In the Book of Numbers we hear that the people of Israel, grumbling about God while walking around the wilderness, started to be bitten by fiery serpents.[i] Moses was told by God to erect a statue, a bronze pole with a snake wound around it so that the people would look at it and live. Sounds crazy doesn’t it? Maybe, but if we are able to get inside the head of Moses, it may not be so silly.
When we are unhappy and grumbling we become listless and careless, and sometimes we just don’t look what we are doing or where we step. In Australia, where 20 of the 25 most deadly species of snake reside[ii], we know the consequences. God, speaking through Moses, called the people to awareness.
Further, I read that the only way to remove a fiery serpent, drawing its head and poison away from the body, is to gently wind the snake around a stick. Thus the bronze fiery serpent signified the danger and the cure.
The relevance of this image to Jesus is immediate. Jesus comes to make us aware and offer us a cure, to open our eyes and offer us his redemption. “The Son of Man,” we are told, “must be lifted up as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so that everyone who believes might have eternal life in him.” He continued in the most translated verse ever: God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son that everyone who believes in him will not die but have eternal life.[iii] Jesus is the gift of God to us, to show us the way. As the serpent was lifted up, so was Jesus on the Cross. Both were an invitation, not a demand. Both demanded a free acceptance of reality, and the acknowledgement of God’s power. We are not told that Jesus might be crucified, but that he must be raised up from the earth, which is saying that we ‘needed something as shocking as a crucifixion to shake us out of our lethargy and save us from the futility of being caught up in aUmeaningless way of life of reacting top sin with more sin.’[iv]
The history of the encounters of Nicodemus with Jesus takes us one step further. The acknowledgement of the person of Jesus and his meaning for us brings us out into the light. For Nicodemus, it was a process, firstly the man who came to Jesus by night, then the one who spoke against his condemnation in the Sanhedrin, and after his death, the one who fearlessly went to Pilate to ask for his body. His was a slow conversion, like ours, one that needed renewing and deepening. We are a work in progress, God’s work of art[v], as St Paul eloquently puts it to the Ephesians. Nicodemus came out into the light and was able to proclaim Jesus as Saviour and Lord. His was done through challenges and crises, possibly like our own journey.
Like Nicodemus, we have the opportunity to make sense of our lives, to practise and deepen our own faith and that of our parish. We do this through specific acts of prayer, almsgiving and fasting. These are the three keys of our spiritual growth during Lent.
Homily 18th March 2012, the Fifth Sunday of Lent Year B
No comments:
Post a Comment