Savior, Teach Us So to Rise

“Savior, teach us so to rise”

The Rev. Canon Patricia M. Grace

Lent IV – Year B

Numbers 21:4-9; John 3:14-21

Church of the Ascension                                  March 11, 2018

“The soul of the people was greatly discouraged because of the way”

Numbers 21:4 (KJV)

Many years ago I was in trouble. 

No, not legal or financial trouble – I had trouble in my soul…

            the problem was spiritual.

I was in a situation in which I felt unfairly treated, even somewhat abused

            by someone I worked for;

someone I also deeply respected and loved as a friend.

I struggled daily with intense feelings of rage and resentment,

            desiring revenge and retribution…

even though I knew there had to be a better way to handle things.

Over time, I began to live only in that space of anger and bitterness…

those emotions becoming like close, comfortable companions,

something I nurtured, tended to – and not in a good way.

All of this started to affect my sleeping, my work,

            and my interactions with others.

Even so, I clung to a kind of slippery evil

that was poisoning my whole outlook.

My soul was greatly discouraged, like the Israelites in our reading today…

            because of the difficulty of the journey, the way.

I addressed this with my spiritual director,

            lifted the situation up in prayer…

and one night the answer came…

            and it came in a dream.

I dreamed I was holding the most disgusting reptile in my hand…

            a snake of bilious orange,

                        which I could sense was incredibly powerful…

I could see and feel its strength under my hands….

            rippling up and down like a well-toned muscle.

The snake turned to me in my hand –

            and I was shocked to see it had a human face.

The snake spoke only one sentence to me:

“Put me down or I will kill you.”

“Put me down or I will kill you.”

Even in sleep, I sensed this was an important message for me.

The next day, I rushed to contact my spiritual director

            to talk with her about the dream.

“What do you think it means?” I asked her.

She kind of laughed – and said,

“You know exactly what it means…you have to go there…

            you have to face your problem or it will be the end of you.

Look up and face the sickness of your soul….

lay that burden down, or you will die from it.”

With her help and God’s,

            that day became a turning point –

                        and I did face my problem and was set free of it in time.

I could not help but think of all that        

            in light of the story in Numbers that we hear today.

The soul of the Israelites, as the King James Version translates it,

            “was greatly discouraged because of the way –

because of the journey they’d been on.”

They too were filled with anger and resentment –

            and were expressing this with vigor,

                        and not for the first time

in those long forty years in the wilderness.

Like with me, their bitterness had become

a constant and comfortable companion.

Day by day, their unhappiness and dissatisfaction grew more toxic,

                        more poisonous to them and their relationship

to God and to each other.

Maybe God did send real snakes to bite them,

            but this reading seems more like

the record of a scary but helpful dream…

or like a story told to teach a lesson learned

            which needs to be remembered and repeated

for present and future generations.

The people, as the story goes, were beset by poisonous snakes –

            actually, what the Hebrews would have called,

            saraph snakes – like seraphim…

those scary angelic creatures that show up in Isaiah…

six winged entities,

            whose voices shook the foundations of the thresholds of the people.…

We’re not talking those pudgy little cherubs

            that surrounded the baby Jesus at his birth…

but literally, in the Hebrew,

fiery monsters, the burning ones,

who came with a powerful message from God.

Like the deadly strike of a poisonous viper,

            the spiritual sickness of the people was laying them low,

                        even unto death.

So Moses prays and God suggests a sign…

“Make a version of a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole;

and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.”

Moses crafts an image in bronze and lifts it high

            so all the people could see it.

And when they were bitten, again,

by the snakelike evil around and within them,

                        they looked upon the serpent and lived.

Like my spiritual director said,

            “You have to go there –

you have to stare the truth in the face

                                    before you can be set free for a new life.”

Jesus was thinking of this same snaky story

            as he talked with his disciples

in the passage we read in the Gospel today.

He had just come from his midnight conversation with Nicodemus…

            you can hear in that encounter a sense of urgency

                        on Jesus’ part.

He was running out of time to tell the story…

            running out of time

to share the dreams of God for the world,

about which he was sent to proclaim …

and even the great teachers of Israel

seemed unable to understand the message.

The people were missing the signs;

            many were confused, many were resistant,

                        tied to the past, 

                                    to their rigid understandings, rituals and fears.

The people were failing to look in the right direction.

Moses created a bronze image of the evil that had taken over

            his people’s souls…

inviting them to look upon their true state and live.

Jesus would offer another way forward….

            Look upon me, he was saying…

            when I am lifted up…

            and not only healing will be yours,

                        but eternal life.

Jesus came not to condemn or judge us

            for these moments of soul-wracking discouragement,

                        for the many times we choose anger and resentment

                                    over the better way of love and vulnerability.

He came to offer us a way out of the discouragement of our souls…

and being lifted up on a cross

was the way it had to be.

Because, as the early church fathers taught,

            the cross was the only instrument of death

                        that would enable him to stretch out his arms

                                    wide enough to embrace the whole world.

Look on me, Jesus says, and live.

Look on me, Jesus says, and live.

He tell us to

place our burdens, our temptations, our anger, fear, sorrow,

            our pettiness, our lack of love and inability to forgive –

take all the discouragements of the journey of life,

and place them all on me… he said.

And I will show you a better way.

Look on me, Jesus says, who is the Truth -

look on me in the high place of death

and live.

We’ve got to go there, you know…

            where he is lifted up.

We’ve got to make our way to dark Gethsemane as the old hymn says,

and from there, to the cross

and finally, to the tomb.

Go to dark Gethsemane, You who feel the tempter's pow'r;
Your Redeemer's conflict see; Watch with Him one bitter hour;
Turn not from His griefs away; Learn of Jesus Christ to pray.

Follow to the judgment hall; View the Lord of life arraigned;
O the worm-wood and the gall! O the pangs His soul sustained!
Shun not suff'ring, shame, or loss; Learn of Him to bear your cross.

Lent is the time in which we are encouraged

            to make our way toward Jesus,

toward the place where he was lifted up;

to make our way in hope and security

through the valley of the shadow of death into life.

Lent is the time that we focus

through our worship, teaching, preaching, self-denial,

the practice of spiritual disciplines,

            and our mutual support and love for each other,

                        on that task – to look at him and live.

Lent is the time when we look up to learn

how we are invited to follow our own way of the cross,

                        which can seem at times, discouraging, even unto death.

But paradoxically, is ultimately encouraging, even unto life.

Lent is the time when although we may begin in dark Gethsemane,

            we always end up at the empty tomb.

to the final place where he is lifted up –

where we seek him,

and find that he is dead, no longer, but alive.

Look on me and live, Jesus said. 

The journey of a holy Lent, like the way of life,

            can be hard.

But if we travel that way in faith,

            we can be led to the place, where Jesus, lifted up forever,

                        looks right back at us…

where he looks right back at us…

not a lifeless image nailed to a pole,

but our own, living breathing Savior….

who promises to release us

from the deadly venom

of rage and resentment and revenge;

whose presence heals the discouragement of our souls.

Look on him and live.

Early hasten to the tomb, where they laid his breathless clay;

Where all is solitude and gloom; who has taken him away?
No, Christ is ris'n! He meets our eyes: Savior, teach us so to rise.

Savior, teach us so to rise!