“We are All in This Together” Lent 5 B: Numbers 21:4-9, John 3:14-21
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Many scholars prefer to present the presence of the snakes in the midst of the Israelites as a type of punishment for their grumbling. As you know, I do not subscribe to the notion of a punishing or condemning God. I would suggest to you that their life circumstances, lost here in the wilderness, created an opportunity for the Israelites to lose faith. It created an opportunity to grumble, to question God, and to fear. It brought their minds back into the darkness. They were more susceptible to fear, and so Moses cast the object of their fear in bronze and put it before them. In my language, this means, “Face your fears on a daily basis, bring them to the light. Then you will know spiritual health and you will dwell in the Realm of God.”
Like us, the Israelites were prone to grumpiness and lack of faith when things weren’t going their way. Verse 4 of today’s reading says the Israelites were “impatient.” The Hebrew word used here can also be translated as “short of soul.” Their faith wavered. Jesus would tell this story again in his lifetime, presumably to the Pharisee Nicodemus, but Jesus would present himself as the snake on the rod. He would experience that which is most feared by those of little faith: a humiliating and public death basically by torture. Yet he will predict that those who have become enlightened to the fact that we are not just substance, form or matter will not perish. For we know that it is only our bodies that are temporary.
Before shifting gears into the ministry of Jesus, let me close out the Caduceus mystery. Much of what I read indicated that the actual winged serpent/rod combination was an ancient astrological symbol of commerce and is associated with the Greek god Hermes. You may be the judge as to whether modern medicine is more about healing or more about commerce. I also ask myself, in light of these lessons, whether modern medicine is about the facing of fears or the creating of even more fears -Food for thought.
Let’s go back a few verses in today’s Gospel lesson to uncover more of Jesus’ teachings to Nicodemus, the Pharisee who snuck out in the night to hear from this wise rabbi, Jesus. Nicodemus knows from observing Jesus’ healings that Jesus has come from God. Jesus tells him that no one can see the Kingdom of God without being born from above. He goes on to say that one must be born of the Spirit. Nicodemus, like us, gets all caught up in the physical reality of this. “How can we re-enter our mother’s womb to be born a second time?” and so on and so on.
Jesus chides him, telling him that he has seen the signs and miracles performed by Jesus and still does not believe in his God. “If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?”
He will go on to explain that he has come not to condemn the world, but to save it. In other words, those who can learn the capacity to love, and to remember that we are all in this life together, can live in the light. Those, perhaps like the Pharisees, who insist on judging others, of rooting out their darkness, will continue to live in the darkness. They will not feel the warm sunlight of God’s radiant love; for they will be too busy projecting their own darkness onto others.
Jesus speaks of evil in this passage from John. The best definition of evil that I can give you today comes from M. Scott Peck, who says that evil is “unbridled narcissism.” Narcissism is a state of normal human development, found in infants, in whom all energy is focused on oneself and ones needs. In adults, this translates into a failure to recall that we are all in this together. It translates therefore into an assumption that “life is all about me.” It often translates into neurotic superiority, which involves the judgment of others and subsequent condemnation. The ego is the seat of narcissism, and the ego’s desire is to judge. The ego is loathed to say “we are all in this together.” The Holy Spirit’s desire is for us to accept all people as they are, as images of God.
Jesus’ attempts to help Nicodemus see how love leads us to light and judgment leads us to darkness are almost more than we can comprehend. I am grateful to modern writers like Marianne Williamson who can put these concepts in language better understood by today’s listeners. And I daresay that the hounding language of the fundamentalists, so quick to use scripture for their own judging ends, have made it hard to even listen to scripture anymore.
Here are Williamson’s words. “…God doesn’t need us to police the universe. Shaking our finger at someone doesn’t help them change. If anything, our perception of someone’s guilt only keeps them stuck in it. Treating someone with compassion and forgiveness is much more likely to elicit a healed response… Most of us are aware on some level when we’re off. We’d be doing things differently if we knew how. We don’t need attack at this point, we need help…
An attack on a brother is a reminder of his guilty past… To let the past go is to remember that in the present, my brother is innocent. Only love is real. Nothing else actually exists. If a person behaves unlovingly, then, that means that, regardless of their negativity—anger or whatever—their behavior was derived from fear and doesn’t really exist.
When people behave unlovingly, they have forgotten who they are. They have fallen asleep to the Christ within them. The job of the miracle worker is to remain awake. We choose not to fall asleep and dream of our brother’s guilt. In this way we are given the power to awaken him.” (pp 96-97 A Return to Love).
Sometimes when I near the end of my writing of a sermon, I re-read it carefully and ask myself: What will people take from this message? I hope you will take the caduceus, the symbol influenced by Moses, who had the wisdom to know that when we face our fears and bring them to the light, we are spiritually healed and free to love others. I hope you will take the notion that sin simply means separation. It is a sign that our sneaky ego has taken over and prevents us from saying, “We are all in this together.” I hope you will take the statement that Jesus did not come to condemn the world, and neither must we.
Amen.
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