saw something that was wrong, that went against God’s plan,

and he was showing that with a demonstration.

And Jesus crossed a line that lots of people think

you’re not supposed to cross when he was protesting:

he destroyed personal property

he caused physical destruction to a business.

 

If he crossed that line today, lots of us would just call

Jesus a “thug” and disregard what he had to say.

  

And sure enough, in Mark’s Gospel it says that this

was basically the thing that made the religious

authorities look for a way to arrest and crucify him.

 

Some say Jesus did it in order to get into trouble

and get arrested. But I think that’s silly.

I say he did it for the reason that so many other

people get angry and protest,

and why some people cross that line:

Things were just plain wrong needed to change.

 

So what was Jesus so angry about?

Some people think it was just because they were selling

stuff in the front of the temple.

And some pastors and denominations have made a hard

and fast rule that there can be no selling of things on

church grounds, and they feel they’re saving their churches

from this temptation.

But I don’t know that that is what Jesus was mad about.

Like we could just stop selling things and Jesus would be happy.

 

I remember preaching about this story coincidentally

one Sunday when the kids were having a sub-sale

for their youth trip, it completely slipped my mind.

I wasn’t telling people not to sell anything,

but I had the distinct feeling that THAT was not

I had to go, yeah, but kids what you’re doing is just fine.

I don’t think the problem is selling things and

even what they were selling. And we shouldn’t think just

because we put a ban on selling things, we’re scott free.

I think it’s deeper than that.

 

So it would probably help to explain why people were 

selling things in the front of the temple in the first place?

The reason that they were selling was so people could buy them 

to do sacrifices which was the main element of Jewish worship at the time.

 

The original idea was that people worshipped God by giving

God back the best of what God had given them. A sacrifice.

A gift from the heart. Most people would bring their own animals,

or they would trade whatever they produced

for an animal to sacrifice.

 

But when the temple was built in Jerusalem,

people would travel there to do their worship.

So they couldn’t bring one of their own animals

or a bunch of fruits or vegetables. So people started to

sell animals in front of the temple for money.

 

And because Jews couldn’t use Roman money,

there were money changers, who would exchange

Roman money for Jewish tokens for a price

so then you could use them to buy the animals.

 

I don’t think this system in itself was what made Jesus so angry.

It wasn’t outrageous. It all made perfect sense.

They weren’t selling terrible elicit things,

or necessarily bad things. It was all stuff for worship.

All of these things were proscribed by religious law.

 

But what had developed was two things. One:

The temple that was built for everyone to worship God

had become a place of exclusion.

Even though I’ve heard that it was on a sliding scale,

still, it was only a place where only those with money

could worship. The poor were kind of left out.

 

The whole purpose of the temple

and the act of sacrifice, was so that people

and communities would grow closer to God.

So they could understand God’s will for humanity.

So they could live out God’s dreams, and live in a just

and righteous community, caring for the poor, the orphan and the widow.

But they actually built a system that excluded

those that they should be caring for.

That’s what “market places” do.

Only those with something to trade can participate.

 

And two:

Instead of serving God like they were supposed to,

they ended up just “doing temple”.

The purpose of it had become to make money.

Jesus saw that the place was full of people

who were just “doing temple” in order to sell things.

They were not considering

how to serve God or to serve other people.

they were just there to make a buck.

They were not concerned with God’s will,

The worship of God wasn’t changing them at all.

 

And this is a warning for us too.

We could be “doing church” just right.

We could say all the right things,

sing the right songs,

have the most accurate budget,

the best classes, the nicest facility,

the best most organized ministry teams,

And sometimes just doing this we inadvertently exclude

the people that we’re intend to be serving.

 

Lots of people have been “doing church”

for a long time, but many have forgotten

what we were “doing church” for.

People can go through their whole lives

doing the practice of Christianity and never

have it change them, never have it effect their lives.

We forget what God wants out of this whole thing:

justice, mercy, forgiveness, loving our neighbors,

loving our enemies, self sacrifice, faithful service, and love.

And if we’re not doing it all for God’s vision for us

and for this world, what is it all for?

 

And there are quite a few churches that “Do church” so well,

that they’ve turned the whole process into a money making venture.

Not sub-sales for the youth group to go on a trip, but big money.

That is a temptation that many churches have faced

and that many churches and church leaders have given into:

They find that they are making a lot of income,

and then they serve that purpose instead of the ones

that God has for them.

Those churches have become market places,

and people are commodities.

 

That’s why it might be best to be a church like ours,

just a little less than breaking even.

No one is making the big bucks off of

Christ Lutheran church, right? Temptation thwarted? Of course not.

 

Lots of churches still put all their focus on the

anxiety of having enough money. They make that

their whole focus and they forget about their mission

and their purpose for existing.

They just become market places that doesn’t make money.

 

So to be clear, I don’t think that Jesus thought that the

Jewish way of worship was uniquely bad, or that the Jewish way 

of life needed to be overturned more than any other,

but I do think that he saw that the intent for worship 

was going off the rails. That there was a lot of doing, and a lot of profiting, and

a lot of excluding people who were supposed to be served,

and not a lot of heart-changing going on.

 

As Amy Jill Levine said in her book that we’re reading for Wednesday: “Worshippers who go through the motions, but neither repent in the hearts, nor act with love of neighbor and love of stranger. Ritual without repentance, financial contribution without fellowship and community, prayer without actions.”

 

And these are things that all houses of worship of all faiths 

have to struggle with at one time or another.

When I was in seminary, one summer

I went to Guatemala for a month by myself to learn Spanish.

I still don’t speak Spanish, but that’s another story.

 

When I was there,

the church in the town where I was staying

was in the center of the city near the town square. 

 

I noticed on Sunday, there was this weird class dichotomy.

The only people actually worshipping were the more

well-to-do people. I mean there wasn’t anyone in that town in Guatemala 

who was even as well off as the most modest middle class

people in the United states, but still there was a dichotomy

of class in who actually attended church.

Like the owner of the house I was staying in went, but the housekeeper and her daughter did not.

 

Now in front of the church on any day of the week,

there were always vendors there. 

That’s where a lot of the poor people were.

They were standing in the town square

trying to sell things to tourists and other people.

 

And on Sunday morning, on the way to worship

the vendors were doubled. They were selling rosaries,

wooden crucifixes, all types of religious articles.

 

And while I was in worship on Sunday,

every week, there was a boy who was visibly paralyzed

would come into church on a homemade wooden cart 

and roll around the church asking for money from all the worshippers.

And especially the out-of-towners like me.

Whenever he would come to me, I would just

shake my head at him and go back to focusing

on my worship, like every other person in that church did.

 

And I have to admit, this was the thing that annoyed me.

This was bothering my religious experience.

I was annoyed by the selling of religious trinkets in the front,

and the boy asking for money right in the middle of worship.

 

It wasn’t “right”. The Church after all was a “sacred space”

Sitting there, I actually thought of this scripture,

“Don’t make God’s house a marketplace.”

I felt more than a little self-righteous as only a young person

whose just completed their first year of seminary can be.

 

But I ask you now, what system would

Jesus have protested then?

Which table would Jesus have turned over?

 

Would Jesus have scolded the poor people

who were selling and just trying to make a living?

Would he have scolded that young paralyzed boy

rolling around church bugging the worshippers?

 

Honestly, I think that if Jesus was there that day

he would have left all those tables alone.

I think Jesus what Jesus would have done was turn over

the table of my heart that felt entitled to have my sacred moment.

He would have turned over my table that  

was actually thinking that the poor people

were bothering my experience of Jesus.

 

And he would have turned over the table

of everyone else there who looked down on that young boy

and would have nothing to do with him, and the table 

that had only the more well-off in worship who didn’t engage

with the rest of the community.

The tables that put a barrier between God and others.

 

He would have turned over the tables of the

system that allowed people to go to worship,

but never touched people’s hearts and lives and attitudes.

 

Jesus didn’t just talk about his anger in the temple that day.

He didn’t waste time telling a parable,

or asking a clever question.

 

That day he flipped it all over.

He turned over a tradition that he had been a part of,

that his parents had been a part of,

in a religion that he loved and honored.

He turned it over. He disrupted everything.

Everyone was disrupted that day.

He loved God and God’s people so much

that he disrupted what they were doing.

 

Richard Rohr a well known Catholic theologian said:

Christianity is a lifestyle - a way of being in the world

that is simple, non-violent, shared, and loving.

 

However, we made it into an established "religion"

(and all that goes with that) and

avoided the lifestyle change itself.

 

One could be warlike, greedy, racist,

selfish, and vain in most of Christian history,

and still believe that Jesus is one's "personal Lord and Savior" . . .

 

The world has no time for such silliness anymore.

The suffering on Earth is too great.

 

The suffering on Earth is too great.

We don’t have any time for this silliness.

This “doing church” without allowing

our hearts to be changed we don’t have time for it.

 

And God isn’t having it any more either

God is disrupting us now in so many different ways.

God isn’t being nice and gentle these days.

Things are changing quickly and the church

is struggling to keep up with the Holy Spirit.

 

To be honest, God is kind of being a thug right now.

Not having any regard for our property and our possessions,

and the things that we have valued and held as sacred all our lives.

 

We have to do this whole church thing

completely different than we once did it.

And that is okay, because I think what was happening

before was probably making Jesus angry.

 

God loves us so much that the tables

are being turned over on us and all we know.

 

And that, brothers and sisters, is good news.