Beauty and Life

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Church Episcopal
March 10, 2024

4 Lent B 

          Last Sunday at Lego Church, we heard the story of Jesus in the wilderness.  We talked about the three temptations the devil offered Jesus: power, privilege, and protection.  We wondered in what way the angels waited on Jesus and what Jesus’ relationship with the wild animals might have been.  When it was time for the Lego build, everyone was asked to build a wilderness scene.  Both the children and the adults at Lego Church take the Lego build very seriously and we had some very interesting wilderness scenes.  We had a beach scene that represented one kind of wilderness. We had a wilderness with flowers and friends.  One person built a representation of Jesus in the wilderness with the three temptations.  One very small child put a Lego person in a Lego escape car.  A child after my own heart.  Interestingly, almost all of the wilderness scenes were happy ones.  A beach. Flowers.  Friends.  A getaway car.  None of the scenes were scary.  The children found life and beauty in their wilderness scenes.

          The Hebrew people could use a little life and beauty in the wilderness this morning.  They are brutal in their complaints against God.  They complain about the lack of food and water and insist that God has brought them into the wilderness to die.  While I have never complained to God about not having enough to eat or drink, I have certainly done my share of complaining to God about war, natural disaster, the illness of beloved family and friends, and any number of other things.  And this is hardly the first time the Hebrew people have complained against God in the wilderness.  Plus the Psalms are full of complaints.  So I would really like to know what about these particular complaints has sent God over the edge.  These complaints caused God to send poisonous serpents to bite and kill God’s chosen people.  I would really like to avoid those complaints!

          As utterly bizarre and inexplicable as it is that God would send poisonous snakes to attack God’s beloved people, perhaps we would do well to focus on what goes right in the story.  The people recognize their sin in speaking against God.  They ask Moses to intercede for them, which Moses does.  And God tells Moses to make a bronze serpent, put it on a pole, and tell anyone who is bitten by a snake to look at the serpent and live.  While on the one hand, the story has gone from bizarre to incredible, and where does Moses get bronze out in the wilderness anyway, God’s plan works and the people live. 

          If we try to be like our children and focus on life and beauty in the wilderness, which is admittedly a challenge in this story, what we see is an agent of death, a poisonous snake, being turned into an agent of life.  All the people have to do is look at the bronze serpent being raised on a pole, and they will be healed and live.  The people recognized their sin, repented, believed God could heal them if Moses asked, then did as God asked of them.  In the end, this is a very weird story about life, but it is a story about life.  Psalm 107 is a reflection on this story, praising God for God’s healing word, God’s mercy, and the wonders God does for God’s children.  At the end of the day, even a day like the Hebrews were having in the wilderness, God is a God of love and mercy.  There is beauty and life in the wilderness.

           In a clear reference to the story in Numbers, this morning we hear Jesus say "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." Jesus is not saying that whoever gets the best score on the correct belief test will be saved, whatever the John 3:16 billboards might imply. The cross itself looked like the very essence of the wilderness-a place where God could not possibly be present and where the poisonous snake of death has done its worst.  But once again, God will take an agent of death, this time the cross, and turn it into life.  In the wilderness of the cross, ultimately there will be beauty and life.  In John’s gospel, the cross and the resurrection are two pieces of the same theological statement.  When we look upon the cross on Good Friday, we will also hear words of resurrection in our liturgy.  When we experience the empty tomb on Easter morning, we know that resurrection is possible only because of the cross.  Jesus beckons us to look at the cross, that serpent of death, to feel that wilderness, and trust that out of death, God will bring life.  When we are bold enough to open our eyes and look at Jesus raised on the cross, and trust that life will prevail, then we can also trust that in the midst of the snakes in the wilderness of our own lives, whatever those snakes may be, God will also act to bring life.  There is beauty and life in the wilderness.

                                                                             Amen.

 

         

Focus

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Church Episcopal
March 3, 2024

3 Lent B

          In seminary, I took a class entitled “Anglican Church History.”  I enjoy history and took a lot of history classes in college, so I was looking forward to the course.  In the first nano-second of the class, we figured out that our teacher, a graduate student from the University of Chicago, had never taught a class before.  Ever.  But we were kindhearted souls and tried to be patient with convoluted lectures and confusing assignments.  The last straw came when we were given a take home open-book test.  I took the test home, found and wrote all the answers, turned the test in, and was quite puzzled to receive the test back and have one of my answers marked as incorrect.  How can you get an answer wrong on a take home open-book test?  I was just as competitive as a student as I am as a parish priest, even if in a slightly different way, so I was not amused.  At the end of class, I went up to the teacher and inquired about my answer, which he insisted was wrong.  So, I politely got the textbook out showed him where I got my answer.  I got nowhere.  My patience was running thin at this point.  I left the room before I said something I would regret and headed home confused and furious. 

          I wonder if the people in the temple felt that same combination of confusion, frustration and fury when Jesus comes barging in with his whip of cords this morning.  The people in the temple were faithful people, trying hard to live according to God’s commandments.  Cattle, sheep, and doves were sold at the temple to help weary pilgrims procure the unblemished animals God required for the temple sacrifices.  Worshipers had walked for miles to get to Jerusalem for Passover.  They couldn’t bring cattle, sheep and doves with them.  Unless they could buy the animals at the temple, they could not make the sacrifices they had traveled so far to make.  The money changers were required to convert the Roman currency into temple currency, just like we convert currency when we travel to another country.  There is always a fee, and in the case of the temple, there were sales taxes to be paid to the Romans.  Everyone at the temple was trying to be faithful to the laws given by God in the book of Leviticus and the laws of the state as dictated by the Romans.

          So, what is Jesus so upset about this morning?  Which of the commandments are the people breaking?  Fortunately, we hear those commandments this morning in the reading from Exodus.   The people in the temple buying and selling animals for the sacrifice do not seem to be dishonoring their father or mother, murdering, committing adultery, stealing, bearing false witness, or coveting.  So, they are good on the last six commandments.  The problem must be in the first four commandments.  But the people don’t appear to have put another god before God, made an idol, made wrongful use of God’s name, or violated the Sabbath.  Quite frankly, they are doing all in their power to keep the law and honor God with the required sacrifices.  So what is Jesus’ problem?

The temple was thought to be the place where humans encountered God in a unique way, the place where the divine and the human meet.  The claim was not that the temple was the only place where the people encountered God.  The Hebrew people had experienced God in their Exodus from Egypt, during their time in the wilderness, in their exile in Babylon far from the promised land, and on and on.  The claim was also not that the Temple was bad.  There are many examples in the New Testament, particularly in the book of Acts, of followers of Jesus worshipping in the Temple.  But the experience of God in the temple was uniquely holy.  However, in John’s gospel, Jesus is the place where the human and the divine meet.  John’s gospel begins “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God….and the Word became flesh and lived among us.”  In that sense, Jesus is the new temple.  When Jesus is asked “What sign can you show us for doing this,” Jesus replies “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.”  The resurrection will allow people in all times and places to experience the meeting of the human and the divine in Jesus. 

          The people in the temple are no doubt confused, frustrated, and angry when Jesus shows up this morning and interrupts their faithful activity.  Sometimes we are so busy and so focused on our faithful activity, trying so hard to do everything right, that we fail to see what new thing God is doing right in front of our faces and we get downright annoyed when interrupted.  In our faithful activity in this holy place, we encounter Jesus in the bread and wine of the Eucharist, in our music, in scripture, and in our relationships with each other.  But Jesus makes clear this morning that there are other places we encounter Jesus as well, sometimes in places where we least expect to have an encounter with the divine.  We encounter Jesus in conversation with those with whom we disagree or do not understand.  We encounter Jesus in a friendly greeting from a stranger or the opportunity to make a difference in the life of someone we don’t even know.  We encounter Jesus in the anger expressed against the injustices of the world.  Whatever else Jesus is up to this morning, Jesus challenges us not to let our focus on our faithful activity prevent us from seeing Jesus right before our very eyes.