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Look at It and Live
A Sermon for Goodson Chapel
Duke Divinity School
March 26, 2009
Numbers 21:4–9
Psalm 107:1–3, 17–22
Ephesians 2:1–10
John 3:14–21
How odd of God to save this way. The people of Israel were very unhappy and so, as was their habit, they began complaining: “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food.” Things weren’t good; the people of Israel discovered, however, that things could get worse. Miserable food is one thing, but how would they survive the threat of snake bites?
The Lord had sent the poisonous serpents because the people were complaining not only about Moses, but this time we are told they even “spoke against God.” Not confident in their ability to intercede with God, they begged Moses to ask the Lord to take the serpents away. Moses did as he was asked, praying that God would save those he had led through the wilderness. We do not know the content of Moses’ prayer, but one assumes he asked God to get rid of the serpents. But God did not take the serpents away. Instead he told Moses to make a replica of a poisonous serpent, set it on a pole, and if anyone bitten by a serpent looked upon Moses’ snake they would live.
Moses did as he was told. He made a serpent of bronze, put it on a pole, and those who had been bitten by a serpent were saved by looking on Moses’ creation. How odd of God to save this way. Surely it would have made more sense to do what the people of Israel asked, that is, just get rid of the serpents! God let Patrick drive the snakes out of Ireland, so it is possible to get rid of the snakes. I have never understood why God could not have seen fit to send a Patrick to Texas. But then, even Texans know that they are not God’s promised people.
It remains a mystery, at least it remains a mystery for me, why God choose to save those who were bitten by the snakes by having them look at the bronze serpent. Even though it is usually not a good idea to second-guess God, I cannot help but wonder why God would save those bitten by the poisonous serpents this way. Why should the people of Israel look at this inanimate object for their salvation?
To look, to see, to really see, is never easy. In particular it is never easy to see death. You cannot help but be sympathetic with the people of Israel. They are being asked to look on, to see, that which threatens their very existence. To live they must look on death itself: “Look on death and live.”
Philosophers have often reflected on the seeming paradox that we only come to life through the acknowledgment of death. Montaigne even entitled one of his essays, “To do philosophy is to learn to die.” I suspect there is much to be learned from philosophers about the significance of death, as well as how to die, but I do not think God’s command to Moses to make the serpent was meant to make the people of Israel more philosophical. Rather it was a reminder of what it means to be chosen by God.
To be called by God is serious business. To be God’s people is a life-and-death matter. God would not have his people, his promised people, presume that by being his chosen they are free of danger. We are all individually and collectively going to die. “Dust you are and to dust you shall return.” But the death Israel faces is not just any death; it is a death determined by her being God’s beloved. The story of Israel is the story of her training to become a people whose survival depends on learning to trust God in a snake-infested world.
How odd of God to save this way. Jesus said to Nicodemus, “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.” Jesus will be lifted up, but he is first lifted high on the cross. We are told he must die in this way because by being “lifted up from the earth” he will draw all people to him (John 12:32–33). Just as Israel had to look on the serpent to live, so now it seems we must look on this man’s death if we are to have life.
Yet we cannot help but think that Jesus on the cross is surely of a different order than Moses’ serpent. Jesus was lifted high on the cross, but the cross could not hold him. He will be raised from the dead to ascend to the Father. We know the cross could not hold him because we are, after all, Protestants. Our cross is empty. Our Jesus won. We do not need to look at him dying on the cross.
In fact, we are not sure we need to look on the cross at all. “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.” Here we are not told to look but to believe. We believe, moreover, if we believe hard enough that we will not have to worry about the snakes. We assume God has done for us what God did not do for Israel. He got rid of the snakes.
That our cross is empty, therefore, tempts us to believe that we are a people no longer in danger. After all, when it is all said and done, as John 3:16 makes clear, it is all about love. God so loved the world that we might love one another. Accordingly we find it rather hard to understand the dramatic tension in the Gospel of John between those who choose to remain in the dark and those who love the light. Indeed we are told that those who love the darkness will hate those who are the light. Why should anyone hate a people who just want to be lovers?
It is all about love—and death. The light has come into the world, but the light that illumines from the cross does not rid the world of snakes. Eternal life does not mean that we escape death, but that even in death we will not be abandoned by Jesus. Like the people of Israel who had been bitten by the poisonous snakes, we must learn to trust God by looking on the cross of Christ. We are to look on the cross of Christ and see there the goodness of our God. He has taken into his life our love of the darkness so that we might live in the light of his cross.
To believe that God so loved the world he gave his only Son requires, therefore, that we look on the cross. To look and to believe are inseparable. We must see, moreover, that the cross is not empty. Jesus died on the cross. When we try to avoid that reality, when we believe without looking at our crucified God, I fear the ever-present temptation to Gnosticism is irresistible. Gnosticism, as Gillian Rose reminds us, is the normal spiritual condition, a condition almost unavoidable in modernity, for those who assume that salvation is to know without looking.
We must look, therefore, on the cross through which our salvation comes. But to look, to see, to really see, is never easy. We are tempted, particularly when we think we are no longer threatened by poisonous snakes, to stare at rather than to see Jesus on the cross. The empty cross has its own peculiar problems, but neither can a crucifix ensure we will avoid looking on the cross as a spectator; that is, even in looking at his crucified body we face the temptation to think the cross is God’s attempt to resolve a problem peculiar to being God.
The temptation to become a spectator at the crucifixion is a particular problem around a divinity school. Here you learn that you need an atonement theory. Unable to decide which theory does justice to the scriptural witness or your experience, you will probably pick and choose depending on circumstance. Such theories may have their uses, but I fear too often they tempt us to stare rather than to look at the cross. Thus the presumption by some that our salvation demands we believe that the cross is the Father’s infliction of violence upon the Son, who receives it on our behalf.
Such a view, I fear, leads many who say they believe “God so loved the world” to use that claim as a weapon against those they assume do not believe that God has so loved the world. They want the cross to be the sign through which their enemies are defeated rather than that which makes possible our love of the enemy. They refuse to acknowledge, as Augustine suggests, that on the cross Christ forgave those who reviled him “because he accepted the cross not as a test of power but as an example of patience. There he healed our wounds by bearing his own. There he healed us of an eternal death because he deigned to die a temporal death.”
In his Letter to the Ephesians, Paul names the conditions necessary for us to see, to really see, the crucifixion. If we are to look on the cross and live we must recognize that we “were dead through the trespasses and sins in which [we] once lived.” To look on the cross of Christ means we are able to see that we have been ruled by the power of sin making us “by nature children of wrath.” Like the people of Israel we have been bitten by the snake, and it is not at all clear we will survive. When life itself is at stake we cannot be disinterested observers.
But notice Paul does not leave the matter there. To look on the cross is not an invitation to wallow in our sinfulness. Rather to look on the cross means the end of our fascination with sin. By grace we have been saved, made alive with Christ. And this means we have been raised up with him—even to being seated in heavenly places with Christ Jesus. Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness so the Son of Man has been lifted up that we might also be for the world a light, a witness, of God’s love for the world. To be raised with Christ means the end of any attempt to passively stare at the crucifixion. You cannot stare at that in which you participate.
An extraordinary claim to be sure but one I think to be true. For it turns out that in the process of learning to see, to really see, the life we are given through Jesus’ death we become a people bronzed and lifted up by God so that the world may see there is an alternative to being captives of death. We are invited, therefore, not only to look on the cross and live, but to eat this bread and drink this wine which becomes for us Christ’s body and blood. In this meal we are consumed by what we consume, and, therefore, we participate in the mystery of God’s salvation of the world. How odd of God to save the world this way, that is, by making us his church. But then it is best not to second-guess God.