It’s not at all unusual to be watching a sporting event – perhaps a football game – and see someone holding a sign that says, quite simply: “John 3:16.” That’s really all the sign needs to say, because most people – including a lot of people who never come close to entering the doors of a church – know exactly what those words mean. They are some of the favorite words of the Bible, words that often can be recited by people who don’t know another word of Scripture. Let’s say them together, right now: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
Now that we’ve done that, I’m wondering just how many of you could recite the words that come right before John 3:16, John chapter 3 verses 14 and 15. The words that read like this: “And 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.” That’s a lot harder to remember, isn’t it? We don’t know those words as well – in fact, they are words that don’t even make sense unless you’re really familiar with your Old Testament history and that strange story we read in the 21st chapter of the Book of Numbers.
In today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus is having what seems to be a private, late-night conversation with a Pharisee by the name of Nicodemus. Not only was he a Pharisee, but Nicodemus also was a member of the Jewish ruling council, the Sanhedrin. He comes to Jesus at night, probably because he didn’t want the other Pharisees to know that he was going to talk to Jesus. Virtually every other time that we read about Pharisees in the Gospels, we read that they were arguing with Jesus … they were criticizing Him … they were trying to trap Him into saying something that blasphemed God … they were even plotting His death. But Nicodemus is different. He wants to learn from Jesus. In John chapter 7 – another time when the Pharisees and leaders of the Temple were plotting against Jesus – Nicodemus actually speaks up in Jesus’ defense. After Jesus’ body has been removed from the cross, John tells us that Nicodemus brought large quantities of myrrh and aloes to help bury Jesus’ body in the tomb. Scripture never mentions Nicodemus again, but we do know from the Book of Acts that some Pharisees became Christians. Early Church tradition tells us that Nicodemus did, indeed, become a Christian.
But one thing we can say for sure about Pharisees – about the good ones and the bad ones – is that they knew their Scripture. They knew it inside and out, frontwards and backwards. When Jesus mentioned the serpent lifted up in the wilderness, Nicodemus’ mind would have gone straight to Numbers chapter 21, the chapter that Jesus quoted when He referred to Moses lifting up the serpent in the wilderness.
If you’re not familiar with that event, here’s a summary of what took place. The Children of Israel were in the wilderness during their 40-year sojourn from Egypt to the Promised Land and they grumbled and rebelled against God – something they had done repeatedly in the past. We read: “And the people spoke against God and against 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 loathe this worthless food.’ Then the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died. And the people came to Moses and said, ‘We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord and against you. Pray to the Lord, that he take away the serpents from us.’ So Moses prayed for the people. And the Lord said to Moses, ‘Make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.’ So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. And if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live.”
For the Children of Israel, the solution to their “serpent problem” was not just to kill the fiery serpents. They couldn’t kill them or get rid of them – there were too many, they just kept coming, they just kept biting. The solution was not to administer some medicine, for no human medicine could cure them, even if one had been available. They couldn’t hide or run fast enough or climb high enough to get away from them – no matter where they hid or ran or climbed, the snakes were waiting for them. Waiting to bite them. Waiting to inject them with their deadly, fiery venom. Waiting to make them suffer. Waiting to make them die.
Does that sound familiar? Does that make us think of things like “sin” or “eternal death?” After all, we can’t get rid of sin – it just keeps coming at us. We can’t cure sin. We can’t hide or run from sin. No matter how hard we try, sin is always waiting for us. Sin is always waiting to inject us with deadly, incurable venom. Waiting to make us suffer. Waiting to make us die.
The whole world – every last one of us – has been bitten by sin, and the “wages of sin is death.” We were even bitten by sin while we were still in the womb; as King David writes in Psalm51: “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.” But God sent His Son to die – not just for the Children of Israel, but for the whole world.
The difference between dying and living, the difference between eternal damnation and eternal salvation, is faith in Jesus Christ. Jesus could very well have come into this world as a judge who would destroy every rebellious sinner. Jesus could have ordered the death sentence for every one of us – and there’s not a single word that we could say in our defense. But in His infinite love, Jesus came to our world as our Savior. He came to our world to suffer and die on the cross. Nicodemus certainly didn’t understand this any better than he understood Jesus’ words about being born again or being born of water and the Spirit.
What Nicodemus did understand about the serpent lifted up in the wilderness is that the bronze serpent itself did no healing. The bronze serpent in itself saved no lives. As Luther once wrote: “Just looking at the serpent did not effect the cure; it was faith in the Word that did it. These people accepted the Word of God as a reliable promise of healing and deliverance from the poison.”
On the hill called Golgotha – on Good Friday – Jesus became our uplifted serpent. The fiery serpent lifted on the pole by Moses brought temporary physical life to those who believed. But when Jesus was lifted on the cross, He brought eternal life to all who believe. So as we and every man, woman and child who have been poisoned by sin looks up to Jesus in simple, trusting faith, we know that we shall not die the death of eternity. We shall not suffer the fires of hell that are so very much stronger and enduring that the pains of the fiery serpents. We shall not be punished with everlasting damnation. We have forgiveness. We have eternal life. We have Jesus.
As Christians, we are used to seeing crosses in our churches. I suspect that if we walked into church this morning and saw a snake – not a real snake, but one made of wood or even of bronze – hanging there, we’d be grossed out. We’d be upset. It would be horrible to look at a likeness of a large snake right here where we worship.
But we have no problem looking at a cross – and let’s face it, a cross is an instrument of torture. A cross is an instrument of death. In itself, a cross is a terrible thing. And a cross is what Jesus is all about. As St. Paul writes in Philippians 2:8: “he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” The cross of Christ is a wonderful thing. The cross is a statement of what we believe.
One of my Seminary professors used to remind us students – remind us frequently and at great length – that people who go to church rarely remember our sermons for very long, no matter whether they’re good sermons or not-so-good sermons. What we do remember when we go to Church is the liturgy. We remember the hymns. We remember receiving the forgiveness of sins through the Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. We remember the cross.
We can see the cross on this altar and remember what Christ has done. We can see an empty cross like this one [point to side] or a crucifix like that stained glass window that bears Jesus’ body, and that cross continuously reinforces what we believe. If I cannot follow the sermon or if I cannot sing a hymn that seems particularly difficult, I can understand the cross. We do understand the cross. And we can never forget it.
I’ve seen this personally during these past six years when I have visited people whose minds have been afflicted with dementia and Alzheimer’s. As you talk to them, you never know if they’re hearing or comprehending what you say. But you would be amazed how many of them – even those who seemingly have forgotten everyone and everything – will recall the Lord’s Prayer and pray it with you. Will recall the Creed and say it with you. May even start to sing along if you’re singing an old, favorite hymn.
When we are seriously ill or even at death’s door, only the cross is important. As much as we love the words of John 3:16, we can love and understand them even more when we include those words that precede that verse: “And 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.”
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