Focus: Jesus saves us from our sins.
A couple months ago, I remember seeing a video on Facebook of the first trucks leaving Pfizer in Portage to deliver vaccines across the country. As of now, there is still work to do: about ten percent of adults are vaccinated, and the pandemic is still at dangerous levels. But that image of those trucks leaving the plant in the dark early morning will always stick with me as something we had not had in a long time: a visible symbol of hope that the medicine we needed was on the way: that things would get better.
It is hard not to think of the connection to the pandemic when we hear the story from Numbers this morning about the Israelites wandering in the wilderness. This passage takes place not so long after God and Moses rescued them from slavery in Egypt, brought them out with mighty acts of power, staged a miraculous escape through the Red Sea on dry ground, and then received the Ten Commandments, as we heard last week. Finally, it takes place after God has been raining down “manna”—bread from heaven—to feed them on their journeys. But a funny thing happened on the way to the Promised Land. After a brief detour around the land of Edom (the Edomites did not allow the Israelites to pass through their country), the people grow impatient. They are whining, they are upset, they are grumbling. They are upset that they’re not getting where they’re going, they’re upset at the menu, they’re upset at, who knows what—probably each other, certainly Moses. Waiting to get where you’re going like kids on a car trip, or waiting for things to get better, like us now is not fun. In fact, they are so upset that they fall into nostalgia or homesickness. Only the home they’re longing for is Egypt! Where they used to be enslaved!
God responds by sending a plague of poisonous serpents who bite the people and cause them to die. This seems harsh to us. But if the punishment is severe, God is also quick to rescue. When the people recognize that they have sinned, confess their sins to Moses, and repent, God gives a foolproof snake-poison “vaccine.” A snake on a pole that whoever is bitten only has to look on it to live. The image is so famous that still today it is used as a symbol of healing and medicine.
Here’s the secret of the story. The problem was never really the snakes. It was the people’s lack of trust in God. The people were wandering in the wilderness. No one is surprised when you find snakes in the wilderness. It’s also no surprise when quarreling, impatience, grumbling, and anger keep you from getting where you want to go. The snakes are the breaking point: the moment when the you-know-what hits the fan, and the people realize they need to reevaluate: they need to be honest with themselves, they need to name and deal with their sin, they need to find their direction, they need to get back to God. In a word: repentance. Set aside the short- term immediate fix of the snake on the pole. Repentance is the medicine they really need to change their lives for good.
Sounds a lot like Lent to me.
We have now had a year to reflect on this pandemic. This pandemic has done nothing but highlight exactly the way our society is still wandering in the wilderness: divisions between wealthy and poor, the inadequacy of our care for our elderly and the most vulnerable, a racial chasm between black and white, all the people we rely on to be “essential” but expose to low- paying, low-safety jobs, the simple day-to-day “human” interactions like hugs or handshakes that we took for granted, our stubborn unwillingness to be minorly inconvenienced to keep our neighbors alive, a choose-your-own-adventure understanding of truth, our constant struggle as churches to change, our tendency to place our trust in fallible human leaders instead of God.
On Prayer Breakfast Tuesday, I asked a simple question: “What have you learned about yourself?”
Don’t get me wrong: I am overjoyed that the vaccines are getting into arms. I am so grateful to have received my own. But the vaccine is our snake on the pole. It may save our bodies from the pandemic, but unless we do the hard work of repentance: the reevaluation, the self-honesty, the naming and dealing with our sin, finding our direction, getting back to God, we won’t be taking the medicine we need to save our souls and the soul of our country for the long-term.
That medicine, that Savior is Jesus Christ. Lifted up not on a pole, but on the cross. This morning salvation has come to us in words so famous that many of us can quote them by heart: “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.”
The medicine we need in our world right now is belief in Jesus. On the cross, he has been lifted up so that all people can see him, can come to him, can receive his grace, his forgiveness, his eternal life. For all the things and people we have trusted in, this world already has been saved by the one who gave himself for us, who gave us his life so that we may live with him, in him, and for him forever.
Belief in Jesus: that is eternal life. And it’s also life right now. Because believing in Jesus means believing in what he taught: “Love one another as I have first loved you.” “Greater love knows no measure than this, that one lay down their life for a friend.”
That’s not just a shot in the arm. That’s not just how we get through this pandemic. That’s how we get through every plague and every challenge we face: together. In love. Trusting in the God who “so loves” us and the whole world. When we see this crucifix, may it be a sign of hope for us and for all people of the God who saves us and will bring us one day to the Promised Land.
Amen.