Saturday, 18 March 2006
Lent 4 Year B
Numbers 21: 4-9 NRSV text
Psalm 107: 1-3; 17-22 NRSV text
Ephesians 2: 1-10 NRSV text
John 3: 14-21 NRSV text
“Look to the cross and live!” The cross that is death for Jesus is life for us. Here, in John’s gospel, we have the first of the “passion predictions” (John 3: 14; cf Mark 8: 31). John frames it very differently from the synoptic evangelists. Instead of suffering, there is elevation. Instead of death, there is the promise of life. As Moses lifts up the bronze serpent on a pole in the wilderness (cf Numbers 21: 9), so Jesus will be “lifted up”. As the Israelites looked to the serpent and lived, so people will look to the crucified Jesus – and live! This is the Easter God – a God who brings life out of death.
On one level, the story of the bronze serpent is a peculiar one to invoke. The obvious parallel is just that – obvious. The dying Israelites – bitten by the serpents – are told to look up at the bronze serpent, and, in doing so, live. Jesus, similarly, will be “lifted up” (ie on the cross) and the people who look to him – “believe” – will live. But the more we think about it, the more subtle and suggestive the image becomes. Let’s explore it further.
1. John’s Good Friday – coronation day!
John has a very particular way of telling his story of Jesus and we must not try to to fit him into the synoptic mould. It’s a “theological” story – a story about the meaning of it all. Of course, all the evangelists tell theological stories, but John’s is more steeped in symbolism and imagery. In a sense, it’s the story of Jesus through God’s eyes. Or, to put the same point differently, John is less concerned to recreate “what it was like” before Easter – to recreate that journey of discovery that the disciples underwent – than to write from an expressly post-Easter perspective, and retell the story with its meaning made clear. So, for example, Jesus comforts the disciples with the promise of Easter joy (16: 16-22).
In John’s hands, the crucifixion is portrayed as Jesus’ coronation. There is the argument over the inscription, “The King of the Jews”, between Pilate and the chief priests (19: 19-22). It is allowed to stand as a sign: this man is nothing less than a king! And it is written in all the known languages of the world – Hebrew, Latin and Greek. Earlier, Jesus is crowned with thorns and decked in the purple robe of authority ((19: 1-5). The irony of Pilate’s “Ecce homo” (“Behold the man!”) is not that Jesus is pitiful, but is regal! What his mockers and enemies fail to discern is in fact true: behold – the king!
Read John’s crucifixion and try to picture it. I don’t know about you, but even before I’d done New Testament 101 at university, I always had a picture of the cross being very high. Jesus was “lifted up”. I imagined the people at the foot of the cross having to stand back a little and gaze up in order to see properly. Rather like the bronze serpent on the pole …
And just as the lifting up of the serpent was a prophetic, priestly and symbolic act – a liturgical act – so is the crucifixion of Jesus in John’s gospel. It draws the eye upward in homage – which is as it should be, because here we gaze upon our king and God’s salvation for the world.
2. Serpents and Incarnation
What on earth has the bronze serpent to do with the Incarnation? Actually, quite a lot, I suspect. The serpent is, of course, the symbol of disobedience and death. It is the serpent who, in the story of the Fall, tempts the first humans to disobey God. And that is not just a single, isolated act of naughtiness. Nothing is ever the same again – symbolised by “Their eyes were opened, and they knew they were naked” (Genesis 3:7). This primordial act of disobedience signals far more than a one-off “slip”. It signals the human determination to make a world without God. The theological shorthand for this is “sin”. It is a deliberate turning away from the source of Life. Sin and death thus become inextricably interlinked. Death is the end result of disobedience. And the serpent becomes a potent symbol of human rebellion against and rejection of God.
It is no accident, therefore, that in the story of the bronze serpent in Numbers 21, Yahweh responds to the whinging of the Israelites by sending poisonous serpents to bite and kill them. They accuse Yahweh of bringing them into the wilderness to die – when Yahweh has delivered them from slavery and death (Egypt) to bring freedom and Life. The response of the Israelites in the wilderness is explicitly a re-run of the Fall narrative in Genesis. What should be a source of Life and fellowship with Yahweh is spoiled. Yahweh sends the serpents – not so much as a “rap across the knuckles” but as way of showing the deadly consequences of rejecting Life.
But note that Moses is commanded to make an image of the serpent. Isn’t that strange? Why make a symbol of death as the source of life? Why not manna, or stone tablets – something that suggests the contrast between death and Yahweh, who gives life? There’s clearly something about the bronze serpent as a symbol of Yahweh’s power to bring life out of death. The very symbol of death becomes deconstructed because it now brings life.
Read through Christian eyes, it takes on even deeper significance. Jesus is quite explicitly the pre-existent Son of God from all eternity in John’s theology (cf John 1: 1-3). In 3:13 (the verse preceding the lectionary reading) he is the One who has “descended from heaven” (ie “come down”). This is Incarnation – God walking among us. Think about it in this way for as moment: the serpent is a symbol of death – and so are human beings! They symbolise darkness, lostness, rebellion, sin and death! And God, in order to save us, is to be found as a human being! In other words, the story of God’s salvation – from Exodus to Incarnation – is the story of God entering into lostness and redeeming it. And in the same way, the lifting up of Jesus on the cross is both the symbol of the very depths to which humanity sinks (the most potent symbol of evil) and the sign and symbol of Life! In other words, both the serpent and the crucified Jesus become the means of Life because God is there! They don’t show God’s pious horror and avoidance of the messiness and darkness of human living, but God’s embracing of it in order to save us. God, in love, embraces what is utterly opposite to God – suffering and death. And so both Jesus the man and the cross become transformed symbols. The man apparently rejected by God becomes the most potent picture of God's nearness and presence, and the cross is transformed from an engine of death into the promise fo Life, as the serpent was.
3. Salvation – the Life of God
The bronze serpent brings life for dying Israelites. They survive in order to continue their journey of deliverance with Yahweh. Jesus brings more than that. Jesus gives eternal life (3: 15f). Why do we always think of eternal life in terms of quantity? And why do we suppose it refers primarily to some other place (heaven) rather than earth? When we think like this, we effectively call creation a cosmic mistake, and salvation becomes the ultimate “Get Out of Jail Free” card (or is it rather the Move Directly to “Go” card?).
Jesus, John tells us, was responsible for creation. The purpose of the Incarnation was to save creation, not save us from it! Salvation is about Life with God in this world. Now, of course, this life is not all there is. But eternal life is primarily about the Life of God and life with God – what John calls “Life in all its abundance” (10:10). What the cross points to is that Life and God are to be found precisely in the places and moments of deepest darkness and hopelessness. The Life of God – the Light of Christ – is to be found where it has no right being! It is a Life that is stronger than death – strong enough to embrace it and rob it of its power. That is why the Light of Christ shines in the darkness, and the darkness has never been able to put it out (1:5)!
Isn’t this precisely what Paul tells us in Ephesians 2: 1-10? We were dead – cut off from God and Life, slaves to powers of darkness and destruction. God does not turn away from us, because God is “rich in mercy” (v4) and does not leave us to a living death. Instead, God “resurrects” us (v5b) in Christ. And if there is a need for life beyond death, it is because God needs all that time to show us “the immeasurable riches of God’s grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” (v7). Now that is some reason for eternity! I don’t know about you, but the idea of heaven as going on and on and on for the sake of it doesn’t particularly inspire me. Longevity for its own sake runs the risk of boredom on a cosmic scale! But eternity as necessary in order to experience all the good things God has for us – that is something deeply attractive, isn’t it?
And it’s all because of God’s grace. It’s not a result of what we do, because there’s nothing we can do! Whatever needed doing was what Christ did on the cross. That is the work of salvation. And it has been done! This makes possible life in the Spirit – abundant life, life as God intends for us. The living of this life, and the transformation it brings, is what Paul refers to as the “good works”. This is what Jesus did – it was the way he lived as a human being. These “good works” are a shorthand for Christ-likeness: living in such a way as to bring Life, not death.
The first rays of the new day
We are on a Lenten journey. At this point, we are called to stand at the foot of the cross and look up. If we have eyes to see, we see two things: firstly, we “see” the darkness. The crucifixion of Jesus is never less than absolutely evil and horrific. We see ourselves exposed – we see what “sin” really means. It isn’t just the guilt that is so suffocating. What is so soul-sapping is the scale of the mess we’re in. There is no way out of the darkness. It traps us. We are held in powers that we have unleashed and created. The only end to the road is death – not just the cessation of life, but the end of everything that is worthwhile. That rings true of our experience of the world. We have created a global economy that deals death to most of the world’s inhabitants. Life for the majority of the globe’s inhabitants is hell on earth. And when we become aware of these things, then we who live in the prosperous west and north are trapped in a cycle of guilt and despair. Our best efforts to change things run into the sand. We realise that the eradication of poverty is both possible and cheap – yet there isn’t the will to sort it out. We realise the suffering we inflict on others – yet are powerless to stop it. We are like the people in Psalm 107 who realise the mess they have got themselves into (Psalm 107: 4, 10 & 17). We are “in trouble and distress”. And, like the psalmist, we cry out to the God of steadfast love who "saves us from our distress and trouble" (vv 6, 13, 19).Lent
But as we continue looking, we also see the first rays of a new dawn. This is resurrection. It is God’s new day – and it is a gift of grace. It has no right to exist. God ought not to behave as God does. It is not right - not just. Grace is an offence to any decent human being who wants to insist that justice is about deserts. God is a God of steadfast love who hears our cries and delivers us from our troubles and distress (the psalmist). God is “rich in mercy” and makes us alive in Christ (Paul). This is because God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but, though him, to save it (John). And so we see in the cross – as the Israelites saw in the serpent – not only our darkness, but God’s Life. Look up and live!
Amen.
16:00 Posted in Ephesians , John , Numbers , Psalms | Permalink | Comments (2) | Email this | Tags: Bible Study
Wednesday, 28 December 2005
Holy Name Year B
Numbers 6: 22-27 NRSV text
Psalm 8 NRSV text
Philippians 2: 5-11 NRSV text
Luke 2: 15-21 NRSV text
What’s in a name? When it comes to the name of Jesus, pretty much everything! Jesus – which means “God saves” – is the means by which God has chosen to save all of created reality. All of creation will be summed up in Jesus as Paul tells us in Philippians 2:10-11. It is at this name that every knee shall bow and this person that every tongue confess as Lord. “Jesus” is therefore not only a name, but a cause. It is the shorthand for God’s project of salvation.
But this means that “Jesus” is an intensely disputed name. It is disputed, not in the sense that there is lack of clarity about which individual is being designated, but in the sense of the “how” and the “what” of God’s salvation. What does God intend by “salvation” in Jesus? How is this salvation to be accomplished? There is also the disputed sense of “who”: who is the God that is revealed in Jesus of Nazareth? What kind of God is this? The fact that God intends this baby to be the means of salvation puts Jesus on a collision course with the powers of his day – religious and political – from the moment of his public ministry. It is a ministry that will end in death on the cross. Ironically, it is precisely because it does so that God exalts Jesus (Phil 2: 9). This is a salvation that is effected by God’s humility – in taking flesh and being prepared to suffer the total rejection and humiliation of the cross. In Luke’s account of the cross, it is through the radical grace and forgiveness of God in Jesus: when human beings have fully, finally and ultimately rejected God, Jesus speaks the words of promise and forgiveness – “Father, forgive them …” and “This day you will be with me in paradise”. Salvation in Jesus happens because there is nothing that we human beings can do to cut us off from God’s love, and when we have spoken our last word on the subject, God has still another Word to speak: the Word of Resurrection.
But what sort of salvation is this? If Christian history shows us anything clearly, it shows us that there are many Jesuses, in the sense that Jesus is claimed by various opposing groups in history to be on their side because their cause is part of God’s saving actions in the world. South African Christians claimed that Apartheid was the manifestation of God’s saving grace – the way in which God was apparently “blessing and keeping” South Africa, “being gracious” to its people and “making his face to shine upon them”! The German Christians saw Hitler similarly. As did the Inquisition, and the white supremacists in the United States.
One of my Christmas presents was the DVD The Kingdom of Heaven, which told the story of the capture of Jerusalem from the Christian king by the great Moslem leader, Saladin. Those of you familiar with the history will recall that what was so remarkable was that, whereas a generation before, the Christians who captured the city had massacred every Muslim in the city, Saladin spared not only the inhabitants but the Christian army, as well. It raised acutely the question of who was more Christ-like: those who fought in Christ’s name, or who acted mercifully? Put differently: which is the real Jesus – the Jesus who commands and blesses the slaughter of so-called infidels, or the one in whom we see God’s grace, peace and justice made a reality on earth?
What is important is not that people do things in the name of Jesus, but what they do in his name. Bob Dylan wrote With God on our side, a military history of the United States, as an ironic reflection on the ease with which Jesus is commandeered as a justification for militarism and conquest. His final verse exposes his own disquiet: “Through many a dark hour/I’ve been thinking about this:/that Jesus Christ was betrayed by a kiss./Now I can’t think for you,/you’ll have to decide/whether Judas Iscariot had/God on his side!” This is a song that is informed by the same gospel tension where Jesus says that there will be many who say to him on the last day, “Lord, Lord, didn’t we cast out demons and perform many miracles in your name?” and he will reply, “Depart from me. I never knew you!”
Christian faith is not simply a matter of naming the name of Jesus – even in worship! It is not enough to be baptised in his name, or belong to the community of faith that exists in this name. Christian faith is about discipleship, which means following in the way of Jesus and doing as he did. It is Jesus-shaped living and acting in the world. Or, as he himself put it when asked by his disciples how to pray, it is doing God’s will on earth.
Jesus’ mission was the means by which God was saving the world. The community in which Jesus lived was under military occupation. They expected the imminent intervention of God – by which they meant the overthrow of the Romans, the purification of Israel and a newly-established theocracy in Jerusalem which would be their vindication to the whole world. Yet the saving activity of God in Jesus was something radically beyond all that Jesus’ contemporaries – including the religious leaders – could possibly imagine. God had a bigger agenda than the salvation of Israel. God’s agenda was nothing less than the salvation of everything that had been created! Its scope reached far beyond the narrow confines of Jerusalem. It was global. Indeed, as Paul reflects, it is cosmological in breadth.
Yet its beginnings and its means are astonishingly, ridiculously small and insignificant. It begins in the stable in Bethlehem, witnessed by shepherds. And while we are clearly meant to understand that Luke is telling us, “This is the Shepherd of Israel”, we are also meant to understand that the incarnation – heaven come down to earth – is first and foremost Good News to the despised, the marginalised and the unimportant. Jesus, we are reminded, is the name given to Mary at the annunciation. It is Mary’s song of praise – the Magnificat – that reminds us of the how of God’s salvation. This is a God who will lift up the lowly, cast down the mighty from their thrones and bring in a new order of human living and relating. Jesus is the Liberator, the Hope of the hopeless and Voice of the voiceless. The kingdom that he proclaims and inaugurates is the kingdom of peace and justice longed for through the ages and promised through the prophets. It is the world as it ought to be. And it begins with the very least first.
That is why Jesus’ is the way of radical humility. It is the way of selflessness, the abandonment of our own interests and the embracing of those of the very least. It is committing ourselves to the struggle for a world where justice makes war and violence redundant, and where poverty, disease and starvation will be a thing of the past. It is the way of the cross. But it is the way to Life, because it is the way of Jesus and there is no other name under heaven by which God is saving the world.
Amen.
14:25 Posted in Luke , Numbers , Philippians , Psalms , Year B | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this | Tags: Bible Study, Holy Name Year B, Luke 2: 15-21, Philippians 2: 5-11, Numbers 6: 22-27, RCL, lectionary resources, commentary on lectionary texts