The Rev’d Stephen C. Holton
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
The Fourth Sunday in Lent
March 10, 2024
In the name of God: Father, Son, & Holy Spirit. Amen.
The only thing the fictional explorer hero Indiana Jones and I have in common is fear of snakes. His comes from likely being in situations where the reptiles inhabit ancient ruins—tombs and the like—and hiss and seem ornery and give the impression that they’d like to bite. I also am not fond of things that bite—of things that can kill with just a bite—but my fear is a little less romantic, a little closer to home.
My mother remembers, as a child, enjoying scaring herself by opening up an illustrated reference book—a large dictionary of sorts, kept on a stand in her grandparents’ home, to the article about snakes, and looking at the drawings and color plates of the snakes. I guess it’s like the “jump scare” of watching a horror film. You know what’s coming, but it’s still fun to be scared in the moment.
And she grew up, as I did, in places where there were lots of snakes. In fact, at that same grandparents’ home, there were pecan trees whose ancient limbs overhung the tin roof of the dining room of the house. And inevitably at Sunday lunch in the summer, when it was hot, and the windows were open, and the meal was always always fried chicken—inevitably halfway through dinner there would be a loud THUD on the tin roof and then a BLUM BLUM BLUM BLUM as something fell out of the pecan boughs and then rolled its way down the steep pitch of the roof—that something being, of course, a diamondback rattlesnake!
Now, as an adult, I have to say I’ve never actually seen a rattlesnake in a tree. I suspect they stay close to the ground. I’m guessing that loud noise was a squirrel that had fallen asleep, or a green pecan itself that fell off the tree out of season, or any other sort of thing that might fall and roll… But the story of the snakes falling out of trees can’t be discounted simply because, sometimes, fiction is truer than fact… There were indeed rattlesnakes on that farm, and they were big and old and ornery. And they were indeed dangerous. It was wise to steer clear of them, and to be aware that they might be under a log, or in a corn row, or just underfoot. And, truth be told, it made an entertaining tale to tell to school friends on Monday mornings or to children in general. Like a horror film when we know what’s going to happen, the snakes are definitely coming to get you! It was a fun way to be afraid—a safe way to talk about risk and danger and to get a little adrenaline going.
I don’t know as anyone ever got bitten, and certainly no one died of a snake bite at that house.
But the desert, as some of the Australians and some of the Southwesterners in the parish can testify, is a much more dangerous place in terms of flora and fauna than the Southeast. Plants can sting you, and reptiles and arachnids can bite and kill you!
So I, along with those folks, have some respect for the snakes that make a cameo appearance in the first lesson today. In fact, I’m quite fond of them.
You see, those snakes are, for me, a measure of retribution. Of justice. Of enforcement. Those snakes are payback for bad, bad behavior on the part of God’s holy people.
Now, before you think I’m petty, let me remind you of what I wrote in this week’s Chronicle, our parish newsletter, about the antisocial behavior around campus this week.
On Friday as I was doing some gardening I watched someone throw a bag of trash out the window of his car—McDonald’s food wrappers and cups and the whole lot, just there on the pavement, with everyone and anyone watching. Picking up trash could consume a lifetime here at Broadway and Elm, but I digress.
And then later in the afternoon I went into the church to notice that someone had taken the welcome notebook—that same one at the back of the Elm Street aisle--where I ask newcomers to enter their contact information. And to add insult to injury, it was the second time the notebook had been stolen in as many weeks. I mean, I’m used to the pencil being taken, but the whole notebook? Really.
And then, as though there weren’t enough to bemoan, as I walked out of the church building through the Elm Street porch, I realized that yet another beloved child of God had uprooted and taken the lovely miniature boxwoods that the flower guild had planted outside the church doors. In their place they left a pile of matches, a hole, and a mess of scattered potting soil.
People are, quite simply, impossible. There's a never-ending stream of stories like this of bizarre, antisocial, and just annoyingly wicked behavior around the church.
And thus has it ever been so. In the reading this morning, God’s people have been delivered from slavery in Egypt and are on the way to the promised land. And yet they complain. There’s not enough to eat. There’s not what we want to eat. There was better food in Egypt, for goodness’ sake! They’re angry and complaining and acting out.
And what does God do?
God sends snakes to bite them! (Numbers 21:4-9)
I have to confess that I am somewhat delighted in this idea of retribution. You don't like that I saved you from slavery in Egypt? You don't like how I've cared for you? You're complaining again? Well here are some bitey snakes to show you how bad things could be! Or at least that's what I imagine a vengeful, petty sort of God Almighty thinking.
I'd have liked some snakes to fence the church doors today, to create some retribution, to share the annoyance and sting of theft, of degradation of our community space, and all the annoying things that grind at us each day.
But that's not actually how God leaves things. Of course the people complain again about the snake bites, and what does God do? God tells Moses to make a sculpture--an emblem of a snake on a staff. And if people will look at it, they'll be cured of their snakebites. And they'll live.
It would be easy to think of this snake-on-a-stick as a salvific emblem. A totem. A cure, even. I mean, isn't that how it's working?! And in fact God's beloved people do just that. When the reformer king Hezekiah comes along (2 Kings 18:4) he destroys the bronze serpent of Moses because the people have been making offerings to it, worshipping it as a god!
And herein lies our Lenten tale. The snake, the thing that might provide retribution, correction, punishment, or even deterrence, is a false idol. Sure, it might serve a purpose or make a point. Stop your complaining, you foolish people! But it also causes pain. And it doesn't really solve anything. And in the wrong hands--HUMAN hands--it can become an idol--a god that gets in our way of seeing the one who is really acting, the one who is merciful, the only one who can save.
When we place our trust in mechanisms of vengeance, of even what we sometimes call justice, things go quickly awry. What are our own bronze snakes? The law? Justice? SEC regulations? Immigration enforcement, border fences? Rules, mandates, requirements? It’s easy to confuse those things—even when they work—things of our own making—with the actions of God. To forget what God has done for us—and is doing. To forget whose we are.
The mistake God's people in the wilderness make is in thinking the emblem is what heals them. It's just God. It's always only God. It's not us. It's not our policies or laws or best efforts or trying or anything else but God. God's mercy. God's love.
And so we hear in our gospel message this week that "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) In looking upon Jesus, raised up on the cross, we learn how God loves us--sacrificially, completely, without bounds. And in looking to Jesus we learn how we too can love. Not with retribution, or judgment, or vengeance, but just with love. Only with love. That's how God saves us--through love.
The media personality Ira Glass replayed on his radio show this week an episode from the mid two thousands about the Pentecostal minister and bishop Carleton Pearson. Pearson led a thriving evangelical, Pentecostal, interracial Christian community in Tulsa, Oklahoma, for years. Oral Roberts was his mentor. Over five thousand people attended each Sunday. Offerings were around $100,000 each week. Pearson preached of God’s love, and also of God’s mercy, and also about hell—how one could fall outside of God’s grace.
But one day God spoke to him, and the message Bishop Pearson heard was this: I will save all. I will not lose one soul. No one is going to hell.
And convicted of God’s all-powerful love and mercy, Pearson began to preach this message of universal salvation—the gospel of inclusion, he called it.
God’s love was for everyone. God’s salvation was for everyone. For the blood of Jesus had covered all of creation.
Well, pretty soon the normative elements of American evangelicalism caught wind of what was going on. Pretty soon Oral Roberts and his son, the Falwells, and the Grahams of the Christian right denounced him. And soon enough a conference of Pentecostal bishops labeled Pearson a heretic.
Numbers plummeted, donations dried up, and Pearson lost his ministry, his wife, and his community standing. Turns out it’s easier to follow God when God is angry, apparently.
But Pearson found a home in the United Church of Christ and continued preaching this gospel of inclusion.
He tells a story of feeling love from the Christian community once again when, at the invitation of a another bishop, a woman in a same-sex marriage, to preach to a conference of charismatic Pentecostal Christians, he found a home where people believed that God loved them—and they loved in turn Bishop Pearson. After he came down from the pulpit he was embraced, held, prayed and wept over. And then, out of the congregation, a young man began a dance, choreographed with beautiful music, as he approached the inviting Bishop. His eyes were focused on her the entire time. And as he drew closer, he came right alongside her and whispered something in her ear.
Pearson says at that moment the Spirit spoke to him, and he heard, “She saved his life.”
Later that evening the Bishop phoned Pearson to see how his time in her community was. And he asked her about the young man, the dancer.
Turns out the dancer was the son of an African-American Pentecostal preacher. When the son came out as gay and HIV positive, the father would no longer speak to him. But he found a home there, in church, with these folks who believed in the gospel of inclusion. In God’s radical love.
“What did he say to you?” Bishop Pearson asked his fellow bishop.
“He said, ‘You saved my life.’”
Friends, it’s not the snakes that do the saving. It’s not us, or our rules, or our lies, or any of the things we try to put in place to protect ourselves or the world around us.
It’s only God.
I invite you to gaze with me upon the broken body of our Lord on the cross this Lent. To remember how much we are loved. For it's only from that place that we can go out and deal with the banal, boring, awful and annoying evil of the world we live in. And only from that place of love that we can begin to hope for any change.
When you rise from the communion rail today, look back at the cross. On the altar side there is no corpus. The Body of Christ is you. Is carried out in your bodies. Is carried out into the world.
Lift him up. Let the world see how very beloved it is. Let everyone you know see how much God loves them. Let them see it in you.