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Pardon Our Disruption

Steve Beckham 1 Comment

Numbers 21:4-9; John 3:14-21

Such an intriguing story in the Book of Numbers.  The people of Israel are on the road between Mt. Hor and the Gulf of Aqaba.  They’re complaining.  Again.  This time they’re not happy with the food.  It’s always something.  Anyway, the people grumbled, so the Lord sent poisonous snakes among them, and many Israelites were bitten and died.  That’s how the Israelites tell the story.

Nobody ever tells the story from the snakes’ point of view.  I mean, look at it from their perspective. They were all just slithering around, minding their own snaky business in Snake Land when suddenly the whole nation of Israel showed up with all their arguments, grumbling and complaints and pitched camp right on top of them, driving tent pegs down into their dens, breaking their eggs, chasing them with sticks, throwing rocks at them, hacking at them with swords… So yeah, they bit a few of them.  They were just trying to defend themselves.  They weren’t trying to kill anybody.  Why would they?  The Israelites were too big to eat…at least for those kinds of snakes.  

The text tells us that Moses prayed to the Lord to make the snakes go away.  But maybe the leader of the snakes also prayed to the Lord to make the people go away.  Maybe the leader of the snakes suggested that the Lord could tell Moses to put a big bronze snake up on a pole to remind the people that they were in snake territory, and that the snakes were there first thank you very much, so they should be careful where they were poking around and pitching their tents.  

Well, that’s not the way we get the story in the Book of Numbers, but then snakes never were any good at public relations, and they don’t come off too well in the Bible as a rule.  Still, it’s interesting that in this particular instance, even in the Moses version of the story, God is using the snakes to accomplish God’s business and that includes healing cranky, ungrateful people from snakebite… which they wouldn’t have got bit in the first place if they hadn’t been cranky and ungrateful and gone poking about looking for something else to eat when there wasn’t anything kosher out there to begin with.

So, the moral of that story is be grateful for what you have, even if you’re a little tired of it.  And leave the snakes alone.  

Many, many, many, many, many years later, this story would come up again when Jesus sat down one night with a Pharisee named Nicodemus.  Jesus was trying to help Nicodemus understand some very basic things about living in the love of God.  This was difficult for Nicodemus because he was a very smart and knowledgeable person.  A teacher, in fact.  He knew the sacred writings of Israel backwards and forwards and upside down, but the things Jesus was saying mystified him.  He had a lot to unlearn.  The way he understood things got in the way of him comprehending things…if you know what I mean.  

Jesus was trying to help Nicodemus learn how to see and enter and experience the kingdom of God.  The Commonwealth of God’s justice and kindness.  Nicodemus was trying hard to get his head around it, but what he really needed to do was to put his whole heart into it.  

Nicodemus needed another pathway into the mystery.

“It’s like this,” said Jesus.  “Remember when Moses lifted up that bronze snake in the wilderness?  It’s like that, Nicodemus.  The Human One will also be lifted up.  And in the same way that people were healed when they looked to that bronze snake gleaming in the sun, they’ll be healed when they look to the Human One, only they’ll be healed of something much more deadly than snake venom.

“Have you ever wondered, Nicodemus, what kind of magic was at work in that bronze snake on that pole in the desert.  It was a powerful magic, stronger than any other kind of magic.  When people looked at that snake on the pole, the light flashing off of it pierced their hearts and reminded them that they had complained against Moses and against God.  They had been in a desert, in a land of no food and no water, and God had provided for them!  But they were ungrateful.  There was poison in their hearts and it came out in their words.  The snakes biting them was a kind of metaphor for the way they had been treating each other.  And Moses.  And God.

“When they looked at that bronze snake glinting in the desert sun, they could see a very unflattering image of themselves.  They could taste the bitterness of their ingratitude and the venom of their complaining.  It made them stop and think.  It made them remember all the ways that God had been taking care of them.  They repented.  And they were healed, because they also saw that God loved them enough to put up with them long enough to transform them.  They could stop being snakes, metaphorical or otherwise.  The magic, the power that flowed from that snake on the pole was God’s forgiveness and God’s love and God’s vision of a better way to be. 

“But people forget, Nicodemus.  The lessons they’ve learned don’t always carry over from one generation to the next even when they’re written down and kept in the book of memories. 

“And now the whole world is snakebit, Nicodemus.  People believe they are walking always and everywhere under the dark night of God’s judgment.  They don’t see that they have been always and everywhere in the bright light of God’s love.  They’re perishing.  Their souls are dying because they can’t let themselves believe they are loved.

“Listen, Nicodemus.  God loves the world so much that God has given God’s unique Son so that whoever trusts and follows him won’t perish, won’t fade into an everlasting death and nothingness, but will instead live forever in the light of God’s love.  

“You think God is about judgment, Nicodemus?   I’ll tell you about judgment.  God wants to bring everyone and everything, even the snakes, into the light of God’s love.  But some don’t want to come.  Some want to stay in the dark.  Some want to keep living in the deep shadows of hatred and fear, and us versus them.  Some have a greedy hunger in them that wouldn’t be satisfied if they swallowed the whole world.  Some think they are the whole world and don’t have room in their hearts for anyone or anything else.  They think they’re all that and a bag of chips.  Some, Nicodemus, many really, want to keep judging others, because it’s the only way they can make themselves feel like they have any value, so they just keep living in the shadow of judgment…and the shadow of their own fears.

“But the Son of God is not here to judge, Nicodemus.  The Son is here to make people whole.  To save them from self-destruction.  To lead people out of the shadows.

“The world has forgotten how lovely it is, Nicodemus.  The Son of God has come to help the world remember, to relearn its beauty and its kindness.  

“The world has forgotten that when God created everything God said it was good.  All of it.  Everyone.  Even the snakes.

“The Son of God has come to help people remember Original Goodness.[1]

“When they see the Human One lifted up, Nicodemus, they will be reminded of all the ugly things that happen in a snakebit world.  They will be reminded of how the venom in their own hearts and souls can wound and kill.  And then they will remember they weren’t made that way.  Then they will see the love of God.  They will see that the Son came out of love, not out of need.  And the love of God will transform them.  They will step back into the light of God’s love.”

All of that is what Jesus was trying to get Nicodemus to  understand.  And us.  It’s what he would like us to understand, too.

When you think about it, all of this is about disruption. 

The Israelites disrupted the generally sleepy life of the snakes when they pitched camp in their territory. The snakes disrupted the grumbly and quarrelsome life of the Israelites when they started biting them.  God and Moses disrupted the poisonous dynamics of fear and dissatisfaction when they set up the snake on a pole.  Nicodemus disrupted Jesus’ quiet evening when he dropped by at night for a private interview.  In his conversation with Nicodemus, Jesus disrupted our understanding of theology and the scriptures, especially our understanding of how judgment works.  Or doesn’t.

God works through disruptions to transform things and people. 

Sometimes life is disrupted by things that are completely beyond our control.

March 10, is the anniversary of the Long Beach earthquake of 1933, a disruption that killed 115 to 120 people and caused an estimated $40 million in damage.  That would be more than $800 million today.  Two hundred thirty school buildings were either destroyed or declared unsafe for use.  Out of that disruption, though, came new standards for building safety, including specific codes for school buildings.  New methods of government assistance for disaster response and reconstruction were instituted, too, as people realized that these kinds of resources were needed when damage was too widespread or extensive to expect a city to be able to recover and rebuild on its own.  Essentially, we found new ways to take care of each other.  To love each other.

That disruption has faded into the history books, but there is another disruption that we’re all too aware of, one that is still disrupting our lives in some ways.  

Four years ago this previous week was our last week of “normal” life as our lives were disrupted by the devastating pandemic of Covid 19.

For more than a year we lived in isolation, unable to worship in church together, unable to gather in our sanctuaries.  Our buildings.  But we never stopped being church.  The disruption of the pandemic made being church more difficult in some ways, but it also transformed us in some important ways, too.  Like all disruptions, it taught us more about who we are and invited us to think about who we want to be, who we are called to be, as we move forward.

The Israelites weren’t the same people when they left the land of the snakes.  They complained less and were more grateful.  Life-as-usual had been disrupted.

Nicodemus wasn’t the same person when the sun rose the next morning as he was when he had sat down with Jesus in the dark of night before.  He had begun to understand both God’s love and God’s judgment differently.  Everything he knew, everything he understood had been disrupted. You might say he was being reborn.

We aren’t the same people we were four years ago.  All the patterns of our lives have been disrupted.  In a time when need and circumstances required us to stay physically apart you would think we would have made every effort to find ways to pull together, but all too often, as a nation at least, we let the polarity of our dysfunctional politics pull us farther apart.  We have seen the damage caused by the venom of our fears and anger.  But we have also heard the voice of Christ calling us together and helping us relearn our loveliness,  reminding us of our Original Goodness. 

We have seen the serpent lifted up in the desert.  But also the cross lifted at calvary.  Through earthquake or pandemic, climate disruption or politics…even snakes…  God’s love still flows to carry us through it all.  Together.  The only question is this: will we let ourselves be healed and transformed so we can build something new, or will we just keep biting each other?

In Jesus’ name.

[1] Genesis 1:31

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Mark 9:2-9; Matthew 17:1-9; Luke 9:28-36

Have you ever sung in a choir or played in an orchestra?  If you have, you’ve probably had a moment when you realized that you were, for all intents and purposes, part of one large instrument.  Your voice in the choir was like one pipe in an organ.  You were part of a single, large organic instrument comprised of many voices, all being played by the director or conductor.  It’s a wonderful experience to be part of something like that, to know that you’re part of something large and beautiful and organic which, if it’s done right, can, in its magical way, completely transport people.  It’s a humbling feeling to know that you are helping to bring this powerful yet transitory thing into the world, a thing composed only of sound, a thing that was not in the world before the conductor raised their baton and will vanish when they cut off the last note and its echoes die in the hall.  

It’s an amazing experience.  And it all works beautifully as long as everyone learns their part.  And they all follow the conductor.  And they all play or sing the same piece.  All it takes for things to start to unravel, though, is for someone to decide they’re not happy with the conductor.  Little rebellions lead to great ones.  It can start with something as minor as the woodwinds rushing the conductor’s beat.  It could end with the disgruntled first trumpet player playing Trumpet Voluntary in the middle of Mozart’s Requiem. 

That seems to be Peter’s problem when Jesus tells him what lies ahead for them in Jerusalem.  He’s not happy with the conductor.  He had been traveling with Jesus for a while now.  He had watched him feed multitudes of people.  He had seen him walk on the sea.  He had watched Jesus cast out demons and heal people.  So when Jesus asked, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter naturally replied, “You are the Messiah!”  It seemed like the obvious answer.  After all, who else could do all those things?  But Jesus was cautious with Peter’s answer.  In all three synoptic gospels he sternly ordered his disciples not to tell people that he is the Messiah.  “No Messiah talk.  Are we clear?”

That didn’t sit well with Peter.  And then Jesus started to tell his disciples and everybody else that he was going to go to Jerusalem to speak truth to power at the corner of Religion and Politics.  He told them that the Powers That Be were going to reject him and abuse him.  He told them that he would be crucified.  And that on the third day he would rise again.  

No one wanted to hear that.  That’s crazy talk. Peter could not bring himself to sing along with that chorus.  He would not.  He took Jesus aside and rebuked him.  

Think about that a minute.  Peter rebuked Jesus.  And apparently the other disciples were kind of half-way behind Peter on this one.  Both Mark and Matthew write that Jesus turned and rebuked Peter saying, “Get behind me, Satan! You’re not setting your mind on divine things but on human things.”

Jesus had a few more things to say to his disciples and the crowd about what it takes to be a disciple—namely, a willingness to take up the cross.  But Peter and the disciples were silent.

Peter rebuked Jesus.  Jesus rebuked Peter.

And then silence.  Six days of silence.

It’s easy to miss that.  Things move fast in the gospels.  Jesus moves quickly from one thing to the next.  The phrase “and immediately” occurs frequently in Mark’s gospel.  But not here.  

Six days later.  Six days of tension between Jesus and Peter?  Six days of anxiety for the disciples?  The gospels don’t say.  The gospels are silent.  And maybe Jesus and the disciples were, too.

Finally, Jesus decided that Peter needed a “come to Jesus” meeting.  Or a come with Jesus moment.  So he asked Peter, James and John to come with him up the mountain.

And there on the mountain they saw him transfigured—shining white and radiant, light within and light without.   They see who their teacher really is inside his humanity.  They saw Moses and Elijah, the law-bringer and the great prophet, the two most important figures in the history of their people, appear with Jesus and converse with him.  

Peter, whose default mode seems to be talk-first-think-later, babbled out, “Lord, it’s a good thing that we’re here!  Let’s make three shelters, one for you, one for Moses, one for Elijah…”  The gospels tell us he didn’t know what he was saying because he was terrified.  Well you would be, wouldn’t you.  

And then all of a sudden there was a cloud throwing a shadow over them.  All the brightness was dimmed.  And a voice came out of the cloud and said, “This is my Son, the Beloved.  Listen to him.”

And as suddenly as it all started, it was over.  There was no one there but Jesus.  And as they headed back down the mountain he told them not to tell anyone about what they had seen until “after the Son of Man has risen from the dead.”  

It took a lot to get through to Peter.  It took six days of silence and a hike up the mountain.  It took seeing Jesus talking with Moses and Elijah as he was shining like the sun.  It took hearing the voice of God speaking to him from a cloud saying, “This is my Son.  The Beloved.  Listen to him!” 

That’s what it took to get Peter to play the same tune and follow the conductor.

What does it take for us?

There have always been people who try to bend Jesus to their agenda instead of bending themselves to the Way of Jesus.  There have always been people who call themselves Christian who don’t seem to actually listen much to Jesus.

For a long time now we have seen a strain of pseudo-Christianity in this country and around the world that has little to do with the teaching of Jesus as we encounter him in the gospels.  It is based on triumphalism and a theology of glory.  It worships and celebrates power and ignores the call to enter the into world’s trials and suffering as Christ entered into our trials and suffering.  It walks hand-in-hand with extreme nationalism and, often, racism.  It sees baptism as a get out of hell free card and not as a way of life in the beloved community.  It has co-opted the name Christian and Christian language and symbols, but it has not learned to do justice, to love kindness or to walk humbly with God.  It has not learned to love the neighbor as oneself. 

So many, like Peter, want a militant messiah.  But that’s not the way God does things.  That’s not the way of Jesus.

Six days before their trip up the mountain, after Peter rebuked Jesus and Jesus rebuked him back, Jesus had this to say to the crowd that had been gathered around them:  “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.  For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.  For what will it profit you to gain the whole world and forfeit your life?  Indeed, what can they give in return for your life?”

Jesus was not giving a recruitment speech designed to conjure the rewards and glories of conquest and victory.  He was issuing a realist’s invitation to a subversive movement where participation could have deadly consequences.  He was calling them, and is calling us still, to confront the powers and systems that diminish and oppress and marginalize and antagonize and lie to people wherever we find those powers and systems.  

Following Jesus can be dangerous.  Listening to him can put you at odds with family and friends.  It can complicate your life.  But your life will be meaningful. 

Jesus wanted to make it clear that he was not a white-horse-sword-in-hand messiah.  He wanted his disciples and everyone else to understand that his way of confronting injustice and oppression was to free people from its weight, heal their wounds, and then simply stand in front of the things that assailed them and speak the truth.  That was the music he was bringing.  That was the song he wanted the world to sing with him.  Peter didn’t like that song at all.  He wanted the White Horse and Sword Cantata.  

So six days later, Jesus took him up the mountain to show him who he was really arguing with. So Peter could see him shine like the sun.  And so he could hear the voice of heaven telling him to shut up and listen.

Sometimes we all need to be reminded that Jesus leads and we follow, that he’s the conductor and we’re the players in the orchestra and singers in the choir.  Sometimes we all need to go up the mountain to be reminded of who Jesus is inside his humanity.  Sometimes we all need to be reminded of those words from the cloud: “This is my Son.  The Beloved.  Listen to him.”  

Especially those last words.  

“Listen to him.”

Art: Transfiguration © Chris Brazelton, Artmajeur