The Christian Lenten season happens in late winter, early spring. It is a time long associated with waiting and preparing for what comes next. If we are honest, for many of us it often seems waiting and preparing is a full-time job in this turbulent world. Maybe this waiting and preparing for the Kingdom is overdone. Maybe the waiting might be over if we open our hearts to see it.
I became intrigued by the exchange between Jesus and Nicodemus as he speaks to the Exodus story at a particular moment when the people were clearly tired of waiting while wandering in the wilderness. Jesus recalls the story of Moses lifting a bronze serpent to explain eternal life. Nicodemus, a pharisee and a member of the Jewish ruling knew this story. And from that story, Jesus then moved right into love.
“Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in Him. For God so loved the world that he gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
The Hebrews moaned about Moses bringing them into the wilderness. Was their liberation a failure? How would they survive? Where exactly were they going? The challenges and fears caused them to wonder about God’s willingness to care for them. Clearly God was not too happy, hence God sent snakes and created a crisis or a decision point for the people. When those who were bitten were able to look beyond their fear upon the bronze snake that God instructed Moses to make, healing took place. The decision point –to look upon the serpent and be healed or look away and suffer. The challenges of their wilderness journey would continue, but they would have experience one more profound act of God’s healing power in the midst of the unknown and unrest..
We who live in a post-resurrection world may be tempted to equate the Son of Man lifted up with Jesus destined for death on the cross. We cannot deny the fear and temptations of those in the wilderness. We cannot deny the fear and temptations we experience today. We cannot deny the trauma inflicted on Jesus by human fear nor ignore the Divine power which transformed that tragedy into salvation’s grace. But the reference to the serpent lifted by Moses suggests an additional meaning. The lifting of the Son of Man is a proclamation of love that makes God’s work in Jesus visible to all who choose and decide to see. God loved the world, not only the chosen people residing on the far eastern border of the Mediterranean Sea. God sent the Son and Lifted Him in order that the whole world may see Him, believe in Him and be healed, and saved, through Him. As verse 15 says, “that everyone who believes may have eternal life in Him.” And that eternal life begins now, here on earth, once we choose to believe in and turn toward Jesus.
