Have you ever been around someone who complained all the time? I have. It’s maddening. And the thing is, often grumblers have no sense of perspective. EVERYTHING is a grievance worthy of World War III to the kvetcher. I have known people who love to complain so much that they will complain to the empty air when those around them have stalked off and sworn to listen no more. They grumble just loud enough for their loved ones to still hear the griping, but not so loud that they can’t try to deny it if caught.
They grumble because everything is about THEM, and they have no perspective to see others who are suffering more. Nope, it all about meeeeeee. Gripe, gripe, gripe. Grumble, grumble, grumble. I mean, you don’t have to Pollyanna. But not everything is worthy of complaint. And it’s been one solid year since we were able to be together to worship together and have Eucharist around this altar. So God knows there have been plenty of opportunities to be not just sad, to be not just anxious, but also to grumble. But a little of that is to be expected.
Let’s face it, though, during the Exodus, those Israelites have been acting like petulant, faithless toddlers all through their time in wilderness, and that is an insult to toddlers everywhere. They have complained, and they have complained some more, and they’ve been impatient, and they have been faithless. They’ve made promises and broken them repeatedly.
And the thing is, when all you look for is what is wrong, all that you see is wrong. And the first few times they did it, God patiently tried to assuage them. Hungry? Here, eat the same bread the angels ate, and meanwhile, I’ll just have a few thousand quail drop down in front of you—all you gotta do is pluck ‘em, clean ‘em, and roast ‘em. Thirsty? Moses and Aaron will strike yon rock over there, and fresh water will come a gushing out.
Complaining and the lack of gratitude and perspective that come with it are a deadly poison to the soul. So no wonder then that poisonous snakes rise up among the people. It’s a symbol of the poison they have been loosing into the world rather than marveling at all the good things they do have: Family. Freedom. A return to their homeland. A God who cares for them again and again. In Moses, a leader willing to give up his own comfort for their sakes. And even though they claim that God has sent those snakes among them because God has finally had enough of the constant kvetching, I suspect that they knew that those snakes had sprung up from every disagreeable complaint that had fallen from their lips and gone splat like a lead balloon on the hard, rocky ground at their feet.
And it is often the case that in order to get well, you have to be able to name what made you sick, and evaluate what role you yourself might have played in your illness in the first place. So since their poisonous complaint set loose poisonous snakes among them, the solution is to fasten a visual representation of what is attacking them. In other words, God orders that the Israelites have to look on the image of their own guilt and ingratitude. They have to look upon that poisonous snake, and realize that the real problem was their own poisoned hearts and souls. Admitting that they had set the snakes loose among themselves was the crucial first step to healing and health.
In our gospel, Jesus compares himself to that shiny snake lifted up on a pole, and that sounds just as bewildering a comparison. Jesus is hardly a poisonous reptile. But that bronze or fiery snake was placed on that pole that the people might look upon the symbol of their transgressions, accept their sinful, hateful tendencies, and lift their eyes from their fear, their pettiness, their self-absorption, and their unpleasantness. They looked up at that snake and knew the snakes were actually themselves. And then determine to turn away from death toward life.
Likewise, Jesus is lifted up on a cross—a symbol or torture, a symbol of shame—and we too are called to look upon him , remembering that what put him there was the very worst evil fearful humans could devise, so that we might see him, believe, and live.
But believe what? To believe in the love that Jesus calls us to embrace that we might have eternal life. To remember that Jesus himself is Love Incarnate. And to remember that our own love of evil rather than love of good has put Jesus there. It was said those who lived by a sword would die by a sword—yet, except for overturning some tables and braiding a whip made out of his own frustration, Jesus has actually spent most of his life denying the power of violence and the power of the sword. And yet there he will be-- placed there by all the forces that rule through fear, and violence, and oppression, and exploitation. The living example of love in human flesh that Jesus is absolutely is anathema to the forces of evil and death to which we cling so desperately, because it is all we have known.
We know how to insist on our own way. We insist on our own way out of fear, out of jealousy, out of spite, out of a misguided calculus that says that one is only winning if one has more than all of those people over there. We know how to be vengeful. We know how to scorn others, to put others down based on their ethnicity, their race, their culture, the threat they pose in competition with us for things we have taught to covet because we believe they are scarce. We know how to complain when everything doesn’t suit us, and to let that poison run wild through our relationships with both each other, and worse, with God.
We are human, but that is not an excuse. It’s not that flesh is bad and spirit is good, as many people have twisted Paul’s words we heard this morning. If the material world were fallen and evil, Jesus would have never come to live among us as one of us, and we wouldn’t be eagerly looking forward in a few minutes to taking common things of the earth-- grain and grape, bread, wine, and water-- and together joining in invoking the Holy Spirit to make of these things of earth the Bread of Heaven and Cup of Life, a living memorial of just how much Christ loves us and gives himself for us, and calls us to give ourselves for each other. No, when Paul speaks of the “flesh,” it has to do with about our tendency to be self-centered, even “self-obsessed.” It’s that same self-obsession that caused the Israelites to spout their venom at God, blaming God for their discomfort. As we all are prone to do.
Too often we concentrate on how we are separate from others, and fearfully seek to protect ourselves against the perceived threats that others may pose to us through competition in seeking to fulfill their OWN desires. The problem is, extreme individualism doesn’t make us feel safe, but actually vulnerable and exposed to attack, since everyone else is a potential competitor for what we’ve been told are scarce goods and resources. This, to me, seems to be the ultimate crisis in our modern western society. For every passage like this, Paul also usually provides another passage reminding us that we are part of the Body of Christ and thus part of each other (such as 1 Corinthians 12-13). When we look at THOSE passages, we are reminded that the gospel of Christ is one of abundance: abundant mercy, abundant grace, abundant kindness, abundant healing. And that abundance is found within community, not against it.
All our fear comes naturally. But we have to be taught how to love. And so Jesus is given to us.
Jesus makes it clear in our gospel today that Jesus is God’s gift to us, given to us out of love, so that we might know how to live as fully human, fully beloved humans made in the very image of God. It’s right there in John 3:16-17:
“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. 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.”
Likewise, Paul affirms “God is rich in mercy,” bearing us “great love” as we benefit from the “riches of God’s grace,” --even when we have stubbornly, fearfully, or selfishly rejected calls to repentance and atonement with God. God claims common cause with us out of love, and calls us to align ourselves with that love that we might have abundant eternal life. That is what “atonement” really means—say it slowly, and you hear it “at-ONE-ment.” Being at one with the love that creates and sustains the world. This requires dedication, determination, and discipline upon our parts—and a willingness to own up to our shortcomings and sins when presented with them. Atonement must never be seen as painful or denigrating, but of lifting up our eyes from our self-centeredness to a life of hope and healing.
So we must affirm that God sends Jesus NOT for judgment, but for love. For mercy. Because justice is such an important concept, central to the very identity of God and God's commandments, it has both an opposite, which comes from ignorance and even hatred, and a companion, which comes from love. The opposite of justice is injustice, and it is a sin, whether a sin of commission, or a sin where we benefit from unjust systems and shrug our shoulders at our alleged powerlessness. The companion of justice is mercy—in which we receive grace and forgiveness where we deserve wrath and punishment. God calls us to not just receive justice and mercy, but to enact it for those around us.
Jesus calls us to repentance not for punishment, but for healing, wholeness, and for joy. For eternal life. Right now. For us all as a community. God so loved the WORLD, we are reminded. And that includes everyone—even those at odds with us, even those we resist calling our neighbor because we like the word “enemy” so much better.
John’s gospel does not speak much about “the kingdom of God/heaven” that we hear of repeatedly in the synoptic gospels. Instead, the term which John most emphasizes is “life.” And in 18 of those instances, the adjective “eternal” comes before that—and he first time we see that pairing is right here in today’s gospel. So eternal life is NOT about what happens to us after we die. Eternal life is about what happens right now. It is a new way of living that brings ultimate peace, ultimate contentment, ultimate joy. We attain those blessings through walking in the way of Jesus, through joyfully taking up our cross of love for Jesus, through being brave enough to lift up love God calls us too rather than the sins to which we cling -- to look upon that love lifted up, and live.
We all take our turns in the wilderness. Do we look only to our own needs, or do we look, and act, for the welfare of those around us? This past year has put us to the test on that. It is only a life lived for others that can bring about the security and hope that we all long for. Anything else sets us at opposition to one another and makes us miserly in our response to God’s great gifts. And that is no life at all.
But love—love that redeems us and claims us as beloved, love that is lifted up to unite us with all creation—that is eternal life right now.
Amen.
Preached at the in-person and online 10:30 am Holy Eucharist, the first on Sunday in exactly a year, at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville.
Readings:
Images: Michaelangelo Buonarroti, detail from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel; Moses strikes the rock at Massah; Georges Roualt, Crucifixion, 1936; Complaint department button from Etsy.
