Lost in the wilderness
Thumbnail image by Ed Baker, used under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en
Clare L. Hickman
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Ferndale
March 14, 2021—Lent 4B
Numbers 21:4-9; “Touched by an angel” by Maya Angelou; John 3:14-21
Sometimes the preacher’s task is set before her like life and death: on the one hand, “For God so loved the world,” and on the other, “God said to Moses, ‘Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole.’” (over here) Life … (over here) death. (over here) The single most popular verse in all of a million football stadiums … (over there) a whole lot of “Say what???”
Well, you gotta go with the snake on a stick, right? Because the most mysterious places are often the most interesting to explore. Turns out, this bizarre, magical story is one of several in the book of Numbers where the Hebrews discover that the cure to what they fear is to stare it in the face, and find themselves freed to see beyond it. In this one, God invites them to stare into the statue of the terrifying poisonous snake, and see through to a place in which it cannot destroy them.[i] God doesn’t take the snakes away, but does give them the ability to endure and survive.
Which sounds like just the ticket, in times like these, when we’ve come to a new understanding of the story of a people taking a long, long wander in the wilderness. A year into the pandemic … we get it!
After a year of shutdowns and economic downturns and rolling unemployment. After a year of watching case numbers and deaths climb, and worrying about long-term effects even for those who survive. After all the unknowns and the fear and loss, we see ourselves in this story. See ourselves in their fear of starvation. See ourselves in their fear of death.
And we see ourselves in all the rest of it too. We recognize how lost they feel, and how desperate and angry they are about their leadership. We sympathize with their desire to go back to the way things were (even if things weren’t that great, they were at least familiar)! We can even (if we are honest) empathize when they whine about having to eat the same pasta night after night because Kroger didn’t deliver the asparagus and chicken we ordered and no, we can’t go to a restaurant!
We get it, is what I’m saying. Especially as we reach the one-year point, and find ourselves opening the valuable but bitter gifts that come with such an occasion.
Anniversaries demand our lament. Something about them heightens our sense of loss, bringing the full weight of it down upon us. They strip us of our ability to pretend that it isn’t happening, or that it’s just a temporary situation and we’ll be back to normal in no time. It’s been a whole year, and suddenly we can taste and smell and feel every one of those days, and lose ourselves in the absence of the people, places and things that should have been there and weren’t (some of which never will be again). And we might not quite be ready to walk into the future, but we do begin to realize that we can never again dwell in the “before.”
No wonder we all feel so darned blurry all the time, as though our brains don’t quite work right any more. It’s not just all the online school and work and socializing, though that probably isn’t helping. The fact is: we’ve been wandering for what feels like forever in the wilderness, with the same small group of people, eating and doing the same things day after day, facing deprivation and threats of death on a regular basis. And just like the Hebrew children in the desert, we are … lost!
But God’s people never wander in the wilderness in vain. There is always something that we learn here, something that we gain here, something that is born of our time in the wilderness.
Often, it is something about trusting God, because the wilderness brings us face to face with our own helplessness. Alongside that comes the re-orientation, because the wilderness takes away the familiar landmarks. So the question becomes, what have we allowed to center and guide us in the past, and what will lead us forward?
To protect his children from being overwhelmed by poisonous serpents, God raised up a totem that got them past their fear, allowing them to trust God to lead them into the Promised Land. To protect and guide his children in all their wildernesses, God lifts up Jesus. Jesus is our promise, our magic, our guiding star; he will be with us in the midst of all our wanderings.
When John speaks about Jesus being lifted up, he’s referring to more than just the crucifixion. He means the complete cycle of the Incarnation: the coming into the world, the death on the cross, the resurrection, and then the ascension into heaven. And when we abide in Jesus, we abide in that whole cycle, and we too are lifted up.[ii] Lifted up out of our aimless drifting. Lifted up out of our fears. Lifted up out of our selfishness and our anxiety. Or, if not completed lifted out of those things, lifted up in them.
So that we can endure. And survive. Make do. And live into the kingdom just a little bit. And practice abiding in Jesus, because abiding in Jesus is both the cause and the content of the salvation that John speaks about so passionately.
We abide in him, so that he abides in us. We abide in him, so that we might have life, and have it in abundance. (John 10:10). We abide in him, so that we might live life in its fullest, most generative goodness, which is a life that reflects eternity: the life of the Everlasting One.
We do it by loving and serving Jesus. And we do that, by loving and serving one another. Of course, even that has been made difficult this past year; it’s awfully hard to wash a person’s feet from six feet away! But the desire to love and serve the children of God is something that can sustain and nurture us, rather than drain us dry. It can be the sign we gaze upon to see past the loss to the gift that comes from the love itself.
God so loves the world, that he does not want to see us condemned to a life constrained by fear and death. His answer, his sign, his guidepost for us is the lifting up of Jesus. Which is the love, as the poet says, that costs us all we are and all we will ever be, but is the only thing that sets us free. May it be so. Amen.
[i] Rabbi Arthur Waskow and Rabbi Phyllis Berman, 39 Hukkat, www.shalomctr.org.
[ii] Karoline Lewis, Sermon Brainwave podcast 773: “Fourth Sunday in Lent (B) - March 14, 2021”