In next Sunday’s Gospel, we walk into a conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus, a highly placed member of the Jewish council. He has come at night to learn more about this fellow who is stirring up so much trouble. Jesus tells him that the Life of God is not comprehensible by physical senses; it is a spiritual reality, and one must be born of Spirit to discern the spiritual. He chides Nicodemus, “If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.”
That’s a big “outing” of his Messianic identity. Jesus’ implication that he is this “Son of Man” who has descended from heaven must have shocked Nicodemus. He may been horrified at what sounds like megalomania, or delusion, or pure blasphemy. But Jesus has more in store for him. “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.”
What on earth did he mean by “So must the Son of Man be lifted up?” From where we stand, this means the cross on which Jesus was to die a brutal death, suffering not only the full brunt of human cruelty, but – we claim – also the full consequence of sin, separation from God. This was the penalty he took to the grave for us, and left buried there when he rose on Easter morning. But how could such a “lifting up” bring salvation and its reward, eternal life?
The reference to Moses lifting up a snake in the wilderness comes from a story in Numbers that Nicodemus would have known well. It’s about the Israelites’ journey after their deliverance from slavery in Egypt. Their joy at freedom had quickly turned to bitterness. They complained mightily against God and 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." God, angry at their ingratitude, sends poisonous snakes and many die – rapidly inducing repentance in the survivors. They ask Moses to intercede with God to take away the snakes. And here is God's remedy:
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.
This story is where we get our symbol for the medical profession. We can see this principle at work in vaccines and homeopathic remedies – a small amount of toxin introduced into the body can build resistance. But how would it work on sin? How did Jesus’ crucifixion set us free?
Try this on: If we are indeed slaves to sin – wired to act for ourselves at the expense of others, which is one way to define “sin” – then to gaze at an image of the crucified Lord is to focus on the full effect of sin, the worst case – all the sin of all the self-seeking, creation-exploiting, God-ignoring human beings that ever lived. Yet the healing power of the cross goes beyond a “scared straight” mentality. We are invited to gaze upon, draw near to the healing love of Christ, demonstrated supremely in his taking on this sin-sickness for us. He did not have to. He did it for love, to set us free.
If we think we have no sin, this makes no sense. But if we’ve ever hurt another living creature, or ourselves, and felt that dull ache of shame at our actions… we know. Like every person in the world the age of Covid-19, we are vulnerable to a terminal illness. From sin, we are healed.
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