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St. Andrew's Church
An Anglican Church • Grimsby, Ontario, Canada
Preached by
Stuart Pike
Rector
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Lent 4 B - Lifted Up
St. Andrew's Church, Grimsby
Sunday, 26th March, 2006
Numbers 21:4-9; Psalm 107:1-3,17-22; Ephesians 2:1-10; John 3:14-21
This is one of those Sundays which puts me in an interesting position. Many of you will know that, being the fourth Sunday of Lent, it is Mothering Sunday - a day when we remember our own mothers, and honour them. The reason why this Sunday was known as Mothering Sunday, was because the epistle for the day (which used to be Galatians 4:21-31) compared the rivalry of two mothers, Sarah and Hagar, then noted that "Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all."This Sunday, part way through the season of lent was seen to be a break from the solemnity and a chance to even rejoice in the midst of the fasting and repentance. Working children were given time off to visit their mothers, and cathedrals, which were the mother churches of the Diocese, encouraged people to make a pilgrimage home to the cathedral and were met with the festivities of homecoming. Children made simnel cakes for their mothers and brought flowers which they gathered along the way. Clergy wore rose-coloured vestments which replaced the more sombre deep purple colour of Lent. With the commercial takeover of Mothering Sunday, and its removal to the second weekend in May as "Mothers' Day", a few churches have renamed this Sunday as "Holy Humour Sunday", when people are encouraged to lighten up, tell jokes, and enjoy laughing together. This Sunday we will bless some flowers and give one to each woman in the Church in honour of women and to remember our own mothers.
Unfortunately, the lectionary has changed and it seems to afford room for neither mothers, nor humour. What is a poor preacher to do?
Perhaps the Israelites thought that their escape from Egypt would be a walk in the park.. They were leaving miserable lives - anything had to be better than slavery.
They didn't get a walk in the park - they got a long wander in the desert. Their journey was hardship. And, as metaphor for their hardship we hear the story of the serpents in the desert. The people, wandering in the desert are grumbling against God. God sends poisonous snakes to teach them and they repent of their grumbling. God then instructs Moses to put the symbol of the snake on a pole so that anyone who looks upon it will be cured.
This symbol of the snake became the symbol of medicine and is still in use today.
The Gospel lesson is a part of Jesus conversation with Nicodemus. John writes it as though it is Jesus himself speaking, but it is far more likely that it is the writer of the Gospel's own commentary about Jesus. Reference is made to the Old Testament story of Moses lifting up the serpent in the wilderness.
What does this obscure symbol mean? And what can it teach us today? Its deep truth is in its metaphor. Our trek through lent and even our trek through life can seem hard and dangerous. We are bitten by snakes. Our healing comes in the same form as that of the Israelites. To be healed they had to confront their fears by looking at the image of the snake on that pole. They had to face their fear. Notice that the direction of their gaze is changed. From looking down at themselves and their own concerns, God asks them to look up. They adopt an attitude of faith, they face their fears and they are healed and can move on.
The temptation for us is to look down and around us and to give into our fears. Jesus asks us to look up as well. He ,too, will be lifted up, on the cross, and becomes for us our way to full healing. By his suffering we are healed, through his death we are brought to eternal life.
Do we dare lift our eyes away from our selves and our wounds? Do we dare confront our fears?
At Jesus' crucifixion there were few of his followers who had the courage to stay and face their fears. But one who did stay was the one who was there from his birth, his mother, Mary.
Yesterday was the feast of the annunciation. Nine months to the day earlier than Jesus' birthday, we celebrate how Mary was approached by the Angel and told of his birth and of her part in it.
It was his mother who was constant in her faith and her love for her son and for God. Mary represents the love to which all mothers are called: the instinct to love which is the strongest force in creation. She had the courage to stand and even to look up to see her son suffering on the cross.
How does it all work? How is it that Jesus' death on the cross brings us to life and healing? I can honestly say that I do not understand it all. Perhaps it was as Jesus says in the Gospel: the light came into the world, but the people loved darkness, rather than the light. The light exposes what is dark what is sinful, what is fearful. Perhaps Jesus' light was too much for people to bear, perhaps it brings us too close to what we are afraid to face. And so we put the light out. And Jesus is crucified.
The miraculous thing is, the instrument of death and humiliation, becomes for us, through the love of Christ, our salvation. We must indeed raise our eyes. We must face our own fear and then rise above it and look up and be transcended. We must look upon what we have done, and find, astonishingly, a Christ who looks down on us and loves us exactly as we are: before we have changed one particle.
The love that Mary gave to her son - the love which a mother has for her child is magnified in the self-sacrificing love which Mary witnessed in her son that day and in the days to come.
This Lenten season is our time to prepare to look up, beyond ourselves and our suffering and our sin so that we might grasp how completely God loves us. Let us look up and be healed. Amen.
