God's Love Lifted Up

Year B: Fourth Sunday of Lent

The forty days of Lent bring into focus a long biblical tradition beginning with the Flood in the Book of Genesis, when rain fell upon the earth for forty days and forty nights. We read about Elijah walking forty days and forty nights to the mountain of God, Mt. Horeb. We read about the forty years that the Israelites wandered through the desert in order to reach the Promised Land. The biblical desert is primarily a place of purification, a place of passage. The biblical desert is not so much a geographical location—a place of sand, stones or sagebrush—as a process of interior purification leading to the complete liberation from the false-self system with its programs for happiness that cannot possibly work.¹ —Thomas Keating

Year B, Fourth Sunday of Lent, March 10, 2024

First Reading: Numbers 21:4-9

Psalm: Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22

Second Reading: Ephesians 2:1-10

Gospel: John 3:14-21

Sermon - God’s Love Lifted Up

There are lots of thoughts about why Christ died. Christians all agree that Jesus died “for the remission of sins,” but they disagree what exactly that means or looks like. In fact, there probably isn’t one “official” reason for why Jesus died. That is, there probably isn’t just one theory of how all that works that is superior to the others.

The Bible gives us various reasons, and all of them are metaphors to help us understand the tragedy of the Cross. Hebrews relates Jesus’s death to the sacrifices under the Law. Mark speaks of Jesus’s death as a ransom for many. Others in the New Testament draw from Isaiah 53 or Psalm 22 to explain the death of the Messiah. And the apostle John offers us yet another vantage point from which we might view the Cross.

And the passage who used to make his point is really…weird. Read it for yourself:

From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom, but the people became discouraged on the way. The people spoke against God and against Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food.” Then the Lord sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died. 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.” So Moses prayed for the people. And the Lord said to Moses, “Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.” So Moses made a serpent of bronze and put it upon a pole, and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live. Numbers 21:4–9

Since you’re probably already familiar with today’s passage, this citation may not seem that strange to you, but try to put yourself into someone’s shoes who is first reading the Bible. Fiery (or venomous) serpents? A bronze serpent on a pole? What’s going on here? How could this relate to the Cross?

Well, Jesus really latches onto just one idea from this passage: the serpent was lifted up on a pole.

And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. John 3:14-15

For John, Jesus was lifted up so that we might look upon him and believe. In other words, Jesus died to show us the Father’s love so that we might live.

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. John 3:16

Our sins, like the serpents in the wilderness, seek to destroy us, and in destroying us, they attempt to destroy the world around us. Our anger, frustration, and despair end up corrupting our work, our families, our churches, and our communities. No sin is sinned privately.

What, then, is the way forward? How might we find life, which gives the world around us life?

By looking at the love of God lifted up.

God did not send Jesus to condemn us but to save us.

“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. Those who believe in him are not condemned, but those who do not believe are condemned already because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.” John 3:17–21

Our hatred of this light, of this salvation, that we sometimes harbor comes from our fear that our bad deeds might be exposed. When we put our head down and refuse to gaze upon the One who was lifted up, we are often trying to hide something about ourselves.

Coming to Christ means coming to the Light, and coming to the Light means willingly enduring the often painful experience of dying to oneself.

It means relinquishing the idea that you have any power at all within yourself to save yourself from yourself. Only by looking upon the love of God can we finally admit our powerlessness and give up the tendency of the ego to circle its wagons and keep what we need the most out.

Look upon the Cross. Look upon God’s love lifted up. Jesus has come to change our minds about who God is, and, in doing so, tells us a lot about ourselves.

Second Reading: Ephesians 2:1-10 - Fearing Death

The fear of death is a universal experience with which we can all relate. The Hebrews writer says that Jesus came to “free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death” (Hebrews 2:15). And why do we fear death? Well, the easiest answer is because of sin.

Death is most often associated with a time of reckoning. Depending on one’s worldview, what exactly happens at death may differ, if anything happens at all, but most Christians believe that one either goes to a good place, heaven, or a bad place, hell. There’s variations within Christian circles, of course, but this typical view is what strikes fear in the hearts of many when they contemplate that great step we must all take.

But there is one secret to all of this.

We have all been dead already.

Don’t worry. I’m not trying to pull some kind of M. Night Shyamalan stunt. I’m just using “death” in a different way. In Ephesians 2:1-10, Paul explains that we have all been dead in our sins at one point or another. When we walked in the way of the world, we were walking around dead.

“But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus…” (Ephesians 2:4–6).

We, then, have no need to fear death because for us, both kinds of death have been defeated. Not only has spiritual death been conquered, but in some sense we have already been raised with Christ and sit with him in heavenly places. While we may have some apprehensions about dying, our life is with Christ in God.

Thanks so much for keeping up with this blog. If you have any suggestions, recommendations, or critiques, you can always comment here or reach out through my website: https://danielr.net.

1. Keating, Thomas. The Mystery of Christ: The Liturgy as Spiritual Experience. New York: Continuum, 2008. Print.