March 11, 2018                        Lifted Up                                                

Way back in the 80’s, there was a pop song called “Man in the Mirror”. It talked about the problems in the world, hunger, sickness, poverty, and a growing feeling that people had that nothing could be done about it. But the song came to the realization that  a great deal of the suffering in the world, came from our all individually pursuing our own self interest, and that if we wanted to make a difference in the world, then we all had to take a look in the mirror, and choose to change our ways, to live in ways that would overcome this suffering, through our thoughtfulness for others.

I thought of this song, because of our Old testament lesson this morning. The Israelites find themselves in the wilderness, and they are grumbling against God. Now when most people hear the story of the Israelites being slaves in Egypt, they think of the poverty of slaves in movies like Roots, eating gruel and knowing only hardship. But in the book of Exodus, we often hear the slaves in the wilderness, crying about how they wanted to go back to Egypt, to sit beside their cooking pots, where they plenty to eat. How they would gladly give up the terrible freedom God had won for them, for a good pot of beans.

Anyway, many of you know what grumbling can do to a community, it can destroy morale, make people act solely for themselves, create disagreements, and become even violent. Moses is often caught saying that the Israelites were out to overthrow him. So what does God do about this? God sends serpents among the people, who bite the people, and spread poison among them. And God commands Moses to create a bronze serpent, and lift it up before the Israelites, so that those who look upon it may recognize their sin, and turn and live.

So what does this have to do with the song, “Man in the Mirror”. Well, the Jewish interpretation of this scripture is that the serpents came because of the grumbling of the Israelites, and the poison spread by that grumbling against Moses and God. And so by having Moses raise up the bronze serpent on the pole, God was confronting them and calling them to repent of their grumbling, and those that did, lived. Like the “Man in the Mirror” song, they had to look in the mirror, and see that they were the cause of their suffering.  

In our gospel lesson this morning, Jesus reminds Nicodemus of this story of the serpents and the bronze snake that Moses lifted up in the wilderness for their salvation. Now Nicodemus is a leader of the Jews, and in the 3^rd chapter of John, Jesus confronts him about turning Judaism into a religion concerned only about the flesh, about the keeping of moral law and punishing or excluding those who go astray. By using the image of the serpents in the wilderness, Jesus is attempting to tell Nicodemus, that the moralistic religion of the Jews, is what has poisoned the Jewish faith, and made if fruitless in the lives of the Jewish people.

And so, Jesus tells Nicodemus that in the same way, the Son of Man will be lifted up on the cross. And in seeing Jesus upon the cross and recognizing him as the Son of God, we will see the destructive power of sin in our lives. We will see how living  for the flesh, rather than the spirit, creates our own suffering and death. Only in recognizing Jesus humility, obedience to God, and love for us, will we be able to turn and live as disciples of Christ, to overcome sin, suffering, and death in our lives.