At the beginning of the Book of Numbers, the children of Israel are in Sinai, having emerged safely from Egypt and Pharaoh’s cruel grasp via the exodus. Their journey in Numbers takes them through an arduous forty years of wandering as they move towards the Promised Land.
We can understand why the children of Israel became impatient. They had recently been through quite an ordeal as they escaped the clutches of a tyrant. Now, they simply wanted to be home.
And so, as usually happens when a group of people are journeying together, they become tired and hungry, and they grumble. The past was so much better, wasn’t it? How easily we forget about our former frustrations when we emerge into new territory.
There is not enough water to drink, but back in Egypt, there was at least water. The food before we left was tasty, but now we can find nothing to eat. Moses, as the fearless leader, takes the brunt of these grumblings.
Can’t you just hear what they say to him? It could even be a page taken out of the book of parish life in so many places. “Well, people are saying that the food we used to have at coffee hour was so much better.” “When we used to do things that way, everyone was happier.”
The story of God’s children trudging through the wilderness for forty years speaks to us as well in the wilderness of a pandemic. Many haven’t even made it a full year of wearing a mask before grumbling that their glasses are fogging up and they’re uncomfortable. The human condition is prone to complain, especially when we become impatient for an immediate result to satisfy our needs or provide a quick fix for our quandaries.
But all those times when God’s children mumbled with discontent, and all those times when we do as well, God provides, even if it’s not as we expect, want, or predict. This is the dilemma of human trust. Do we really believe that God will provide? But God sent quails in the desert, and made water appear for his children making their way to the Promised Land. And in a most striking way of countering snakebites, God instructed Moses to make a bronze serpent, put it on a pole, and tell anyone who had been bitten by a snake to look upon it. And miraculously, the person was healed.
Isn’t it a bit uncomfortable when we hear God’s healing power equated with magic? It seems random and beyond our reach. It seems, quite frankly, false.
The bronze serpent cure has been described as a form of homeopathic healing.[1] The source of the affliction—the serpent—was the visualized source of healing. Curious indeed.
And it is curious indeed that John the Evangelist incorporates the image of the bronze serpent in close proximity to some of the most beloved verses in the entire Bible. If you are puzzled by the juxtaposition of the allusion to the bronze serpent from Numbers and the image of the Son of Man being lifted up, you are not alone. And yet, if we continue further with this unusual juxtaposition, we might have something to learn about salvation.
Let’s return to the explanation of the bronze serpent in Numbers as a homeopathic treatment of illness. This alternative form of medicine rests on the principle of “like cures like.” In other words, something that causes illness to someone who is healthy can also be a source of healing in that person. The cause of the illness becomes the means of a cure.
The children of Israel who suffered from snakebites looked on the bronze serpent, which wasn’t even a real serpent, and they were healed and survived. Magical homeopathy, you might say. What does this have to do with the Son of Man? Our salvation is bound up with Jesus being lifted up on a cross. The cross is the sign that rises above the sin and tragedy of the world to point to our healing in Christ. But is something else happening here? Are we not called to look upon the agony of the cross, with the epitome of self-emptying and sacrifice, as precisely the thing that does heal us?
Many of us also probably know how John’s words have been so vastly misinterpreted over the years. Generations of Christians have hitched God’s love conditionally to a mechanical affirmation of belief. God’s love has been twisted into a rescue operation that hinges on a one-time personal declaration of faith. We are seen as needing to be saved out of something rather than brought into something.
And what this engenders is something little more than magical thinking.[2] Similar to looking on a bronze serpent as a means of saving one’s life, it is now common to call upon Jesus’ name as a magical incantation. We are told by some that all we need to do is feel a certain warmth in our heart, make a simple profession of faith, and we are fixed forever.
The gift of eternal life available to the entire world is then reduced to a formula. And it is a formula that has been used to great harm, to keep people out rather than welcome them in.
If belief in God and in the saving works of Christ is reduced to a mere homeopathic remedy, akin to looking at a bronze serpent, it is possible that we will lose the gravity of what salvation really is.
Suppose, though, that the homeopathic analogy does have some relevance for us, minus the magic. If, indeed, like cures like, there is some theological truth to John’s use of the image. It is true that our salvation is accomplished in Christ as the one who took on the human condition. Only salvation by one who is fully human can heal us. St. Gregory Nazianzen told us that when he said that what has not been assumed cannot be redeemed. Precisely because of Jesus’ sinless humanity, he is able to heal us.
And if like cures like, then there’s something else to it as well. We look upon the cross and see our own call to take up the cross to be Jesus’ disciple. We see the need for humility and self-emptying. We see that the Son of Man lifted high upon a cross is far more than a magical cure for our brokenness. It is far more than a vaccine against sin. It requires something of us.
Because if like cures like, and we look at the cross, we find that the way of the cross becomes the means of healing. It is only when we sacrifice our own desires and self-serving interests that we find salvation. It is only when we die to self that we gain eternal life.
This is where we come face to face with the difficulty of the Christian journey. Like our spiritual forebears in the throes of forty years of wilderness wanderings, we long, perhaps, for the quick cure. We want the bronze serpent to gaze upon and heal us with no effort on our part. We yearn for that precise moment when Jesus rescues us from the sinful human condition and ushers us into a place of safety and security.
But if we gaze upon the cross, we know that it is not so easy and that it is more complicated than we might want to think. There is no cheap grace. Accepting the gift of salvation requires us to be transformed. If like cures like, then the cross shows us who we are to become.
Even when we accept the claim of the cross, we will continue to fall short. There is no pill to be taken for our salvation, because our own personal healing and salvation is not the full story. It is about something much more. This cross, when held before our eyes, is about nothing less than the healing of the entire world.
The individual bronze serpents that we long to instantly heal us can so easily become weapons to condemn others and beat them into submission and repentance. The cross, too, can become a way of intimidating others into being rescued by Jesus.
But if we gaze long and hard at the cross, and the Son of Man hanging high upon it above the horrors of the world, we will perceive that it is precisely the opposite. Only what has been brought down can be lifted up. We must die to our old selves to rise again to new ones. The cross requires that we change.
And the best part is that when we get to the point of change, we realize that we are not alone. We find ourselves among billions of people living the human condition, also in need of repentance. We are one of many who experience the suffering that is part of the fabric of this earthly life. But when we are brought down by the pain and vicissitudes of human existence, we can be lifted up by the cross. And we discover that this is precisely how God brings salvation and life to the world.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Fourth Sunday in Lent
March 14, 2021
[1] Commentary by Terrence E. Fretheim, The New Oxford Annotated Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 221.
[2] See Samuel Cruz. Commentary on John 3:14-21, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fourth-sunday-in-lent-2/commentary-on-john-314-21-4