"Bearing Witness" March 18, 2012

Numbers 21:4-9
John 3:14-21
For God So Loved The World, God Gave God's Only Begotten Son
Whosoever Believes in Him Shall not Perish But Have Ever Lasting Life
The passage is so familiar, that any who grew up going to Church, any whoever went to Sunday School, if you have ever watched a Football or Basketball game, or driven through a major city, you have seen John 3:16. This has become a cliché of the Christian Faith, that makes many on the west side of the church begin to yawn.
However, Our sermon this morning begins with the question, Which IS IT?
Do we believe in Universalist Love of The Creator, or that only those who believe will be saved?
All around us are manifestations of the Unconditional Love of God, especially this year when the crocuses are not buried under snow, when in March the birds are singing, and we happen to live beside one of the most glorious of natural treasures.
And yet, it happened to me again yesterday. I do not know what it is about being a pastor, but invariably, I am greeted by strangers who confess, “I tried to read the Bible once, but it was too long and too involved and had too many names.” The Bible is not a book of easy and ready answers.

The Gospel of John alone, includes the verb of “Believing” more than any other in the New Testament, yet not even once uses the noun Faith. For John, it not about having Faith, but the activity of believing.
Rather than a book of comfort and consolation, the Bible requires us to look at our fears. Believing shifts our attention from looking at what we most desire, to seeing through what we most fear, to question our actions and words and to decide: Do I want to believe, or Not? It is that simple.

The Book of Numbers is the story of a long journey, not only the 40 years in the wilderness with Moses searching for the Promised Land, but of a journey from being slaves to choosing to exercise Free Will.
On any long journey, be it across the country, or living with change, there are three different voices. There is the Moses, the leader, pursuing the dream, bringing others along, but following where they know they have to go. There are the Hurriers, WANTING TO GET LIFE OVER: Are We There Yet? How Long Until We Get There? When Will It Be Over? And there are the group that proclaim: “Let's Go Back” “We were better off before”. Ten different times, the LET'S GO BACK Committee has dominated. They were thirsty and God showed them a pool of water. They did not like the taste, so Moses threw something into the pool to make it sweet. Then they were hungry, and God appointed Manna for them from Heaven. They wanted Meat and God gave them a field full of quail, but they gorged themselves and developed food poisoning. They were again thirsty, and God commanded Moses to strike a rock, and water came out of solid rock. But still they complained and whined, no longer just against Moses and Aaron, but now began to complain against God.

The Bible has a wonderfully simple symmetry. In the Beginning of Genesis, Darkness, Chaos and Water covered the face of the Earth. The Covenant with Noah, was God witnessing how corrupt humanity had made itself and God allowing Chaos to go free, for the Water's to flood the earth. Then God choosing that this was too painful, loss too severe, and God hung up the Bow. In another of the beginning stories of Genesis, humanity's fear of snakes and serpents was explained. According to a recent Harris Poll (one that had nothing to do with the Presidential elections) nearly 40% of all adults fear snakes. In response to the wanderers complaining about God, seraphim come out of the rocks. We do not have a full description of what kind of snake these were. “Seraphim” are referred to by Isaiah as being a variety of angel, there are fat cherubic little babies, and there are 6 winged Fiery Serpents. We do not know if this is the origin of fire breathing dragons, or whether being described as fiery is about their coloring, or most likely the burning of their venom. At any event, these ankle-biters plague the people, because bitten they writhe in pain and die. Virtually instantaneous the LET'S GO BACK Committee repents. Confessing Faith instead of coveting their own desires, Moses makes a Bronze Serpent and places this upon a pole, and all those who have been bit, look on the symbol of their fear and suddenly they live.

This is a tricky passage, because it sounds an awful lot like making an idol to worship, particularly the very image of Pharaoh, a spitting Cobra Headdress. It also sounds a great deal like magic. But the nuance of the story is subtle. This is not a story of how to cure snake bite, nor the worship of a bronze serpent. Instead, Numbers 21 is the story of once healed, how can we be cured when we repent, how can we be saved? We have had many stories in each of our lives of narrowly escaping crisis, being found guilty and yet released, having tumors that go into remission, the point of Numbers is that the people needed to look into their fears to look passed the fiery serpents at what had brought all this about, to who God really is.

The reason the decision-makers put this passage from John with this story of the serpents is obvious. But all too often, we make the Cross, or the Holy Grail, an iconic image to worship, rather than seeing that to the people of the Roman Empire, The Cross was a long, brutal, public means of persecution and suffering, created as a means of inspiring FEAR in people, as those condemned writhed in pain. When I was a little boy, we spent summers at my grandparents' farm just north of here in Fulton. One of the mischieveous things little boys on farms do, is that we would put frogs on top of fenceposts. The reality is that frogs like damp, cool places away from the sun, and frogs are accustomed to being very near to the earth. So being placed atop a fence post, the frog must decide which is the more to be feared the heat of the sun, or a leap into the unknown from a great height. Which is where we all are, we have differing fears, but each require leaps into the unknown. And as we do, not simply healing from the illness, overcoming our doubt, but looking through these to what truly kills us, and what sets us free.

John 3:16 is like each of the Covenants we have discussed in recent weeks, God extends love to all, but we each have a choice of whether to accept and act believing, or to be limited by our fears, by our past, by Going Back to what is safe. The simplicity of this is that that is also the way through to eternal life. When our kids were deciding on Colleges, it was a fear-ful time for parents. Where will they go? Will they be happy? What will become of them? Can we Afford the tuition and costs? Regularly, we would check: “Have you filled out the application?” “Have you written the essay” And we would receive the teenagers' response “I'll get to it”. Until finally we came to realize that not making a choice was making a choice. Only when they were ready to choose, only when they wanted this school, or this option badly enough, were they motivated to act, and the choice was made. In John 3:16, to choose is to believe and have eternal life, to not choose, to remain stuck is a place of torment and indecision.