The Answer to Everything
The old joke, for anyone who went to Catholic or Christian school growing up, is that if you didn’t know the answer on a test, you could just write “Jesus,” because Jesus is always the answer. Who was the first man to walk on the moon? Jesus. Who won the battle of Waterloo? Jesus. What is the square root of 144? Jesus.
Well… I went to public schools, so I never got to try out the Jesus answer on my tests and quizzes.
But here this morning, on this brisk Sunday morning in Lent… when we’re a little bit bleary-eyed from our lost hour of sleep… Here in this juxtaposition between the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New… Here we can say that Jesus is the answer.
The difference between how God acts towards us in our passage from Numbers and our passage from John is striking.
Numbers is recounting the exodus of the Hebrew people out of Egypt, and they’re lost… they’re in the wilderness… they’re wandering the desert trying to get to Canaan – to the promised land of milk and honey… and they’re having a difficult time of it. So naturally, the people get impatient.
Now, I get impatient when I get stuck in traffic for a few minutes. I get impatient when there’s someone walking slowly in front of me and I can’t get around them. I get impatient when I order Chinese takeout and they tell me it’ll be ready in 15 minutes, but it takes them 20. I don’t get rude or mean or anything when these things happen, but the clock in my head starts to tick faster, and I start to get nervous, like, ok, what else is this going to make me late for? I start to feel anxiety when things get delayed by a few minutes.
The Hebrew people coming out of Egypt weren’t delayed by a few minutes here. The impatience that the scripture talks about here comes at the tail end of a 40-year wandering through a rocky wilderness and harsh desert. Water has been scarce. Food has been scarcer. God has provided – and the people have survived – but it hasn’t been easy.
So, as we might well imagine, there are some complaints. An entire generation of people has grown up in this hardship – hearing stories of a promise of a fertile land, a green land, a land of peace, where they can settle and live without worry – hearing these stories… yet day after day, month after month, year after year… they never see green valleys and flowing rivers… Just dusty rock after dusty rock after dusty rock.
Just imagine it for a minute… you’re walking; constantly moving, day after day. Every step on the uneven rocks and pebbles makes your feet ache. The constant smell of sand and dust and dung is in your nose and in your lungs. There is no shade to stop the heat of the sun from beating down on you, burning your skin, drying out your throat. It sounds miserable. And the only thing that keeps you going… that keeps your feet moving east; going forward and not back to Egypt… is this idea that God has made a promise. That somewhere out there is a land of milk and honey… a land of peace… a land where they can finally sit down and get some rest.
Well… it’s a promise that probably was easy to believe the first day or two. They probably expected a few weeks of this. After a couple months, you can imagine people starting to ask questions… After one year, there’d be some grumbling… How much faith do you think people still had in this promise after 40 years? How much patience do you think they had left? I’m sure there were many many people in that throng of thousands who probably were convinced… who knew in their heart of hearts… that God had broken his promise.
And so they complain. They ask, “Why has God brought us out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? There is no food and water, and what little we do have is no good…” They’re not whining. After 40 years, it’s more than a fair question.
And God’s response to the complaints… to the questions and the criticisms… is to send poisonous snakes among the tribes to bite and kill many of the Israelites.
Yikes.
God punishes.
God hears the cries of his people, and greets them with vengeance.
Afterwards God shows some mercy… God instructs Moses to take one of the serpents and set it on a pole, so that anyone who was bitten could look at it and live. The snakes are still there. They’re still biting people… so it’s not a great solution… but at least there’s an antidote, of sorts.
God’s justice and God’s mercy in this passage are two very different things. God exacts justice by punishing the people who complain against him. God shows mercy by giving the people a way out of that very punishment.
So the question is, what’s changed from this account of God’s behavior to humanity, to the Gospel we read from John this morning?
Well… it’s the old Catholic school answer for everything. The answer is Jesus.
In Jesus, God’s justice and mercy are no longer separate from each other. In Jesus, justice and mercy are connected in one body. There can be no justice without mercy; and to be merciful is to be just.
God no longer deals with his people through punishments. God’s justice is not harsh. Through Jesus Christ, who lived and died as one of God’s people, God justice is found in love.
“For 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.”
Before Jesus, God’s justice is in the serpents that bite and kill the people.
With Jesus, God’s justice demands that no one should perish. That all who believe may have eternal life.
God himself did not change, but the way in which he deals with us did. The God of the Old Testament loved us, this is certain. But it was a love occasionally tempered with vengeance, when the situation called for it.
In Jesus, God’s love for us is also certain. It’s not that God loves us more or loved Israel less. But that the love is no longer about what’s right and wrong, punishment or reward, or what we deserve. It’s simply that God has decided that he loves us. That we’ll never be perfect. That we’ll have good days and bad days. Days of faith and days of doubt. And God will love us anyway.
This is the Good News of the Gospel. That in Jesus Christ we are loved. And that love is good and pure and infinite. That love is both just, because God’s love is always just; and merciful, because God’s mercy is wide, for the whole world. Amen.
For God’s blessings of justice and mercy, let us give thanks.
Holy Lord,
We pray to you as a grateful people. You made our ancestors subject to your wrath; to flood and to serpents. Yet you choose to deal with us in kindness. We know we do not deserve your blessings, yet you choose to bestow them on us anyway. We thank you and praise you, that your justice is tempered by your mercy, and that your mercy is at the forefront of your love for us. We pray to you in humble gratitude and deep thanksgiving. Through the name of Jesus Christ, in whom all your people are given salvation. Amen.
The old joke, for anyone who went to Catholic or Christian school growing up, is that if you didn’t know the answer on a test, you could just write “Jesus,” because Jesus is always the answer. Who was the first man to walk on the moon? Jesus. Who won the battle of Waterloo? Jesus. What is the square root of 144? Jesus.
Well… I went to public schools, so I never got to try out the Jesus answer on my tests and quizzes.
But here this morning, on this brisk Sunday morning in Lent… when we’re a little bit bleary-eyed from our lost hour of sleep… Here in this juxtaposition between the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New… Here we can say that Jesus is the answer.
The difference between how God acts towards us in our passage from Numbers and our passage from John is striking.
Numbers is recounting the exodus of the Hebrew people out of Egypt, and they’re lost… they’re in the wilderness… they’re wandering the desert trying to get to Canaan – to the promised land of milk and honey… and they’re having a difficult time of it. So naturally, the people get impatient.
Now, I get impatient when I get stuck in traffic for a few minutes. I get impatient when there’s someone walking slowly in front of me and I can’t get around them. I get impatient when I order Chinese takeout and they tell me it’ll be ready in 15 minutes, but it takes them 20. I don’t get rude or mean or anything when these things happen, but the clock in my head starts to tick faster, and I start to get nervous, like, ok, what else is this going to make me late for? I start to feel anxiety when things get delayed by a few minutes.
The Hebrew people coming out of Egypt weren’t delayed by a few minutes here. The impatience that the scripture talks about here comes at the tail end of a 40-year wandering through a rocky wilderness and harsh desert. Water has been scarce. Food has been scarcer. God has provided – and the people have survived – but it hasn’t been easy.
So, as we might well imagine, there are some complaints. An entire generation of people has grown up in this hardship – hearing stories of a promise of a fertile land, a green land, a land of peace, where they can settle and live without worry – hearing these stories… yet day after day, month after month, year after year… they never see green valleys and flowing rivers… Just dusty rock after dusty rock after dusty rock.
Just imagine it for a minute… you’re walking; constantly moving, day after day. Every step on the uneven rocks and pebbles makes your feet ache. The constant smell of sand and dust and dung is in your nose and in your lungs. There is no shade to stop the heat of the sun from beating down on you, burning your skin, drying out your throat. It sounds miserable. And the only thing that keeps you going… that keeps your feet moving east; going forward and not back to Egypt… is this idea that God has made a promise. That somewhere out there is a land of milk and honey… a land of peace… a land where they can finally sit down and get some rest.
Well… it’s a promise that probably was easy to believe the first day or two. They probably expected a few weeks of this. After a couple months, you can imagine people starting to ask questions… After one year, there’d be some grumbling… How much faith do you think people still had in this promise after 40 years? How much patience do you think they had left? I’m sure there were many many people in that throng of thousands who probably were convinced… who knew in their heart of hearts… that God had broken his promise.
And so they complain. They ask, “Why has God brought us out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? There is no food and water, and what little we do have is no good…” They’re not whining. After 40 years, it’s more than a fair question.
And God’s response to the complaints… to the questions and the criticisms… is to send poisonous snakes among the tribes to bite and kill many of the Israelites.
Yikes.
God punishes.
God hears the cries of his people, and greets them with vengeance.
Afterwards God shows some mercy… God instructs Moses to take one of the serpents and set it on a pole, so that anyone who was bitten could look at it and live. The snakes are still there. They’re still biting people… so it’s not a great solution… but at least there’s an antidote, of sorts.
God’s justice and God’s mercy in this passage are two very different things. God exacts justice by punishing the people who complain against him. God shows mercy by giving the people a way out of that very punishment.
So the question is, what’s changed from this account of God’s behavior to humanity, to the Gospel we read from John this morning?
Well… it’s the old Catholic school answer for everything. The answer is Jesus.
In Jesus, God’s justice and mercy are no longer separate from each other. In Jesus, justice and mercy are connected in one body. There can be no justice without mercy; and to be merciful is to be just.
God no longer deals with his people through punishments. God’s justice is not harsh. Through Jesus Christ, who lived and died as one of God’s people, God justice is found in love.
“For 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.”
Before Jesus, God’s justice is in the serpents that bite and kill the people.
With Jesus, God’s justice demands that no one should perish. That all who believe may have eternal life.
God himself did not change, but the way in which he deals with us did. The God of the Old Testament loved us, this is certain. But it was a love occasionally tempered with vengeance, when the situation called for it.
In Jesus, God’s love for us is also certain. It’s not that God loves us more or loved Israel less. But that the love is no longer about what’s right and wrong, punishment or reward, or what we deserve. It’s simply that God has decided that he loves us. That we’ll never be perfect. That we’ll have good days and bad days. Days of faith and days of doubt. And God will love us anyway.
This is the Good News of the Gospel. That in Jesus Christ we are loved. And that love is good and pure and infinite. That love is both just, because God’s love is always just; and merciful, because God’s mercy is wide, for the whole world. Amen.
For God’s blessings of justice and mercy, let us give thanks.
Holy Lord,
We pray to you as a grateful people. You made our ancestors subject to your wrath; to flood and to serpents. Yet you choose to deal with us in kindness. We know we do not deserve your blessings, yet you choose to bestow them on us anyway. We thank you and praise you, that your justice is tempered by your mercy, and that your mercy is at the forefront of your love for us. We pray to you in humble gratitude and deep thanksgiving. Through the name of Jesus Christ, in whom all your people are given salvation. Amen.