Scott AndersonNumbers 21:4-9 † Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22 † Ephesians 2:1-10 † John 3:14-20 A video version of this sermon can be found here. I’m sure you’ve noted in the news that we have passed another important milestone this week. We have now spent a full year with this pandemic, with its limitations on our movement and interaction with one another. Our last in-person worship was March 8th, 2020. On that date the US had marked 22 deaths from Covid-19. None of us have been unaffected by the strains of this past year. Few of us have been untouched by the sting of death. What would we have thought, what would we have done differently if we knew at that moment that just a year later well over half a million of us would be dead from the disease in the United States and 2.6 million souls world-wide? How would we have acted differently? I suppose we in the Seattle area have a unique perspective on this having been hit first and hardest. I’m sure you’ve seen the article first published in the New York Times noting that had the rest of the country followed the lead of Washington as many as 300,000 of our neighbors—grandparents and farmworkers and health professionals—might still be alive.[i] There is a direct link, according to the texts for this morning, between our ability to face our stories with a steady, honest gaze, and our health and well-being. I suspect this is true on an individual basis, as a church and local community, and as a nation and world community. It is true in our most intimate relationships—as friends, as parents, as spouses and partners. This is the central lesson of this ancient and strange story from Numbers that is then taken and reused by John in our gospel lesson. To look closely and honestly, unflinchingly and lovingly at the choices we have made, at our actions and their consequences, at the truth of who we are is a precondition for our healing. We cannot correct, we cannot redirect, we cannot ultimately find our way to new life without this confessional, reflective honesty. To attend closely to the wound and its cause is the beginning of healing. A corollary of this is at the heart of modern medicine even as it was understood in practice by the ancients. We are, of course, all too aware as we anxiously watch the numbers of the vaccinated grow, promising a return to life something more like it was. It is no accident that both the American Medical Association and World Health Organizations have adopted the Rod of Asclepius—a snake on a pole—as the symbol for medical healing. One of the great wonders of modern medicine is that scientists have learned how to de-fang viral forces and return them back to the body as vaccines. The only sure cure for infection is exposure, in which the body produces killer memory cells to combat the danger, to resist what would otherwise kill us. The disease is used to cure the disease. I suspect that both Numbers and John understand this imagery in the way that we see it in Ephesians as well: you were once dead through your sins, following the common and course way of a world that cannot see the death-dealing results of its actions. Greed, hatred, fear, apathy, the othering of racism, sexism and economic exploitation, the tyrannies of our selfish preferences that plague our social, economic, and political life. These diseases, as they pervade our life together, are destroying us and they will continue to as long as we choose not to look squarely at them, examine them, and remember. Why would we choose to put these serpents on a pole for all to see, for us to see? Why would Christianity choose to center its story around the dying and degradation of a God who took on our diseases in order to become the antidote? There is no easy answer to this. I am not sure, for example, that I would ever want to claim that the death of Jesus or any unjust death is necessary. Ever. But there is a sense that our exposure to the truth of our diseases, of our dis-ease, disrupts its power and reveals to us the love and justice of God that is the antidote. The season of Lent and the planting like a flag of these images for all of us to see, if we have the will and the courage to look, to expose ourselves to truthful examination bears with it a promise. With examination, with confession comes the very real possibility of repentance and the new life it promises—God’s new age. You see, John is absolutely clear about this: God is never the source of condemnation, but always the driver, the source of salvation—the cure—in all the ways we need it. So, enough words. Now a little action as we mark a year in these places we have occupied. A practice that might help us to see. I am grateful to the pastor Elsa Cook for this guided reflection.[ii] Find yourself here, now, with two feet planted firmly on the ground. Take off your slippers or socks or whatever is covering your feet. It’s ok. Be brave. I am going to. Give it a try yourself, even if it isn’t your style. This is holy ground. Right here, in this place, where two or three are gathered in worship and wonder, in your place, even if you are the only one you see. Take a deep breath, full of the dust of the ancestors and the lives lost this year. Feel the presence of the whole cloud of witnesses here with us now. Breathe in and breathe out. Look around the space where you are and have spent so many hours in this past year. Life has happened here. Notice five things that you can see from where you are sitting that remind you of what this life has felt like this year. Breathe in and breathe out. Reach from where you are sitting to touch four things that connect you to someone you have loved. Breathe in. Breathe out. Notice in this space where you have lived abundantly three things you can hear. Listen for the hum of life that is in this place. Breathe in and breathe out. Call to your awareness two scents, smells, or aromas that remind you there is goodness here in this very moment. Breathe in and breathe out. Notice what stirs on your taste buds and excites you about the future and for now acknowledge one thing that you can taste. Breathe in. Breathe out.
For these things that you have tasted, smelled, heard, touched, seen, remembered, we together, give thanks. We give thanks for the rich blessing of this life and for the ways that we seek to live into the days ahead. We give thanks for the life we have shared across internet and phone connections, across safe distances. We give thanks and praise to God. Amen. Notes: [i] Mike Baker. “Seattle’s Virus Success Shows What Could Have Been” New York Times, March 11, 2021. Retrieved on March 12, 2021 from https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/11/us/coronavirus-seattle-success.html?smid=url-share. [ii] See “Pandemic Prayers for the Fourth Sunday of Lent” from her blog Cooking with Elsa. Retrieved March 10, 2021 from: https://cookingwithelsa.org/2021/03/03/pandemic-prayers-for-the-fourth-sunday-of-lent/.
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