Fourth
Sunday of Lent, March 14, 2021
watch here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8lEop4wGho
I thought about comparing the death of Jesus on the cross
with the COVID-19 Vaccines now available.
The vaccines give us hope that we can beat this disease that has killed
so many people worldwide. When we commit
to Jesus, is that being vaccinated against sin?
Wanting to get the analogy
right, I went to the source of all-knowing, Google, and typed in “What do vaccines
do?” Up popped the answer. “Vaccines train our immune systems to create
proteins that fight disease, known as ‘antibodies’, just as would happen when
we are exposed to a disease but – crucially – vaccines work without making us
sick.”[i] The vaccine doesn’t protect us against
COVID-19. The vaccine readies our own
bodies to protect us.
I could see immediately that there is no analogy
there. The vaccines help our own bodies
fight off disease. There’s no vaccine
for the disease of sin. There’s no
spiritual program to which we can commit or ritual we can undergo that will
ward off sin or its effects. We all
sin. Sin kills and there’s nothing
anyone can do it about it, not even God.
Instead, what God does, something only God can do, is take the inevitable
death sin brings on himself. Jesus’
death on the cross is God’s son, the Second Person of the Trinity inhabiting
human form, dying the death brought about by the sins we all commit. There’s no vaccine for sin.
Instead, there is salvation from God. As we see in John 3, this salvation is as
radical we could imagine. The story is
told through the eyes of a religious leader, a Pharisees named Nicodemus who comes
to see Jesus. Pharisees were often
antagonistic to Jesus. Maybe Nicodemus
visited at night so his Pharisee peers wouldn’t know he was genuinely seeking
God’s truth and he thought Jesus had it.
“Rabbi, we know you … have come from God” Nicodemus says. Jesus responds by explaining that he,
Nicodemus, and all people must be born again. The Pharisee does not
understand. So, Jesus sets the story in
within the flow of Israel’s grand narrative.
The original readers of John’s Gospel would have read with
Israel’s story in mind. The very first
community to read John as scripture was probably a group of Christ-followers in
Ephesus between 80 and 100 A.D. They
knew all the Old Testament stories. They
also believed Jesus was the son of God, God in the flesh, crucified, and
resurrected. They believed he had
fulfilled the promises of the Old testament.
From the preaching of the disciples, they knew of the resurrection. The original readers of the Gospel read as
informed insiders. Depending on his age,
Nicodemus himself may have been a member of the Ephesian church and present the
first time the Gospel of John was read publicly.
In the story, Jesus tries to help Nicodemus understand
the idea of ‘born again’ by tying it to a story Nicodemus would have recalled
without even thinking about it. Jesus
said, “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”
(3:14-15). Nicodemus, and decades later,
John’s readers, knew what “lifted up” meant.
Do we?
Jesus is referring to the Torah, specifically, Numbers
21:4-9. Moses is leading Israel out of
Egypt on the march to the Promised Land.
4 From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red
Sea,[b] to go around the land of Edom; but the
people became impatient on the way. 5 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 detest this
miserable food.” 6 Then the Lord sent poisonous[c] serpents among the people, and they bit the
people, so that many Israelites died. 7 The people
came to Moses and said, “We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you; pray to the Lord to take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for
the people. 8 And the Lord said to Moses, “Make a poisonous[d] serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone
who is bitten shall look at it and live.” 9 So
Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent
bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.
Are we horrified to hear
that the Lord sent poisonous snakes that bit and killed complaining
Israelites? Are we just as horrified
that this people God rescued from slavery and sustained in the wilderness, and
called to be his holy people, then complained?
How often do we humans shrug our shoulders at sin and then become indignant
with God when sin brings consequences? How
could God let this happen, we ask. Less frequently do we say, How could
we insult God and reject His rule as we have? For healing, those bitten had to look upon
their sin, a bronze serpent lifted up. There is no escaping sin. We must face it, repent, and accept God’s
forgiveness. Only God can remove sin,
and out of His love for us, He does.
Nicodemus would
immediately recognize the story, as would John’s readers. But what did Jesus mean by “the Son of Man
must be lifted up?” He hints at what’s
coming. Instead of saving a few Israelites in the desert, God would save all
people for all time with the death of his son, Jesus.
The death was very
specific – crucifixion; lifted up for all to see. New Testament scholar Alicia Myers writes,
“Jesus’ body, the very location of God’s glory, is the most staggering
revelation of the gospel.”[ii]
In explaining his death on the cross by illustrating it with Moses’ elevated
serpent, Jesus draws together the double entendre. Nicodemus and John’s readers would know
‘lifted up’ means to be hanged, as in a lynching or crucifixion. Both the Pharisee and the late first century
church would also know ‘lifted up’ means to glorify, as in ‘they lifted up
God’s name.’
In Jesus, the two meanings
coalesce. The shame of the cross
glorifies God as an expression of His love; the cross also takes care of all our
sin; and, the cross gives us the hope of eternal life. This story involving Moses, Nicodemus, Jesus,
and the late first century church also involves us. How we respond to the story determines our
part in it. We cannot just read John 3,
close the book, and move on as if it doesn’t matter. It does. We are actors in this play that is
played out in real life – our lives.
We have two options for
response – to believe or not believe in Jesus as Son of God, God incarnate, and
as our Savior and Lord. In recent weeks,
you have heard me say that Jesus was not interested in believers but in
disciples. According to the late
theologian Walter Wink of Auburn Theological Seminary, the author of John’s
Gospel used the idea of “believe” in a specific way. It’s something much more involved than
intellectual assent or commitment that doesn’t cost us anything to make.
Wink writes, “This idea
[of belief] seems to be that one must commit oneself to Jesus.”[iii] Jesus mentions “believe” in John 3, verses12,
15, & 16, and this just after trying to help Nicodemus understand being
born again as well as grasping his own need to be born again. Wink concludes
both “born again” and “believe” connote the same idea. “To believe … is to throw one’s whole life on
the side of Jesus.”[iv] To believe is to commit, for the rest of
one’s life, to Jesus as Lord, master of all of life. When we say we believe, in terms of John’s
gospel, it costs us everything because we submit everything in our lives to
Jesus’ lordship. We are in bondage to
Him forever. Paradoxically, this gives
us the greatest freedom we’ll ever know.
Who is it that is freed
from sin by believing when Jesus is “lifted up?” For Nicodemus and the rest of the very first
followers of Jesus in decade immediately following the resurrection, this was a
first century Jewish story that reached its climax in the revelation that the
crucified one was the long-anticipated Jewish Messiah. All four gospels strongly imply and the book
of Acts explicitly asserts that Gentiles – non-Jews – are also in this story
when they repent and declare that Jesus is Lord. In fact, the “in-group” shifts. Believers, both Jew and Gentile are brothers
and sisters in Christ. Non-believers,
Jews and Gentiles who reject Jesus, are not.
When we say submission to
Christ brings us freedom, who is the “us” being talked about? The answer to this question comes from a
startling revelation found throughout John’s gospel and especially in John 3.
Who does Jesus save from
sin and death? John 3:16 says, “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 live.” Twentieth century Baptist scholar George
Beasley-Murray calls this verse “the fundamental summary of the message of
[John’s] Gospel and … the canvas on which the rest of the Gospel is painted.”[v]
Most of the time the idea
of ‘the world’ is set in contrast to the Kingdom of God. The world is rebellious and is
perishing. John 3:16 reminds us that as
hell-bound as the world might seem, it’s made up of people. God calls out the sins of society, but God
loves the world. How much? God allowed his beloved son to be crucified
that the world might have the chance to look upon him hanging on the cross, and
believe. The world rejects God. God loves the world so much; he’ll give up
everything for it.
The cross is uncomfortably
public. Christianity is public. We live our discipleship in the world, in the
public eye. People need to see their
need for salvation, and they need to see from where salvation comes. They need to see so they can believe in
Jesus, Jesus lifted up. This is how God
saves not just Israel or not just the church, but the entire world.
AMEN
[i]https://www.google.com/search?q=what+does+a+vaccine+do%3F&oq=what+does+a+vaccine+do%3F&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l2j0i10j0i390.5314j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
[ii] https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fourth-sunday-in-lent-2/commentary-on-john-314-21-5
[iii]
Wink, Walter (2001), “’The Son of Man’ in the Gospel of John” in Jesus in
the Johannine Tradition, Robert Fortna, Tom Thatcher, editors, Westminster
John Knox Press (Louisville), p.120.
[iv]
Wink, p.123.
[v]
George Beasley-Murray (1987), Word Bible Commentary: John vol.36, Word
Books, Publisher (Waco), p.51.
No comments:
Post a Comment