Lent

Lent 4B: Trading Snake Stories

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bronze-snakeOLD TESTAMENT: Numbers 21: 4-9

To read the Old Testament Lectionary passage, click here

This is truly one of the oddest passages in the Scripture. It’s probable that the only reason that it even shows up in our lectionary is because this week’s Gospel passage actually refers to it. Here we find the people of Israel in the wilderness. They have been delivered from their captivity and, once again, as they’ve done before, they are complaining, “murmuring” about how bad they have it. “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt,” they cry to Moses, “to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water and we hate this miserable food that we do have.” (So, apparently, it wasn’t that they didn’t HAVE food; they just didn’t have what they wanted!) Now if you remember a similar occasion in the Book of Exodus, God hears the complaints of the people and rains down manna upon them.

But this time, God sends poisonous snakes. The Hebrew word is seraph, which could also be translated as fiery serpents or winged serpents. Whatever they are, I don’t think it’s a good thing, particularly when they are surrounding you and biting you. The serpents bite the people and many of the people die. So, the people come to Moses, full of remorse for complaining and they beg him to pray to God to make the snakes go away, as if Moses is some sort of divine snake handler. But in a curious, and certainly unexpected, move, God does not take the serpents away. Instead God sends a strange remedy. God tells Moses to make an image of a snake. Moses makes one out of bronze and, following the divine instructions, sets it on a pole. And, just as God told Moses, whenever a serpent would bite someone, that person could look at the bronze serpent and live.

Think about it, though. From the very beginning of Creation, the snake has slithered on its belly and eaten only dust without a word of complaint. What better character to rule over the people when they complain about the choice of food? The snake comes to teach humility and patience. Snakes demand our full attention. And in response to the plague of snakes, God gives the people a snake. It is a way of teaching them to look at their fears, to look at themselves, to look at those things that get in the way of life. It is a sight that brings fear and loathing and one that is truly hard to find God’s presence in it. This is a creature that has resigned itself to full surrender.

This is very interesting. God sends snakes to combat snakes; God does not destroy the snake as evil; instead God recreates the image of the snake. And centuries later…Jesus’ death is recreated into something that conquers our own and our lives are recreated into something that lasts for eternity. Snakes for snakes, death for death, life for life—it is a paradox.

 

The ancient rabbis equated both the primordial serpent and Satan himself with a force known as the “yetzer ha-ra.” This Hebrew expression is often translated as “the evil urge,” but this translation is dangerously misleading. According to the Jewish understanding, the good Lord implanted into every human being this yetzer ha-ra, a drive that combines features of ambition, greed and desire.

There is a myth found in the Talmud that relates how the Jewish sages, shortly after the Babylonian Captivity, were determined to put an end to this threat [of this adversary depicted as the serpent]. Encouraged by their recent success at eradicating the “urge” to worship idols (an urge that had been such a constant stumbling-block to earlier generations, but which no longer held any appreciable attraction to the Jews of their time), –these sages now felt (understandably) that they were “on a roll.” So they decided to seize the opportunity to capture and destroy the “yetzer ha-ra” itself. And they were successful. They caught the beast and bound it in chains, eagerly awaiting the moment when they would remove it from the world for all time. But soon strange reports started arriving: Nobody was showing up at work anymore. No one wanted to marry or raise families. The chickens were not laying eggs! Life had all but stopped.

Now these sages came to the realization that they had misunderstood the nature of this “evil urge.” For the drives represented in that faculty are essential for the proper functioning of humanity as God planned us to live our lives. The urge is not “evil” in any absolute sense, but only when it is allowed to trespass beyond its legitimate domain… [For instance], ambition can be an admirable quality when it is channeled towards spiritual creativity and service of humanity, but is a fiery scourge when it is twisted into unrestricted covetousness. It was this failure to set limits to the “yetzer ha-ra” that was represented by the serpent in the Garden of Eden. This made the serpent a suitable instrument of divine punishment–but also of healing. The conclusion from all this is that our role as humans is not to eliminate the “serpent,” the yetzer ha-ra, but to keep it under control and direct it to a productive course. Jews believe that this is best done by following the values and way of life set down in the Torah. (Excerpt from “Brazen Serpents”, a sermon available at http://people.ucalgary.ca/~elsegal/Shokel/Preaching/S970309_Serpent.html.)

 

  1. What is your response to this passage?
  2. What do you think of the characterization of the snakes as humble and patient?
  3. So what is the snake on the pole supposed to do for us?
  4. So what does the midrash story mean for you? Do you think there is an “evil” in your life?
  5. So what, for you, does this say about the power of God in the world? In one’s life?

 

 

NEW TESTAMENT: Ephesians 2: 1-10

To read the Lectionary Epistle passage, click here

This is a typical “Reformation” passage. The author starts with a “before”. The three “before” characters are sin, Satan (the “power of the air”), and self. (The power of the air is a Greek reference. The Greeks believed that there was a space between the moon and the earth that was dominated by demonic activity. It’s just a way of thinking through the theology within their own understanding. Verse 4 begins the “after “ position. “But God who is rich in mercy…” The before, semi-dead state was never the way that we were supposed to be. We were made for greater things. God brings transformation through Christ.

The emphasis here is the shift from “before” to “after”; in other words, transformation. The agent of the change is God. We are playing a part in the change. This Scripture is a central tenet of the Christian faith. The writer emphasizes that we are saved by faith. But it is not an empty do-nothing faith. Good works, rather than being frantic acts to achieve a heavenly residence, are not transformed into the way we are supposed to live. They become the expressions of God in the world.

BUT the writer of this letter (who is more than likely not the Apostle Paul but rather a later follower or disciple of Paul’s) seems to be really focused on continuing this separation between this world and God, between the “sinful” world and God’s promise of grace and life. Paul had introduced the notion of being justified by grace through faith, the notion that God was a redemptive God, that it was a process by which we traversed the experience of this world and along the way encountered God. BUT, here, that word “saved” appears, as if it’s past tense, as if it is some badge of honor that we earn and wear as we continue to be forced to live in this sin-filled world in which we live. Somewhere along the way eschatology became realized, “already”, rather than something to which we look and live into.

Now keep in mind that this letter was probably written in the late first century. Jesus had come, died on the cross, and the Resurrection on which everything that is “Christian” is based had happened. And Jesus had promised to return. That had been imminent for Paul. BUT that hadn’t happened yet. The first century Christian followers (it still wasn’t “Christianity”, per se, the way we think of it today) were wondering if perhaps they had misunderstood, perhaps they had gotten the whole thing wrong. So the emphasis for the writer of Ephesians (as well as others), was a notion of echatology that had already happened, an emphasis on the crowned Jesus sitting at the right hand of God. And for those of us who are still mired in the throes of worldly evil and worldly despairs, there became a separation, a dualism that was put into place that pretty much exists even today. So many of us live in this world, burdened by sin, and hope against hope that God will swoop in and save us.

Really? Is that it? What happened to “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, BUT in order that the world might be saved through him.“? (But…but…but) God’s vision of the Kingdom of God is not to shun the world or even to rid us of all things worldly. God’s vision of the Kingdom of God is to recreate the world into what it is called to be–BUT the whole world, not the ones who follow the rules or the ones who are “good”, but everyone. So in this life of faith, we do not magically crossover to being “saved” from being “unsaved” and then sit back and wait for God to pluck us out of our miserable existence. Rather, we yield to new meanings and new circumstances as God recreates our lives into Life and brings about the fullness of the Kingdom of God throughout this wonderful created world in which we live.

That’s what Lent is about–new meanings and new circumstances. Maybe it’s about dropping the “but” in life. God created the life that each of us has. Why would God call us to leave it behind? Rather God is recreating it as we speak, bringing it into being, into the image that God envisions for it. You know, if we look at things with the eyes of a world where God is not, a world that waits for God to return, there is always a “but”; BUT if we look at all of Creation with the eyes of faith, with the eyes of those who believe in a God who came into our midst to show us how much we are loved, everything has an AND.

 

  1. What meaning does this passage hold for you?
  2. What meaning does this “before” and “after” hold for you? Does that sound to much like an “event” of conversion, rather than a process?
  3. What does being “saved by faith” really mean for you?
  4. How would you describe faith?

 

 

GOSPEL: John 3: 14-21

To read the Lectionary Gospel passage, click here

Well, obviously, this passage begins with the reference to our snake story. This is followed by one of the most well-known passages. Scripture proclaims that God’s extravagant love for the world is a self-giving act of grace. But are God’s love for the world and God’s giving of the incarnate, crucified, resurrected Son limited to the part of the world that believes what God has done? John’s Gospel assures us that “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

This Scripture begins at the last part of what is actually a response to a misunderstanding by Nicodemus. Jesus predicts the Passion, drawing on what would have been a familiar passage as an analogy. There are parallels between the two—“look at the serpent and live” and “believe in the Son of Man and live eternally”. There is also the familiar light / darkness language. To love darkness rather than light is disobedience. In this season of Lent, we consider our disobedience, our “dark” living. If, then, believing is the same as obedience, do we really believe?

The third verse of this passage, though, is, of course, the “elephant in the room”, so to speak. It’s on street corners and marquis, T-Shirts, football helmets, and sometimes painted on faces at sporting events. It is often taken as the quintessential “insider” verse, the badge of honor for the believing Christian. It is often interpreted as “God came; God came to save me and the rest of you are on your own.” But keep in mind that this Gospel was written later than the others. To be a follower of Christ, a person of The Way, was just downright hard. You were NOT an insider. You were part of a fledgling and sometimes persecuted minority that was just trying to hold it together. So, these words would have been words of encouragement, words of strength, a way of defining who they were as a Jewish minority. It was a way of reminding them why they were walking this difficult (and sometimes dangerous) path—because of the great Love of God. But in the hands of the 21st century Christian majority in our society, they become weapons. They turn into words of exclusion, designating who is “in” and who is “out”. Well, first of all, nowhere in the Gospel are we the ones called to make that determination. And secondly, look at the whole context of this Gospel by the writer known as John. It starts out with Creation. It talks about this great Love that is God. And it proclaims that God came into the world to save the world. So how did we interpret this that God had quit loving some of us?

The Truth (that’s with a capital T) reminds us that God offers us Life, that God, in effect, DID come into the world to save us—mostly, I would offer, from ourselves, from our misdirected greed, our disproportionately selfish ambition, and from our basic desires to be something other than the one who God has called us to be. God desires this for everyone. God really does want to save the world from the world. And so the Kingdom of God seems to us to sometimes be inching (or perhaps slithering!) in rather than pervading our world. I think that the world DOES need to somehow be moved to believe, DOES need to somehow begin to see itself anew. But that will never happen if the cross is raised as a weapon. SURELY, we get that it’s something other than that! Remember, God redeemed it. God took something so loathsome, so foreboding, so, for want of a better word, evil and turned it into Life. God is doing the same for the world. God loves the world so incredibly much that God would never leave us to our own devices (or even, thankfully, to those of who count ourselves as well-meaning believers!). Instead, God comes into the world and offers us life; indeed, loves us so much that God offers us recreation, redemption, and renewal. Don’t you think THAT’S the story? It’s not about who’s in or who’s out. It’s about Love. It’s a promise that there’s always more to the story than what we can see or fathom or paint on a sign. To say that we believe does not qualify us for membership; it leads us to The Way of Life.

 

  1. What meaning does this passage hold for you?
  2. How does this Scripture speak to you?
  3. How is this Scripture misused?
  4. Does the story that we read from the Old Testament shed (no pun intended!) any new light on the meaning of the Cross for you?

 

 

Some Quotes for Further Reflection:

 

There was, indeed, something I had missed about Christianity, and now all of a sudden I could see what it was. It was the Resurrection! How could I have been a church historian and a person of prayer who loved God and still not known that the most fundamental Christian reality is not the suffering of the cross but the life it brings?….The foundation of the universe for which God made us, to which God draws us, and in which God keeps us is not death but joy. (Roberta Bondi)

 

Surrender does not simply mean that I quit grieving what I do not have. It means that I surrender to new meanings and new circumstances, that I begin to think differently and to live somewhere that it totally elsewhere…Surrender is the crossover point of life. It distinguished who I was from who I have become. (Joan Chittister, Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope, p. 58-59)

 

It is well know that Christ consistently used the expression “follower.” He never asks for admirers, worshippers, or adherents. No, he calls disciples. It is not adherents of a teaching but followers of a life Christ is looking for…Christ came into the world with the purpose of saving, not instructing it. (Soren Kierkegaard, in Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter, p. 55-56)

 

Closing

 

The way to Jerusalem is cluttered with bits and pieces of our lives that fly up and cry out, wounding us as we try to keep upon this path that leads to Life.

 

Why didn’t somebody tell us that it would be so hard?

 

In the midst of the clutter, the children laugh and run after stars. Those of us who are wise will follow, for the children will be the first to kneel in Jerusalem.

 

Amen.

(“The Way to Jerusalem is Cluttered”, from Kneeling in Jerusalem, by Ann Weems, p. 42)

Lent 1B: Into the Wilderness

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Judean WildernessOLD TESTAMENT: Genesis 9: 8-17

To read the Lectionary Passage from the Old Testament (or the whole story!), click here

This is, obviously, the end of the well-known story. Noah has packed the ark with two of everything and they have spent months cooped up as the rains pounded outside and the flood waters covered the face of the earth. Then he sends the bird out, which returns. He tries again and again and finally, the bird does not return and he assumes that the waters have seceded enough for them to venture out. They begin to load off the ark, probably wondering what they would find.

And now God speaks. And God brings a new covenant, a new promise that from now on all of Creation will be with God, never to be cut off again. And the now-familiar sign appears for the first time—a bow in the clouds, a hint of color as the rains move away, a sign of the promise that God has made. We understand the familiar rainbow as a sign of God’s promise. We look at it and we feel at ease. God will take care of us. In the Celtic tradition, though, the rainbow is a threshold, a bridge between what is and what will be. It’s another Celtic image of one of those “thin places”, places where the air is so thin that what will be can be glimpsed, if only for a moment.

Now we can either look at this story as a sort of children’s story, complete with rainbows and pairs of elephants and zebras or we can look at this story as one depicting a deity who was so angered by the rebellion of the Creation that God wiped it off the face of the earth. Truthfully, neither one works. Indeed, this is a story about rebellion and human sinfulness. (And to be honest, what story is NOT?) But the whole point is that no matter how far the human creation wandered from the Creator, there was a calling back, a return, an offering of love and forgiveness and a chance to begin again. Now, that’s hard for us to fathom too, possibly because we are not good at offering each other “do-overs”. We are not good at understanding a God who would dispense with all means of justified destruction and just offer Presence and Grace and a future filled with hope. It is hard for us to imagine that no matter what we do, no matter what we screw up or blow up or make up, God is offering a chance to return, a chance to be recreated into something that only God can imagine.

In fact, if you read the whole thing, it was God who showed regret. It was God who changed the course of punishment, regardless of how justified it may have been. It was God that offered a chance to begin again. God offers all of Creation a new beginning. It is not a “different Creation”. God doesn’t erase the chalkboard and start writing history again. Rather God takes Creation as it is—sinful, rebellious, human, hurting, afflicted—and breathes grace and mercy in infinite measure into it so that THE creation becomes a NEW Creation.

In her book, Sacred Spaces, Margaret Silf says that “God rejoiced to see his Dream reborn. He desired to mark this moment eternally, as a sign of all creation that hope is more real and permanent than despair. He shone his perfect, invisible light—the light of joy—through all the tears that would ever flow out of human grief and suffering. That invisible light was broken down, through our tears, into all the colours of the rainbow. And God stretched the rainbow across the heavens, so that we might never forget the promise that holds all creation in being.. This is the promise that life and joy are the permanent reality, like the blue of the sky, and that all the roadblocks we encounter are like the clouds—black and threatening perhaps, but never the final word. Because the final word is always ‘Yes’!” (Sacred Spaces: Stations on a Celtic Way, by Margaret Silf, p. 145-146)

In this Lenten season, we will often find ourselves surrounded by darkness. We may find ourselves mired in despair. We might somehow turn up on a road that we never intended to travel. In fact, sometimes we find ourselves in hell. But these are never the final word. Even when tales of a place called Golgotha begin to swirl around us, there is always something more. When we come to the end, God will be there to beckon us into the arms of grace that we might begin again. God has promised recreation.

 

  1. What is your response to this passage?
  2. What, for you, does this “threshold” of the covenant represent?
  3. In what way is this whole season of Lent a “threshold”?
  4. Why is it so difficult for us to fathom a God who offers a new beginning?

 

 

NEW TESTAMENT: 1 Peter 3: 18-22

To read the Lectionary Epistle passage, click here

First Peter is one of the general or catholic epistles. These letters are not attributed to Paul and they are primarily addressed to a group of churches, rather than a specific particular church. This letter speaks to the condition of the churches as they are alienated from the surrounding society and for Christians who in a lot of ways were slandered for their faith. To those who first heard the words in this letter, it was a promise that the powers that were affecting and controlling their lives would not be forever. For this reason, it often provides comfort for believers in troubled times.

It begins with a reminder of Christ’s suffering, without which it would not be possible for us to follow Christ to obedience and encourages readers to not be ashamed of needing to face suffering. The Old Testament reading that we just read provides the data for the claim here that eight persons were on Noah’s ark and reminds us of the covenant made by God with Creation. The flood is used as an analogy for Christian baptism and the whole process of coming to faith. Here baptism, or cleansing (just as the earth was cleansed in the flood) is a resurrection, a re-creation. The whole point is that believers do not need to fear suffering nor fear the powers that be. Their faith and their Baptism has joined or bridged them with Christ. Christ’s story becomes their story.

This is not necessarily a classic salvation tale to which we are accustomed. The writer of this epistle is not preaching the notion of being “saved”. Rather, the reader is being assured of the hope that baptism brings, of the promise of becoming new, recreated, indeed, resurrected. It is a reminder that in baptism, we return to our Creator and we return to the waters in which we were created. And we begin again. For those to whom this letter was written, it was an assurance that the way life was now was not permanent, that the God of Creation was already recreating them into a life beyond what we see, beyond what we know. It was a reminder that the swirling chaos around them and around their church would indeed, like the flood waters so long before, subside and that life would indeed begin anew.

In fact, even the powers of hell cannot impede the recreation that is happening all around us. Now our church chooses to recite the more sanitized version of the Apostles’ Creed but there is an older version that dates back to the 5th century that goes like this: “I believe in God the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ, his only Son our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried. He descended into hell.” That last sentence is believed to have been loosely taken from this passage. We read that Jesus proclaimed even to the “spirits in prison”. In other words, Jesus descended into hell. And, there, he blew the gates open and the eternally forsaken escaped. In the Middles Ages, it was referred to as the “Harrowing of Hell”. Now, admittedly, there is little basis for this theology but if death hath no sting, why would hell win? If God’s promise extends to all of Creation, then perhaps hell really hath no fury.

Now this is in no way a lessening of the impact or importance of sin. We all know that. We sin. We try not to. But we sin. But even the powers of sin are no match for the promise before us. The writer probably didn’t see baptism as so much a cleansing but, rather, a claiming. We are claimed. The water washes over us and the act of being made new begins. Perhaps this Lenten season of penitence is not so much a call to grovel at the feet of a forgiving God but rather to faithfully follow this God who beckons us home again to begin again. Maybe it truly is the harrowing of whatever hell we find ourselves in. But in order to do that, we have to name our sin and release its power. It’s part of our story. It’s part of what we must tell. And with that, the waters subside and the green earth rises again.

 

  1. What meaning does this passage hold for you?
  2. What meaning for Lent does this passage provide?
  3. It is hard for many of us to imagine “suffering” for our beliefs. What does that mean for you?
  4. In what ways is this Scripture sometimes viewed differently?
  5. How do we in this day and age talk about sin?
  6. What is sin to you?
  7. How do we reconcile the modern notion of “hell” with this passage?

 

 

GOSPEL: Mark 1: 9-15

To read the Lectionary Gospel passage, click here

Once again, we read the account of Jesus’ baptism, a reminder of our own baptism and the covenant and promise that God has made. The writer of Mark then goes into the forty day temptation of Jesus in the wilderness and a summary of Jesus’ ministry. You will remember that the way Mark depicts this, the heavens are “torn apart”, ripped open, if you will, as the barrier between heaven and earth is shattered. Jesus, here, is the intersection, the bridge, between the two. Jesus is the thin place, the threshold of God.

Then Jesus departs into the desert, the place of wildness and wonder. Think about all the stories of wilderness—Israel passing through the wilderness toward liberation. In the same way, Jesus is liberated from the world and we with him. Preparing for this liberation is a journey and involves struggle. For some the struggle is overwhelming. But God is leading us all.

During Lent, we often focus on the temptation (the “Satan” part of the story). But looking at it this way, the desert becomes the threshold through which we journey. It is a time for preparation, a time for readying oneself to claim who God calls you to be—God’s beloved child. And the only choice one has is to repent, to turn around, to change. In this passage, Jesus proclaims that “the time is fulfilled”. He will not use that language again until the Passion begins. Mark’s Gospel story begins in darkness. It begins in the wilderness. It begins in hell. The Spirit had driven him there.

Now, our version of the wilderness is sometimes very difficult to grasp. In our world of perfectly manicured lawns and perfectly coiffed houses, we usually do everything in our power to avoid wilderness in our lives. Wilderness means to us some sort of deprivation and, thus, a loss of power. We do everything we can to see that our lives stay exactly where we want them. We take a pill when we have a pain. We use cosmetics so that we won’t look our age. And who of us would ever be caught without access to a telephone? The wilderness is the thing that we are always trying to run from. The wilderness does not fit into our carefully thought-out plans.

Jesus did not see deprivation but, rather, an emptying of himself before God. In fact, if you think about it, Jesus’ baptism propelled him into the wilderness. Maybe that’s our problem. Maybe we missed our wilderness. Maybe we missed our emptying. This emptying brings us in touch with what we really need—and nothing more. Without our pills and our cosmetics, our cell phones and our tablets, our GPS and our step-trackers, we are vulnerable. Thank God! For when we are powerless, when we are vulnerable, where do we go? We look to the only place we know. Because even we, who are normally so in control of our lives, must look to the compass if we do not know the way. And there, we become acutely aware of God’s ever-presence. It is only when we have truly emptied ourselves that God can fill us with God and there we are nourished and fed by those things for which our souls truly hunger. From this we can grow in God’s spirit.

That’s what Lent is—it’s a pilgrimage through an intentional wilderness. These forty days are our emptying time—the time when we strip all of our preconceptions away and meet God where God is—right there with us. We do not walk this road alone. God is always there. And when we are tempted to once again take control, God will still be there. Lent is the time when we allow God to work on us that we might burst forth on Easter morning in radiant bloom.

 

  1. What meaning does this passage hold for you?
  2. What does this say to you about your own Lenten journey?
  3. What is uncomfortable about this whole image of the wilderness?
  4. What does the wilderness image mean for you?

 

Some Quotes for Further Reflection:

 

Not only is another world possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing. (Arundhati Roy)

 

At the center of the Christian faith is the history of Christ’s passion. At the center of this passion is the experience of God endured by the godforsaken, God-cursed Christ. Is this the end of all human and religious hope? Or is it the beginning of the true hope, which has been born again and can no longer be shaken? For me it is the beginning of true hope, because it is the beginning of a life which has death behind it and for which hell is no longer to be feared…Beneath the cross of Christ hope is born again out of the depths. (Jurgen Moltmann)

 

The promised land lies on the other side of a wilderness.{Havelock Ellis}

 

Closing

 

Those of us who walk along this road do so reluctantly. Lent is not our favorite time of year. We’d rather be more active—planning and scurrying around. All this is too contemplative to suit us. Besides we don’t know what to do with piousness and prayer. Perhaps we’re afraid to have time to think, for thoughts come unbidden. Perhaps we’re afraid to face our future knowing our past. Give us the courage, O God, to hear your word and to read our living into it. Give us the trust to know we’re forgiven, and give us the faith to take up our lives and walk. Amen.

 

(“The Walk”, from Kneeling in Jerusalem, by Ann Weems, p. 21)