Sermon preached by The Revd. Neil Fernyhough, September 14, 2008 (Holy Cross Day)
Readings: Numbers 21:4-9; Psalm 98:1-6; 1 Corinthians 1:18-24; John 3:13-21
“The Son of Man must be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” – Jn 3:14-15
In 1643, the Puritan government of Oliver Cromwell passed laws to rid England of so-called idolatry and superstition. This resulted in what is known as the iconoclasm riots, one of which was vividly described with dismay by a contemporary bishop. “What work was here!” he wrote, “What clattering of glass…beating down of walls…tearing up of monuments! What pulling down of seats…wresting out of irons and brass from the windows…defacing of arms…demolishing of curious stonework!…And what a hideous triumph in the marketplace before all the country, when all the mangled organ pipes, vestments…and service-books and singing books that could be carried to the fire…were heaped together.” The bishop no doubt knew that the reason given by Parliament for the destruction of images was Biblical, specifically, the second commandment, prohibiting the making and worship of idols.
I wonder what the Puritan mobs would have done with Moses’ bronze serpent, apparently constructed in breach of the second commandment, but also at the direction of God. Well, I suppose they would have been faced with a bit of a puzzle, as we may be. But the issue is not God’s inconsistency, rather it is an all-too human misunderstanding of the second commandment. On this day when we honour the central place of the Cross as a symbol of our faith, we do well to work our way through this misunderstanding, and the fundamental relationship between the bronze serpent and the Cross.
First, the misunderstanding. The second commandment states that the Hebrew people shall not make for themselves an idol out of anything in the heavens or earth, and bow down and worship it. Now I would suggest to you that there are many curious things in this story, but worshipping a bronze snake isn’t one of them. So what is the story about? On the surface, it recalls similar conflicts in the wilderness between the Hebrew people and God, with Moses acting as intermediary. We have the familiar pattern: The people complain, they’re punished, they repent, Moses intercedes, God responds, and the people are saved. But then there are the unfamiliar elements. We’re first struck by the curious response of God. The fiery serpents bite and poison the people, yet looking at their graven image heals them. There may be a historical reason for this anomaly. There is literary evidence to suggest that among the cultures surrounding Israel, a serpent could in some places be a symbol of evil and chaos, while in others it was a symbol of life, fertility and healing. In this passage, it ingeniously encompasses both these extremes – a means of death and a way of healing.
But there is a still more profound departure from the other complaint stories. This is the last of them, and the most serious, since the people no longer restrict their complaining to Moses, but speak also “against God.” In short, they cross the line from voicing a grievance, to people with no conception of how God is caring for them and very little idea of what it means to even have faith in God. We are to understand the sending of the serpents as not so much as something done to the Israelites, so much as an example of what happens in the cosmos when the mercy of God is absent. Without God, life itself is impossible. The serpents function as a vivid reminder of the necessity of the grace and mercy of God for survival. It has its intended effect. The people repent, Moses intercedes with God, and God instructs him to “make a poisonous serpent and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look on it and live.” The source of suffering is transformed into an object of healing.
Jesus recalls this verse in his chat with Nicodemus, a portion of which we heard in the Gospel reading. “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,” he tells him, “so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” At first, the analogy looks a little strained. How are the events connected, aside from the part about being lifted up? It seems much the same as if I said, “Just as my uncle drove to Oregon in 1956, so I am driving to Clayton’s to pick up a litre of milk.”
What connects the two stories is the use of a symbol – not as an object of worship – but as a mnemonic, an aid to memory. The tangible Cross, like the living serpents, is a source of suffering. The symbol of the Cross, like the bronze serpent, is symbol of healing. The common thread of the saving mercy of God in response to the potential of a Godless reality.
One of the most effective ways of learning something is to experience natural and logical consequences for our actions. After getting burned, you quickly learn not to touch hot stoves and irons. The serpents in the wilderness, much like the chaos represented by the great flood in Noah’s time, are lessons that show us that what we take for granted for life and health and safety – the regularities of nature and ties of family, friends, and society – exist because of the grace of God. Wilfully turning away from God, as though God didn’t matter or didn’t exist, causes us to experience God’s absence. And the natural and logical consequence of living according that reality is chaos and destruction.
When Jesus was raised up, both on the cross and in glory, He brought healing and restoration to a rebellious and wounded world. And when we look upon that event, when we regard it with our mind’s eye, we are acting in much the same way as those Israelites did when they looked upon the bronze serpent. We are demonstrating our faith in the necessity of God to care for us, for others, and for our planet – to heal us whenever we stray into touching whatever hot stoves or irons come our way. As Paul reminds us in our epistle reading, “the message of the Cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to those who are being saved it is the power of God.” And he concludes, “we proclaim Christ crucified…Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”
Which brings us back to images. When I was a child, my family and I used to spend summers at a cabin on the beach near Parksville. My sister and I would spend our time collecting sand dollars, seashells, and stones. We’d bring them back to Victoria, and forget about them. A few years ago, after my father died, Lois and I were cleaning out his basement when we came across a box of sand dollars, shells, and stones. As I looked at them, I was flooded with memories of the past, and filled with a sense of the love I have for my sister and my late parents. When we collected those objects from the beach, I thought we were just keeping pretty things. But when I looked upon them as an adult I saw through the objects to what they symbolised – love. In the same way, the reason we look at images of the Cross, sometimes wearing them or placing them in our homes, is not because we worship the object. We worship the One whose love radiates from that object across the millennia. And in gazing upon it, we are reminded that through faith in what it represents we are healed, made whole, and made holy. Let us never be ashamed to keep our eyes firmly fixed upon the Cross. For it is our origin, our destination, and our means of healing through the eternal mercy of God. Amen.
© Richard Neil Fernyhough, 2008
