Sermon Notes 3/18 Num. 21:4-9, Jn. 3:14-21, Eph. 2:1-10

We all recognize the verse John 3:16 from being waved on bumper stickers and on bed sheets at football games. Most of us don’t catch the reference just two verses prior to it.Years ago, I helped a friend of mine with a fledgling Bible school, since I like to teach, and this issue hit me very hard with his classes. The students could rattle off some chapter and verse numbers but they rarely could place those passages into their context. In the Wiseman Bible class on Friday morning, the gentlemen read form their resource packet on the necessity to read Scripture in its historical and literary context, to more fully appreciate the treasure within the bible.

As good Presbyterians, let’s look at the Old Testament behind this verse. The people were afflicted by poisonous snakes, fiery serpents. If they looked up at an image of a bronze snake, then they would live. Recall the image of the snake in healing still graces pharmacy shops all around our country. It comes from Greek myth of a healer deified by Zeus and his staff had a serpent, a symbol of wisdom entwined around it.

My old professor now dean at Princeton seminary James Kay, preached on this passage in Australia. Looking up at the cross, we see that terrible instrument brought spiritual healing to a world. Looking at the cross drains some of the poison away. Put differently Calvary provides an antidote to the venom of all the hate and violence we face. On many crucifixes we see a snake being crushed by the foot of Jesus on the cross. to look at the cross is to drain the poison out of us, the antidote to all of the venom that courses through us day in and day out.

Some of you may have watched the old TV show Star Trek. In one episode a creature infested members of the ship, and they found that light could rid them of the infection. Mr Spock was the first to try out the experiment, but he was left blinded by the light, at least for a time. For john, to see the light of Jesus Christ as the love of god is to know salvation. It may well mean becoming blind to the faults of others and seeing them through the eyes of love. To be blind to the reality of the love of god in Jesus Christ becomes the judgment, the terrible curse of being unable to see or receive love. Hear it again, not to condemn the world, not to use punishment as a divine weapon. In our time, sin is better conceived as an illness, a sickness, than a crime or a bad habit.

In the gospel of John the physical is the gateway to the spiritual realm. the two intersect but have different dimension, of course. The remarkable set of readings we have for today underscores this with our reading from Ephesians with john. The Israelites were dying in the wilderness. The spiritual and emotional poison in our bloodstream renders us on the spiritual critical list. Twice Ephesians calls us dead, no spirit, no life. Only God, out of the great love, the love made incarnate in Jesus Christ. I heard two two complaints this week that ministers do not preach about judgment, punishment as a goad to good behavior and a deterrent against bad behavior. After all of these years, we recoil against the very notion that god gives the us the precious gift of being saved. Maybe that is both accurate and proper, but thoroughly wrong-headed in my view. Following the logic of our passages, punishment and deterrence are tools for a graceless world.
the church has been called a hospital for sinners. Here we get the prescription we so require in order to live into this lfie and the world to come. It’s a simple remedy from Jesus. See me.