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Hespeler, 14 March 2021 © Scott McAndless – Lent 4
Numbers 21:4-9, Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22, Ephesians 2:1-10, John 3:14-21

This morning, we read perhaps one of the most beloved Bible verses of all times: John 3:16. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” And I certainly understand why people love this verse so much. It is an almost perfect expression of the gospel and of the grace and love of God. But I’m going to be honest here, there is another verse in that reading that I would say I love even more than verse 16, and that is the verse that comes right after it. “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.”

Being saved

The thing I love about that verse is that it describes just how limitless God’s love really is, that it is able to extend even to the whole world. It also brings us to the term that I want to focus on this morning and that is the word “saved.” This verse makes it quite clear that Christ’s purpose in coming had to do with saving people, indeed with saving the whole world. But I find that that past participle, saved, and the connected noun which is salvation have become a bit problematic for the church today. You see, they are words that have taken on special meaning in the life of the church where they mean something very different than they would to people outside the church.

When we talk about salvation in the church, we are usually talking about saving people from their sins or their guilt and we often mean getting people to heaven after they die. Do you realize that, outside the church, when somebody uses the words, “You saved me,” they are almost never talking about sin or heaven? But when we use those same words speaking to God in church, that is almost all we ever mean. It’s a little bit funny.

What did John mean by “saved”?

But what does being saved mean in the passage we read from the Gospel of John. Is it the churchy definition, or the one that people actually use in the world? Well, to answer that, I think we should look closer at the verse before the more famous one. Just before the verse about how God so loved the world, we have a verse that goes like this: “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.” So, whatever sort of salvation is being spoken of in this passage, it must be something like what was there when Moses lifted up a serpent in the wilderness.

Snakes in the Camp

And that brings us to the odd passage that we read from the Book of Numbers this morning. It is, in many ways, one of the typical stories of the wandering of the people of Israel in the wilderness. The people get upset and mad at Moses and they start to complain. And then, following the pattern of many other stories, God sends some sort of punishment.

But this punishment is really kind of special. “Then the Lord sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died.”That is how the story is usually translated and, it is a pretty horrific story, kind of like the stuff of nightmares. Can you imagine being stuck in a situation where your whole camp is overrun with poisonous snakes? It makes my skin crawl just to think about it!

It is actually “Seraphim Serpents”

But that translation is not quite as simple as that. Because the word for poisonous is not in the original Hebrew text. What it actually says in Hebrew is that God sent seraphim serpents among the people. Hmm, seraphim, where have I heard that word before? Oh yes, I remember. It is a word that is used a number of times in the Bible to describe various supernatural beings. There seem to be two kinds of angels in the Bible, cherubim and seraphim. We even often still use the singular form of those words in English when we speak of cherubs and seraphs. So what it literally says in the original Hebrew is that heavenly beings in the form of serpents invaded the camp. Now what are we supposed to do with that?

If our experience with the pandemic has taught us anything, it is that anytime you have a large group of people living in a communal setting, like nomads camping together, there is a very real danger of various kinds of sickness spreading quickly with devastating effect. I suspect that is the kind of thing that is being described in this passage. Again, as we all know, such a situation can be extremely bewildering and frightening and that is the kind of terror that we see in this passage as the people despair.

Some Kind of Spiritual Attack

Because they couldn’t really understand what was terrifying them, they naturally described it in supernatural terms. The use of the word seraph, a word for a supernatural being, is basically their way of saying that they are under attack in many ways. It’s not just a physical sickness, it’s also a terror of the heart. A camp infested with seraphim is a camp that is in the midst of a spiritual battle where they feel under attack in their minds, their bodies and their spirits.

That is the horror that is being described in this passage. And that is what prompts them to seek for salvation. “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.’” And, in response, God tells Moses to make a representative of these seraphim creatures out of bronze and put it on a pole.

The Problem with Moses’ Response

Now, I have so many questions about this. Is this not the same Moses who gave the commandment about how you shall not have any “graven images” of heavenly creatures who is making this graven image of a seraphim, which is a heavenly creature? It is indeed a bit of a problem and becomes a very real problem later on in Israel’s history. But, on a certain level, what Moses does makes a lot of sense. The people are scared of what seems like a supernatural enemy that is beyond their understanding, and Moses takes their abstract fears and makes them something concrete, something that they can look at. And it is that that saves them.

mRNA Vaccines

In a way, it is kind of what researchers like Moderna and Pfizer have done by creating messenger RNA vaccines to save our population from Covid-19. This is an amazing new approach to making vaccines where the vaccine doesn’t actually contain any of the virus. What it does rather is teach your cells how to make a protein that is part of the virus. It is like you are actually creating an image of the thing that is attacking you. That image teaches your body that there is a way to defeat it. That is how an mRNA vaccine works. And that is basically what Moses did when be made a bronze image of the thing that was attacking them and that image taught them that it could be defeated.

You see, salvation in the Bible actually means what we generally mean by salvation in the real world. It is not limited to spiritual things like forgiving sins or getting people into the afterlife, salvation is actually about God meeting us wherever we are. If you are sick, salvation comes in the form of healing. If you’re drowning in the water, salvation is someone reaching out a hand or a life preserver. If you’re terrified of something, salvation may come in the form of giving you a way to manage that fear. And that’s kind of what Moses did for the children of Israel.

How is Jesus on the Cross like that?

And the Gospel of John tells us that when Jesus was nailed up on the cross, it was just like what Moses did with that bronze seraphim serpent. That means many things. It means, first and most important of all, that you don’t just need to look for one kind of salvation from Jesus. No matter what anyone might have told you, Jesus didn’t just come here on earth to offer you a way to heaven. Jesus didn’t just come to save you from your sins. I mean, yes, if those are the very things that you need at this particular moment, then Jesus did come to offer you that kind of salvation, but please do not limit yourself to seeking that from Jesus.

We All Need Saving

We all need saving at various points in our life. In fact, I might even go so far as to suggest that there is always something that we need saving from. The fact of the matter is that if you are struggling at this moment in your life from anything, then you can know that Jesus actually came to meet you in that struggle. Are you struggling with loneliness and isolation? Lord knows that many are in these days! Jesus came to save you in that.

I know that there are a number of people everywhere who have struggled in these difficult times and have developed certain ways of coping – maybe through drinking a bit more or self-medicating in some other ways, others have developed compulsive behaviors or patterns of relating with people that are not all that healthy.

These coping methods have helped you to get through this time and that is okay, but maybe you are starting to realize that some of the habits you developed are not going to serve you well going forward and you’re beginning to see the need for a change and realize that that change may not be easy. Well, that is also a way in which you need to be saved. And I’m here to tell you that Jesus came to save you from that.

Getting that Salvation Going

Indeed, any sickness you may be struggling with whether in mind or body or spirit is something that Jesus has come to save you from. But, of course, the question is how do we get that saving process going? The Gospel of John tells us that it works like it worked for the people in the wilderness when Moses made the bronze serpent. They needed to look at this thing that represented their deep-seated fears, and that triggered the healing that they needed. John is saying that looking at Jesus when he is lifted up on the cross (that must be what it refers to) triggers the same mechanism of salvation.

What I think he means by that is this: that picture of Jesus upon the cross is a perfect depiction of everything that we struggle with, whether it be pain, rejection, addiction, depression or frailty. If you see Jesus upon that cross, there is no denying that he entered into the very worst of what it means to be human. And the very idea that Jesus could do that while being, at the same time, both entirely human and entirely divine, means that he experienced all of the physical and spiritual and mental challenges we face.

Like the bronze serpent, the sight of Jesus upon the cross puts all of that into a concrete image that we can relate to and that helps to calm our fears and understand that we can handle this because we are not facing it alone. That is the salvation that Jesus offers to you and he offers it to you today.

A Salvation Exercise

So let us engage in a salvation exercise. Many of you have made a serpent to bring today. We are going to use that in our focus exercise. I want you to look at your serpent. Or, of course, you can imagine a serpent on a stick in your mind. If it makes you feel more comfortable, you can imagine Jesus on the cross. As we shall see, it is all the same thing. But whatever it is you are looking at, focus your mind on that image. Leave aside all other thoughts as best as you can.

Now I am going to ask you to think of something that is keeping you, right now, from being all that you believe you are supposed to be. It might be something in the world around you, it might be something in your body, in your mind or brain, or it might be in your spirit. Can you find one thing? Think on that one thing for a moment.

Now, would you join me in a silent prayer? Pray this: Lord Jesus, save me from… and insert that thing. Pray it again and a third time. Jesus does save. Now look at your image. Let that be your reminder right now and in the week to come that Jesus does save you. When you doubt that he does, look at that image. Let it remind you that the things you struggle with – the things that seem so big to you – are but little things to Jesus.

Lord Jesus, thank you that you save your people. Amen.

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Hespeler, 7 March 2021 © Scott McAndless – Lent 3
Exodus 20:1-17, Psalm 19, 1 Corinthians 1:18-25, John 2:13-22 (click to read)

A lot of people really struggle with the story that we read this morning from the Gospel of John – basically the same story that is told in all of the Gospels – of how Jesus went into the temple in Jerusalem, and he got really mad. In what almost seems like a tantrum, he was overturning tables, and shouting and screaming at all the people. He was whipping the animals and ordering people around. It just seems to go against so much of the image of Jesus that we have in our minds. Is this “gentle Jesus meek and mild”? Is this the same man who taught his followers to turn the other cheek and to love their enemies? How could the one who came to save humanity show so much anger?

Why we made whips today

Those are all really good questions, and I think there are ways of working through them. And I’d like to do that today by focusing in on an object, an object that is only explicitly mentioned in John’s Gospel but that is kind of taken for granted in the others. The object I’m talking about, of course, is a whip. I was kind of struck by John’s note that Jesus made a whip of cords. I was so struck by it, in fact, that I had you folks make a whip for today.

Now, I didn’t do that without some second guessing. I had a little bit of trouble with the idea of asking kids to make what is essentially a weapon. And I, like any experienced father, immediately imagined scenes of kids using them to whip each other. And then I imagined parents getting very angry with me. But, of course, it says right there in the Bible that Jesus made one, so how could I be blamed for having people follow the example of Jesus?

Why did Jesus make a whip?

But let’s ask the question for a moment, why did Jesus make a whip? The fact that he made it on the spot indicates that he had not really planned this. That is actually a bit of a surprising note in the Gospel of John which often insists that every single step of what Jesus did while he was in Jerusalem was all preordained and that Jesus knew everything that would happen and actually made sure that it happened that way.

But, in this passage, John seems to indicate that Jesus hadn’t planned what happened in the temple. Instead, he just picked up some of the pieces of rope and cord that are always lying around in any busy marketplace, and he braided them together to make a whip on the spot. It was not pre-planned; it was rather that Jesus got rather swept up in a moment.

The temple in Jerusalem

So the big question in this story is what was it that made Jesus so upset. It is not as easy a question to answer as you might think. The temple in Jerusalem was, in Jesus’ day, a massive complex. It might have encompassed two football fields. There were places for everyone there with courts for women, for Gentiles and for Jewish men as well as places reserved only to the priests.

The temple was also, quite likely, the largest marketplace in the city. It had to be. The temple was the only place where Jews were allowed to sacrifice which meant, for the great majority of people, it was the only place that they could go to actually supplement their diets with meat because, of course, the sacrifices were eaten by the worshipers. But, since the temple was a monopoly and people could sacrifice no place else, many of them came from great distances. They could not bring their sacrificial animals all that way, and so they would have to buy one when they arrived.

There were also money changing booths, but those too were also absolutely necessary. The money changing wasn’t the fault of the Jews, but actually of the Romans. The Romans circulated coins that had images of emperors on them – images of people who the coins themselves proclaimed to be gods. And the law of Moses was very clear on that point, there were to be no graven images of any gods, especially not in the temple. And so the people had to exchange their coins for special currency that could be used in the temple.

All of these things were necessary in order for the temple to continue to exist, for the people to worship and to eat. These things were what made it possible for the temple to function as a house of prayer for all nations, and that is what it was. But apparently, when Jesus walked into the temple on that day, he saw something going on that was so disturbing that he suddenly felt that he had to do something. He grabbed the only thing that was available at hand, some bits of rope and chord, and he made himself a whip, a symbol of his anger at what was going on.

Was Jesus trying to shut the place down?

But what was it? When you read about it in the Gospel of John, which we read this morning, you get the impression that the issue was that there was a marketplace. “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a market-place!” is all that Jesus says. But, like I said, it’s a bit puzzling for Jesus to be angry at that. The temple had always been a marketplace and it needed to be a marketplace to fulfill its proper function.

So, if Jesus was trying to shut down the market, he was essentially shutting down the whole institution. And I think that is a part of what is going on here. You see it in what Jesus goes on to say: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” Yes, I know that John reassures us that, when Jesus said that, he wasn’t talking about the actual temple but about his own body, but by the time this gospel was written, the temple in Jerusalem had already been destroyed. The readers could not help but make the connection between what Jesus had done and the ultimate destruction that he obviously anticipated. At the very least, Jesus was definitely pointing out the fragility of the temple as an ongoing institution for that society and anticipating the need to find new ways to think about what the temple accomplished for the people.

What Jesus says in the other gospels

There are other accounts in the other gospels of what Jesus said about the temple that I think we need to take into account. According to the Gospel of Mark, Jesus caused a disturbance in the temple saying, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’ But you have made it a den of robbers.” Rather than being concerned about the marketplace, Jesus there talks about the need for the temple to be a house of prayer for all people. And indeed it was such a place. As I said, there was an entire court of the temple that was set aside for the people of all the nations to come and pray. But the problem, according to Mark, is that it has become a robber’s den.

I think a lot of people have misunderstood that. People have heard that accusation and assumed that there must have been some shady things going on in the temple. I remember, when I was younger, hearing sermons about how the entire temple system in Jerusalem must have been dedicated to ripping the people off – that people were being overcharged for the sacrificial animals and swindled in the money changing, you know that kind of thing. And those would indeed be serious problems worthy enough to make Jesus angry, but the fact of the matter is that there is no evidence that that kind of thing was going on in Jerusalem in the first century.

What is a robber’s den for?

And, in any case, that is not what Jesus is saying is happening. Jesus doesn’t call the temple a crime scene, he calls it a robber’s den. The den is not where robbers rob people, it is the place they come back to after they have finished their crimes. It is the place where robbers feel safe and maybe where they keep their ill-gotten gains. That is the accusation that Jesus makes against the temple, and it points to a much more insidious danger.

The real danger he is pointing to, and I do not believe that it was a particular danger to that temple or within Jewish religion, is actually a danger that is common to all religion. The danger is that people use their religious practices, their prayers, their sacrifices and their religious observances to give themselves a sense of security and a sense that they are all right.

Just like robbers feel comfortable in their robber’s den, they use their outward shows of religiosity and righteousness to allow themselves not to worry about things like systemic injustice, economic exploitation or hidden oppression, especially when they can benefit from it themselves. I cannot help but believe that it was that, more than anything else, that animated Jesus on that day.

Our discomfort with anger

And he was angry. He was in a spontaneous rage. And I know people feel uncomfortable with that. We get very nervous around anger and the expression of anger. Some might suggest it’s an emotion that we should always suppress. But the emotion itself is not a bad thing. Yes, of course, there are bad ways to express or deal with your anger, but the emotion itself should not be feared if we can find ways of dealing with it that help instead of hurt. Indeed, suppressing anger can sometimes lead to very damaging effects including mental health problems and the erosion of important relationships in our lives. So, I believe we can actually look to Jesus in this story as a model for dealing with legitimate anger in helpful ways.

Jesus takes his anger and uses it to try to make people think differently about what they are really doing. He chooses to use it, not to lash out and certainly not to attack or seek to hurt people, but to attack the very thing that he is concerned about, the comfort that people find in religion that makes it, for them, a safe den where robbers can shelter. That is what his whip represents.

A spiritual exercise with whips

So, many of you have brought a whip to our service today. I asked you to make one just like Jesus made one in the temple. Jesus’ whip is a disturbing symbol. It is meant to be. I’d like to ask you to pick up your whip if you have one or to imagine one if you don’t.

As you contemplate your whip, I’m going to ask you a question. What makes you angry in the world around you today. Now, I’m not talking about the kind of anger that we usually experience when somebody hurts us or disrespects us or mistreats us personally. That is a legitimate anger, and we need to find productive ways to express that anger when it arises, but that is not the kind of anger that I want to focus on today.

I want you to think of something that is going on in our society, some systemic problem that maybe disadvantages certain people or groups. I want you to focus on some tendency that is eroding something important. You will not all be thinking of the same thing, and that is as it should be. But you should be able to think of something because I do believe that God lays these kinds of issues on our hearts. Sometimes we suppress that anger or hide from it because we’re afraid of it. But if we allow ourselves to be open to it, I suspect that God will show us things that we should be angry about.

Now, as you hold onto your whip, I want you to think about how you can make things just a little less comfortable for those people who perpetuate that injustice. What can you do to disrupt their easy assumption that they are superior, more righteous or more worthy, perhaps because of their race, religion or mission. That is what Jesus was doing with his whip, stopping the temple from being a place where people could escape their complicity. Will you take up your whip, will you wield it with care. This, too, is to follow the example of Christ.

Final prayer

Lord Jesus, thank you that you did get angry in the temple. You did it to show us that anger, in itself, is not a bad thing. What matters is how we express it and that we do so in constructive ways. Thank you for the anger that you send us at the injustice of this world, help us to find constructive ways to use that anger to build towards a better world, as Jesus did. Amen.

Jesus & Bartimaeus