Sermon for 4th Sunday in Lent – John 3:14-21

The story of the Exodus is a real case study in trust. For 40 years Moses leads the Israelites from Egypt to the land of Canaan. Along the way it’s a constant series of hardships and struggles. They hunger and thirst. They fight with each other. They’re attacked by other nations. Each time, Moses calls upon God, and God intervenes in miraculous ways. Manna and quail to eat. Water from stones. Giving the commandments on Mt. Sinai. Giving them victory over more powerful enemies. God always steps in whenever the Israelites hit bottom. God’s determined to keep the promise even though the Israelites have some pretty big character defects, like mistrust. They never really seem to trust Moses or God.

Now, we shouldn’t be surprised. These miracles only come when folks are desperate, and they’re always the stuff of CGI and special effects. They’re mystifying. Water from a stone? So, if we’re honest, do they really feel trustworthy? And then there’s Moses. He doesn’t inspire confidence. He’s always wracked with self-doubt. Right from the start, God comes to him in the burning bush to call him, but Moses is like, who am I to lead the Israelites? What do I say? What if they don’t believe me? What about my stutter? God keeps countering him with solutions until God’s had enough, and then “the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses.” On the journey, folks keep arguing with Moses, and he laments to God, “What shall I do with this people? They’re ready to stone me!” Don’t folks pick up on that kind of vibe? It doesn’t inspire trust. And then there’s when Moses hikes up Mt. Sinai to receive God’s covenant. He’s gone for weeks without a word. Folks figure he cut and ran, and that’s how you get a golden calf. No wonder they miss Egypt. Never mind that they were beaten and worked to death. Memory’s always a little selective. Who doesn’t lament “the good old days”? But were they really that good? I’m not sure our memories are that trustworthy.

Besides, Moses keeps leading them into danger. Clearly trust is in short supply. God never makes it easy. Now, it’s easy to imagine why God doesn’t just lay down a primrose path for these folks. It’s not just about them getting to Canaan. It’s also about forming these folks into a community that’s grounded in faith. Faith doesn’t come about when things are going great because how do we really know the difference between our good choices and God’s providence? We don’t. Sure, we might thank God for a while, but there’s always a part of us that starts taking things for granted. We get a little too confident and we stop relying on God. But when we struggle and hit bottom because we have nowhere else to turn, then it’s a little clearer from whom our help really comes, isn’t it? So, it seems like there’s always this link between faith and hardship.

Of course, we don’t like this any more than the Israelites do. Our patience is limited. So in our Old Testament reading, Moses is leading the Israelites toward the Red Sea. They can’t go through Edom because Edom warned they’ll attack if Israel even thinks of entering. But while they’re skirting Edom, instead they’re attacked by the armies of Arad. They just can’t win. Except they do, because they make a vow to the Lord, and the Lord gives them victory. So the Israelites move on, but get impatient. They complain there’s no food or water. “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?” Now, that part’s familiar, but this time they ramp it up. Maybe they’re at wits’ end. Maybe they feel entitled after God gave them the victory they asked for. This time they don’t just curse Moses. They curse God too. And they even curse the manna that God’s been giving them this whole time. “We detest this miserable food.” God’s had enough. God sends poisonous snakes and many die. The survivors repent, Moses prays, and God tells him to nail a bronze snake to a pole, so that when folks are bitten, they can look at it and live.

So, this is a pretty disturbing story, because God’s vengeance becomes their new normal. God doesn’t take away the snakes. The Israelites don’t change their ways. The bronze snake “cure” isn’t a happy ending because we don’t know if anyone actually looked at the thing. All we really know are all hardships still awaiting the Israelites down the road. It doesn’t bode well for the Israelites or for us, because we don’t really trust God either. Deep down, we’re convinced that God only helps those who help themselves. When adversity comes, we hunker down and figure we just have to tough it out, because we love to say that God wouldn’t give us more than we can handle. But is that really true? Or do we curse God for being unfair? It’s even more offensive to dare to suggest that God might afflict us on purpose. But if we don’t trust God to see us through our wilderness, then how do we know God hasn’t just abandoned us already?

The good news is that God hasn’t abandoned any of us. For God so loved the word that God gave God’s only son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life. This is Jesus the Christ, who came to us in our wilderness and abided with us. He knew our sin and our mistrust, and yet he loved us so much as to be crucified for our sake. “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.” On the cross he bound all of our brokenness to his own body and let it kill him. But after three days, he rose, so that he might bind the power of his resurrection to our bodies. To freely give us everything he has by his word of forgiveness. To reconcile us with God and with each other once and for all. All of this is a free gift that we never asked for, yet Jesus does it anyway.

Now, that should be all we need to say, but there’s an elephant in the room. We do a strange thing with the cross. We treat it like a litmus test. John says, “Those who believe in him are not condemned, but those who do not believe are condemned already.” As if to say that you have to make some kind of decision to be saved. Now, I’m not going to knock anyone who turns to Jesus. That would be dumb. But so often we treat the cross like the serpent on a pole, and the problem with that is what happens if we don’t look at it? The scandal of the cross is that it’s a done deal, and Jesus doesn’t bother to ask us what we think about it. He just does it. So the gospel says, “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” That means everyone. It’s a hard promise to trust, because it says no one is beyond God’s reach. Truth be told, how many folks have each of us written off? Maybe we’ve even written ourselves off. But Jesus hasn’t. And so he gives us his gift of faith so that we might trust him at his word.

That kind of faith shows us that we don’t have to rely upon ourselves. We can turn to our neighbors in love and we can trust that Jesus will do the same thing to them that he did to us. None of us goes through the wilderness alone. We always go together as the body of Christ. It’s not easy. We still argue with God and with each other. We still falter. But Jesus will not falter, and will love us eternally.