The Fullness of Life Swallowed Up Death

A sermon for the fourth Sunday in Lent given at the United Church of Acworth, Acworth, NH on March 18, 2012.

Numbers 21:4-9
Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22
Ephesians 2:1-10
John 3:14-21

[An excerpt read from from chapter one of John Steinbeck's The Pearl]
The intrusion of the song of the enemy into the song of the family can be an analogy for the story of humanity as we read it in the scriptures.
Humanity is formed from dust and breathed into by God to have spirit and an identity like the creator – to have fellowship with God and live in peace with one another and the created order.
The song of the enemy enters abruptly into this world with the defiance and ingratitude – the hubris
demanding a kind of power and place that is not for humanity to have – denying the relationship between God and humanity and breaking the fellowship.
This is the perennial diagnosis of humanity in the scriptures – we have found ourselves in a place of brokenness in our relationships with each other, our relationship with the natural world, and our relationship with the one from whom we have been given life.
Like the suddenness of the scorpion's bite, the song of the enemy intruded into our world – of our own doing and we live with the results of this venomous event.
We read in the book of Numbers of how the people of Israel found themselves in a place full of poisonous snakes.
They were bit. Many of them. “And many Israelites died.”
And death seemed inevitable for those who suffered the pain of the surging poison through their system.
So we read, “The people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you; pray to the Lord to take away the serpents from us.”
Little did they expect what the cure would look like.
Moses returns with the remedy as a bronze snake – looking a lot like the ones that are inflicting so much destruction on their lives.
Martin Luther imagines their response: "We are so terrified that we cannot stand the sight of them! If only you would, instead, give us a drink, a cooling plaster, a cooling drink, to take away the venom and the fever!...How can that dead and lifeless object up there benefit us?"
But, we read, “whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.”
This miraculous story from the wanderings of the people of Israel in the wilderness of the Sinai desert is interesting in and of itself.
What's more interesting is the way that the writer of the gospel of John picks up this story and points it toward Jesus.
In the story we have people experiencing a terrible trauma, we are told it is because of their ingratitude, their pride and bitterness – their refusal of acknowledging the providing care of God – their refusal of life.
This trauma is terminal. And many have been lost to its dark shadow.
We live in a world that abides under the shadow of death. We are a people who see death around us, who know that we ourselves are destined to die, who grieve with bitter sorrow the death of loved ones.
We live in the shadow of death.
We live in a world where people become empty of life, empty of hope, of meaning. Many live with the pain of broken relationships, of painful memories, of shattered frameworks of meaning.
The shadow of death is the shadow of meaninglessness, of no hope.
We live in a world where people hate. And hate breeds violence and resentment breeds vengeance and we feel unable to live at peace with ourselves or with others.
The shadow of death is the shadow of hate.
And we walk through this land full of serpents, hearing the song of the enemy, and we sometimes don't realize how toxic some of the air that we breathe is.
We feel in our hearts so often the pain of this shadow, the torment of this evil song.
We've become ensnared in a sickness of mind, a sickness of heart – we've become embittered against God, or against a fellow human being, we become full of fear at possibilities of violence or war, or suddenly we are overcome with a cloud of despair which pushes us from the possibility of seeing or feeling love or goodness around us. Or perhaps we come face to face with death itself.
How do we deal with this serpent-ridden world where hovers an unyielding deathly shadow?
It's in just such a darkness that there shines a light inextinguishable. Can you see it?
I pulled out an old bookmark this week that I got from who knows where.
It read: “All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle” St. Francis of Assisi
And as we move to today's reading in the gospel of John we begin to see the radiating light of that candle of candles, the light of the world who to darkness came, Jesus our Savior.

This may not be a sermon we hear often these days but it's as old as the Christian faith and as we travel in our Lenten journey toward the cross and toward the empty tomb, let us remember the good news that God has made known for the restoration of the universe.
The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
those who lived in a land of deep darkness—
on them light has shined.

Nicodemus came to Jesus in the dark of night. And it's in the darkness that Jesus illumines the way of God: “no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”
A new birth, a new creation – that kind of radical change – from nonexistence to existence, from death to life – that is the entrance to the kingdom of God.
Then Jesus recalls the serpent in the wilderness:
“just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”
Just as Moses lifted up the serpent – seeking the healing and restoration of a people who found themselves in a pit of despair – so must the Son of Man be lifted up.
Jesus is the response to our yearning for healing. Jesus' being lifted up – his death by crucifixion – is our entrance to healing, to being born again to a new hope of wholeness in the light of God's love.
For, we read, God loved this world so much that he gave his only Son – that the ones that believe may have eternal life.
God removed the shadow of death, God removed the hopelessness, the emptiness, the meaninglessness by an act of free and undeserved, radical love. Love without condition.
Humanity's sickness of death, and despair, and demonic hate – all confronted boldly in the light of the Son of Man. A sick humanity sought to extinguish that light, but darkness did not overcome.
Our resurrected Lord defeated death and the power of death over our minds and hearts and ushered in the realm of eternal life which we can experience now and forevermore.
“‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.’ 
‘Where, O death, is your victory?
   Where, O death, is your sting?’ 
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
This victory is of a strange and offensive kind.
The snakebite is healed by looking at a snake. Death is conquered by death.
So St. Augustine writes:
“The serpent’s bite was deadly, the Lord’s death is life-giving. A serpent is gazed on that the serpent may have no power. What is this? A death is gazed on, that death may have no power. But whose death? The death of life: if it may be said, the death of life; ay, for it may be said, but said wonderfully. But should it not be spoken, seeing it was a thing to be done? Shall I hesitate to utter that which the Lord has deigned to do for me? Is not Christ the life? And yet Christ hung on the cross. Is not Christ life? And yet Christ was dead. But in Christ’s death, death died. Life dead slew death; the fullness of life swallowed up death; death was absorbed in the body of Christ.”
“The fullness of life swallowed up death.”
When light came to the world, the darkness sought to extinguish it. But darkness was unable to. The worst that darkness could do was kill the one who was the source of life itself. And there was a death. But there was a resurrection. The resurrection was the triumph of the light: darkness cannot extinguish light. And in that resurrection we have the hope of new life.
We look on the cross as the people of Israel looked on the bronze serpent.
It is the death of death in the death of Christ that with faith we behold and in beholding the clouds of fear, the clouds of hate, the clouds of empty, life-denying sorrow, the clouds of death's finality will be dissolved.
With faith, earnest longing faith, the faith of those who've realized the deathly sting of our common human condition – the poison flowing through our collective and individual veins.
With faith, we approach the light, the candle in the darkness, the one who “was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities;” upon whom “was the punishment that made us whole,” and by whose “bruises we are healed.”
For “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way,”
but “the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”
Through Christ, God is healing humanity. As we look upon Christ with faith, we are transformed to a new way, a new life, a new hope. The way, the life, the hope of resurrection.
Our sickness is laid upon him and we by the radical love of God are forgiven and given a new start.
We no longer need to live in the valley of the shadow of death, in the painful torment of past pains, of present emptiness, of future anxiety.
Turn your eyes upon Jesus and find yourself resurrected, born anew in the Holy Spirit's powerful transforming presence. Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Look – he is lifted up for our healing, that we might be freed from the tyranny of sin and death to the reign of love and life.
For with the Psalmist we "cried to the Lord in [our] trouble, and he saved [us] from [our] distress;
he sent out his word and healed [us], and delivered [us] from destruction.
He drew me up from the desolate pit, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure. He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God.
“Love lifted me! Love lifted me!
When nothing else could help
Love lifted me!”
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”
The song of evil is loud and tormenting and we live in the midst of a broken world, but the song of the family is what God invites us into. This is the salvation, the renewal of fellowship, of communion, and connection between God and humanity – and it comes through a death and a resurrection. The death of death and the resurrection to life eternal.
With faith let us hear the new song in the light of God made known to us in Jesus and let us lay hold of our salvation and praise God.
Amen.