Broadway Christian Church · Columbia, Missouri

The Worship of God · June 13, 2010

Litany of Praise

From Psalm 5

Give ear to our words, O Lord, and listen to the sound of our cry.

       Through the abundance of your steadfast love we enter your house.

Lead us, Lord, in your righteousness.

       Let all who take refuge in you rejoice!

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost;

As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,

World without end. Amen. Amen.

Pastoral Prayer

Tim Carson

Let us begin by receiving the gift of silence.

[Silent prayer.]

Eternal Presence, as high as the heavens, as close as our own breathing, we praise your name, and our hearts open unto your loving heart. 

We gather as pilgrims on a long journey, looking for rest and refreshment, looking for companionship, looking for purpose. And so, in this place among the hymns and prayers, the Word, and the breaking of bread, let us find you, you who are already there. And in this awakening, let us come to love you, and in loving you to serve you and our neighbor.

So, we pray in the name of the one who taught us to pray, saying…

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed by thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: for thine is the kingdom, the power, and glory, forever. Amen.

Old Testament Lesson

Numbers 21:6-9

Then the Lord sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died. The people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you; pray to the Lord to take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. And the Lord said to Moses, “Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.” So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.

New Testament Lesson

John 3:14-15

And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

Message

Jesus the Snake

Tim Carson

From the beginning, Christians tried to interpret and make sense, not only of the life of Jesus, but of his death. What does one do with the death of the Messiah? How does one make sense of that? The attempt to interpret of the life of Jesus, and especially the meaning of his death, commenced at the very beginning of the Christian story and is reflected in differing perspectives found among the earliest witnesses to the faith. These varying interpretations of Jesus’ life from the earliest generation found their way into the New Testament and provide us with a library of diverse witnesses to the faith. In later centuries, other Christian leaders and theologians continued to grapple with the core meaning of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.

At the beginning, the proclamation was fairly simple: Jesus was born, preached the good news of the kingdom, died and was raised. Resurrection was the negation of the negation; life overcame death. In short order, though, resurrection was not enough of a solution to crucifixion. How is one to explain the death of the Messiah? That Jesus died on the cross is not a matter of dispute among Christians, but what his death means is another matter. That Jesus is our savior is not a matter of dispute, but just how his death on the cross opens a pathway to God is explained very differently.

Christians begin to search for explanations that came out of their own tradition, Scriptures, and experience. These explanations of the death of the Messiah came to be known as atonement theories, and we have several versions in the New Testament and several that emerge in the centuries that follow. Some of these atonement theories have become dominant during certain times in history, or have become the explanation of choice in certain religious movements. When this happens, they tend to crowd out all other explanations, leaving little room for people to think differently about them. That is why that the great ecumenical councils did not come to define one way of understanding the death of Jesus, but rather simply stating that it happened and has saving power.

One line of thought, early on, (largely based on one reference, Mark 10:45) is that the Son of Man gave his life as a ransom. This explored the idea that Jesus’ death was a ransom paid to the devil that held humanity under his grip. The death was an appeasement payment. What it didn’t do was explain how Satan had a right to possess anyone in the first place or why he would be owed anything.

In the Middle Ages, Anselm penned what are now called substitutionary theories. In the Western Church, this became perhaps the most widely-used way to discuss the meaning of Jesus’ death. In this line of thinking, we have incurred a debt to God that cannot be repaid. Only God can pay it, and God provides the sacrifice to give God what God needs. So God is satisfied by the death of his own son, a transaction that right sizes the scales of God’s justice.

Substitutionary atonement depends heavily on Hebrew concepts of substituting an animal victim for sacrifice such as a ram instead of Isaac, the Passover lamb, or the slaughter of the scapegoat on the Day of Atonement – reassigning our signs to a proxy victim. At the end of the day, this theory presumes a deity that needs blood sacrifice; a debt must be paid in blood to make it right for God. In this thinking, the death of Jesus satisfies this same need of the wrathful God order for God to be reconciled with humanity. Ironically, Roman Catholicism and Protestant Evangelicalism have often appealed to this explanation almost exclusively – which is why Mel Gibson’s film, The Passion of Christ, found Catholics and Fundamental Protestants walking into the same theatre – because the film relied on this one atonement theory.

A rival theory emerged with Abelard, also high Middle Ages, who claimed that Christ saves us by inspiring us with his moral example of his suffering servant faithfulness. The innocent servant who surrenders himself to the will of God, models the life of self-emptying, and we come to understand his death in the great martyr tradition of the faith: Prophets who are faithful to their call take their commitment all the way to death, going the distance for God, whatever it takes. In this understanding, Jesus was the faithful prophet, the one who so conforms himself to the will of God that he offers himself as the perfect example of faithfulness, so inspiring all who behold his faithful life. Though this theory has merit and has had its advocates over the years, most theologians have not considered it sufficient by itself.

Most theologians who have struggled to understand atonement, the way the death of the Messiah draws us closer to God, have done it through one or a combination of these ways. Either they say that God is owed something and blood sacrifice pays the debt, or that Jesus, being the faithful martyr, models the divine quality of life that we want to emulate. I think that both ways present problems for many people of faith who want to take the cross seriously but cannot get there through these particular interpretations. And yet, in many quarters, they are presented as the only avenues to the cross.

On the one hand, many people today don’t have a God who needs appeasement through the primitive categories of blood sacrifice. They see that as superstitious, primitive religion. What kind of God would that be? What kind of God would you have that needs blood to be reconciled to the creation? And the thought that a debt has to be paid as some transaction, some trade, doesn’t reflect a God of grace and endless love either.

On the other hand, the Jesus-as-an-example theory doesn’t seem to do justice to the way the cross reveals the nature of God. There have been other faithful prophets who have gone the distance. So why this one?

But there is an alternative way to understand the death of Jesus, and it is found right in our own New Testament. This voice is different than Paul and the Epistle of Hebrews that present a substitutionary model of blood atonement that derives from early Jewish thought about sacrificing animals to deities. And it is different than a Jesus-as-our-example model. It comes from the latest and most mature writers in the New Testament, and one that is less Jewish in its orientation, less bound to Jewish explanations of sacrificial blood atonement. It is the Gospel of John.

John begins his gospel with the beautiful hymn to the Logos, the wisdom of God, and says that Jesus was the expression of the divine logos that dwells among us, full of grace and truth. He came to those who knew him not, to those who tried to snuff out the light that was coming into the world. But in spite of everything, the darkness has never put it out. In fact, we behold the glory of God shining in his face.

As children, one of the first verses from the Bible that we memorize is John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son so that whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.”

The entire reason for the giving of the Son is based in the love of God. God gives because of love, on account of love, for the beloved. And that is the theology that stands behind John’s understanding of the cross. When you behold the cross, says John, you behold divine, suffering love. And it will break your heart every time.

“If I be lifted up I will draw all people to myself,” says Jesus later in John’s gospel (John 12:32). In the lifting up, in the cosmic drama of God’s love pummeled with human unlove; we are drawn to the cross by the incredible power of innocent suffering.

Though we are able to quote John 3:16 by memory, what we didn’t learn by heart were the two verses immediately preceding it. In fact, most cannot recall even one sermon they’ve ever heard on them: “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” (John 3:14-15)

Have you ever heard Jesus compared to a snake? Probably not. Other animals, yes: the Lamb of God, the Lion of Judah. But a snake?

Once when I was on a study exchange to Sweden, we were touring an art gallery and at one point, we stopped before a huge canvas with Moses as the subject. He was lifting up a staff, a bronze serpent wrapped around it. Most of our delegation looked at that only to see a cross on the cross of that staff. Most were perplexed, but I remembered the story found in the book of Numbers 21:4-9. It was the story of the children of Israel being threatened by poisonous vipers, and how Moses crafted the image of the snake out of bronze and held it up on his staff. If anyone looked at the snake, they would be delivered from death by snake.

The surprising feature of the painting, though, was a cross on the top of the snake-entwined staff. It was clear what the artist was doing; it was typological art. He was reaching back for a type from the Old Testament and bringing it forward to interpret the New Testament. He was doing John 3:14-15. The cross, said the painting, is like the serpent lifted up in the wilderness. In fact, you have another artistic representation of that on the cover of your bulletin. This metal sculpture of a large staff with a snake coiled around it, fanning out to make a cross at the top, sits on the top of Mt. Nebo in Israel. And it accomplishes the same thing: the Old Testament story is borrowed to present a Christian allegory on the story.

There is a deep wisdom in this story which abides beneath the surface. And that is that the cure often contains the original source of the problem. The very thing that is the threat is also the beginning of the solution. Only the image of the serpent can save you from serpents. If you are being vaccinated for, say, typhus or yellow fever, what are you injected with? A little bit of typhus or yellow fever. Your body immunizes you against the disease. The disease immunizes you against the disease.

When I was in the Scouts, years ago, we were on a camp-out in windy Kansas. One of the campfires got out of control and it caught, and raged, and burned through acres and acres of land. We fought the fire all day long. Help came. Finally, we set a perimeter around the fire, trenched around it, and then set a backfire to burn toward the center. We literally fought fire with fire. The cure often contains the seed of the problem.

Do you remember the movie, The Mission? The film provides a cameo of the ruthless conquest of the Americas by European powers and that conquest included slave trade. Robert DeNiro (one of my favorites) plays one of those slave traders, and in a powerful scene, following his murdering of his own brother; he is brought to his knees in repentance for his destructive life. But the priest, played by Jeremy Irons, devises a certain penance for him. He is to climb to the top of the mountain, tethered to the implements of his slave trade – his armor, weapons, ropes – all contained in a large bag. And he drags all these implements behind him up the mountainside, emblematic of the true burden they represented in his life. After he arrived at the top and encountered some of the Indians whose families he plundered – the rope was cut and the slave trade implements crashed down into the waters below.

The symbol of pain was employed as the same sign for the healing. When the problem is snakes, only a bronze serpent will do. True healing requires looking into the face of the pain, wrong, failure, brokenness first before it can transform into something life-giving.

Ann Benvenuti wrote:

If something hurts you really bad

Make an icon of it and put it in your sanctuary

Hang it from the mirror in your car or

Tuck it next to the pillow of your bed

Record the sickening thud and play it

Until you fall peacefully asleep

Recall the heat of that searing shame

Until it wells up in you like a cool breath

And if a poisonous snake should bite you

Make a bronze cast of it and put it up in a high place

Then raise your eyes to it considering well

That you are still alive, though changed

(from WeMoon, Estacada, 2008, 146)

It is only when we gaze upon the One who is lifted up, acknowledge the full story of who we are and of what we are capable, look into the suffering face of the Son of Man, that we are able to turn to a loving and purposeful power that is the beginning of our healing. Like the serpent lifted up to deliver the people from lesser serpents, so the silhouette of the Crucified One reveals, attracts, and heals.

In John, the suffering of God discloses the love of God and draws every soul toward it.

This does not reconcile God to humanity, because God is already the primary, loving actor. Rather, the lifting up reconciles and makes it possible for humanity to draw near to God. That is why God sends the son – not to satisfy the requirements of a wrathful God but so that humanity will be drawn to the divine heart. And Jesus self-empties himself, offering a sacrifice of his own life, surrendering his life for the sake of love of God and humanity (Philippians 2:5-8).

God loves unto death. Love sacrifices for the beloved. Which one of you, having a child, would not go to the death for that child? Which one of you would not trade places in an instant should the choice have to be made? Love suffers unto death for the beloved. We fall to our knees, knowing our darkness, knowing the light of God, and transformed as a result. We are drawn to his lifting up like moths to a flame. We are drawn to the wondrous cross upon which the prince of glory died. We are drawn to the good shepherd who willingly lays down his life for the sheep and it smashes our pride and exposes our sin. We are drawn to the lifted up suffering servant not because he is a substitution, a fleshly currency for the payment of debt, blood to appease a wrathful God, but rather because God so loved the world that love went to its death. Love suffers for the beloved.

It is here, in John’s Gospel, we discover revelatory atonement – God’s love is revealed in Christ, shown by the depths to which love will go in order to reconcile us to God. God needs no reconciliation, no payment of a debt, no transaction to make it right for God. We are the ones who need to have our hearts broken, fully to comprehend the depth of God’s love, to fall down before the cross with every pride and assumption shattered. Jesus is that love incarnated. Jesus is that love made flesh. Jesus is that love that dies for the sake of love, because he is love and has to do the most loving, faithful thing. When that happens, the curtain is torn back and we realize who we are and who God is. And atonement takes place when we behold, when we know, when we internalize the suffering love of God. At-one-ment – atonement.

It was many years ago, in another time and place, and at the close of a worship service, I stood at the rear door, receiving people. There was the usual long procession and exchange of greetings and affirmations. Somewhere in the midst of that experience, I noticed that one woman was hanging back, waiting for the rest to leave so she might speak with me.

This woman had been the stereotypical good wife and mother, doing all things that qualify one for that title. She did the car pool, tended home and hearth, taught Sunday School, and served in the PTA. But then, somehow, her marriage came crashing down and her world with it. In time, she began to speak strange utterances, language only she could understand. She took flight in the middle of the night, driving hundreds of miles to nowhere, anywhere, away from here.

Then she was in front of me, pointing to her bulletin that was madly scribbled with writings that filled every margin and white space. And as she showed me all the indecipherable markings, she asked, “Is that why there is an umbrella?”

I had no idea what she was talking about.

She continued, “Is that why there is an umbrella over the cross?”

And I looked, and sure enough, the footlights under the large, rough-hewn cross, cast a shadow over the top in the shape of a huge canopy, an umbrella in shadow.

And she said, “And is there an umbrella because of the tears of God.”

I was silent.

“And are the tears salty, like my tears are salty?”

And for whatever reason I said to her, “Yes, they are salty tears.”

We already know our suffering, our brokenness, our temptation, and being forsaken. Our tears have been our food day and night. What we desperately need to know is that the tears of God are salty, too, salty like our own. 

For if the Son of Man is lifted up like the serpent in the wilderness, the cure that contains the problem, we know that by his stripes we are strangely healed, that his great suffering will deliver us from all sufferings. And we will know once for all that only love has the power to drive out everything else, to cover all shadows, until the darkness is vanquished, all sighing and sorrow flees away, and everything is enfolded in one circle of light.

Benediction

And now, in hope, faith, and love go forth to serve our God and our world.   Amen.