We all know John 3:16 emblazoned on large sheets at football games. In John's gospel, the physical is a gateway to the spiritual. Failure to move from one plane to the other results in the kind of confusion poor Nicodemus is struggling with. The voices of the dialogue fade off, and the narrator picks up for us to more clearly understand. We get a snake in again this week even as  we often rush past the allusion. You all instantly flashed on to the story in Number 21 and the nehushtan, the bronze shiny serpent that heals. As James Kay, my preaching and worship professor  said, we get rid of the poison that afflicts human life; the cross is an an antidote to all the poison within and without us. Christ is poison to the poisonous one. A single snake around the staff was a symbol of healing for the Greeks and Romans. On many crucifixes we see the head of the serpent being crushed.

We speak of Christ as the Great Physician. In Lent, we do well to refer to T.S. Eliot of Christ, as the dying nurse. Cyril of Jerusalem wrote "sin burns the sinews of the soul, and breaks the spiritual bones of the mind."In ancient times, Communion 's drink was called the "medicine of immortality" and the medieval writer Cabasilas wrote that "the cup is applied to our wounds and slays the sin that is in us." This is usually the passage cited when people refer to a born-again experience. In Lent we seek to be  born again/from above/anew-to enjoy a spiritual rebirth. Was Abram born anew when, at 75, he set off from yet another home toward the new land? We hear this morning a classic maternal image for God's labor with us, to be born from above." Look at receiving the gift of communion as spiritual health food. It is medicine for what ails us.

Nicodemus knew that something was not quite right. Nicodemus stands for us: in the dark but is capable of growth-after All Abram did not know where he was going either, beyond a general direction. Nicodemus, like us, is in the shadows. Jesus does not make it easy on him, as he speaks indirectly, obliquely. For all us stumbling around in the dark, Christ lights the way. In its way, our passage contains a gospel in miniature. I want to seize on the word save, a multivalent word. Too often, we read it as only a ticket to heaven. That is accurate, but weak. Salvation encompasses the whole of life in this world and the next. With the reference to the bronze serpent in Numbers, let's look at saving as healing. After all, an old hymn, There Is a Balm,  speaks of healing the sin-sick soul. Salvation aims at healing everything that afflict us and our society. It does encompass body, mind, heart, and spirit together, to  make us whole, well-integrated  people. Further,  the outstretched arms of the cross embrace a world where too much blood is spilled, where too many people are crushed under a boot heel. In a way, look at salvation as a public health measure designed to structure a safer, better, life.

Hear the 3:16 passage again for God so loved the world, the cosmos, what could be more expansive than that? I remind us that the word save in Greek also means to heal. Look at the image of healing in a pharmacy.   Parish nurse is here that gets at the physical level of healing and salvation. The deacons give away money for people to get prescriptions.  Health is God's good gift across the board. Healing restores health or even helps us find it when we weren't even aware that it existed.