Our Sunday Message

Salvation in the Midst of the Ordinary: Numbers 21:4-9, John 3:11-16, 1Corinthians 15:56-57
Rev. Dr. Kenneth A. Corr
March 26, 2006
Fourth Sunday of Lent

   George turned over in the bed and faced the wall. It was Sunday morning and for some reason, he could not get out of the bed. The family was up. The familiar sound of the household breakfast was all too recognizable. The Sunday morning routine was typical, but he just could not bring himself to face it. He was not sick. He was not hurting. He did not need rest. He just couldn’t face the day.
The children came into the bedroom and jumped on the bed, but he asked them to leave. His wife called him to get up, but he refused. When she quizzed him about what was wrong, he insisted that she go on today without him.
  When he heard the family shuffling out the door, he knew that he was alone, and he turned over again in the bed. He could not explain this behavior even to himself. There was no crisis that he was facing at work, nothing wrong at home, no unusual health problems. It was just the ordinariness of another day that he could not face. He felt discouraged, disappointed, and depressed. He pulled the covers over his face and decided that the best place for him on this Sunday morning was in the bed.
  My guess is that all of us have been there at some point. Maybe some of you are at home this morning, watching this service from the comfort of your bedroom, and I am describing your morning. There are times in our lives when the greatest challenge is simply living with the ordinary. We wake up in the morning and face the sameness of our lives: the same job, the same daily routine, the same face in the mirror. And the temptation comes in the boredom to substitute pleasure for discipline. The temptation comes in the dullness to confuse excitement with meaning. The temptation comes in the tedium to overlook the sacred in the midst of the ordinary. The temptation comes to blame God and others for the sameness of our lives.
  It was the challenge of the ordinary that ancient Israel faced in the wilderness. This story of the fiery serpents is a strange biblical story. I told Denise this week that I was preaching this text, “And the lesson is,” I said, “‘Don’t complain or God will get you.’” She looked at me for a minute with a quizzical look and then said, “But that’s not what you are going to preach.” Maybe she has been listening to me preach for too many years.
  There is more to this story than meets the eye. It was this strange story that Jesus used in his conversation with Nicodemus. It was this peculiar story that Jesus used to point to the crucifixion. It was this odd story that Jesus used as an archetype of salvation. What is the meaning that does not readily meet the eye?
  The story of the fiery serpents comes near the end of the wilderness journey, but the wilderness wanderers didn’t know that they were near the end. For them, it was just another day in the life of the wilderness and they began to complain.
  The text is the last in a series of complaining stories. But this one is different because there was no life-threatening crisis. There was no threat of death from starvation or thirst. There was no enemy. The text says simply, “the people became impatient along the way.”   Apparently, they were impatient with the sameness of their lives: the same daily routine; the same people; the same journey, around and around; and the same food. And they complained. (v. 5), “We detest this miserable food.” The “miserable food” they had come to detest was the miracle manna. We don’t know exactly what they were hoping or wanting, but this wasn’t it.
  Maybe you can relate to that. You wake up one day. There is no health crisis, no career crisis, no family crisis. But there are unspoken expectations, unmet needs, unfulfilled desires, unexpressed dreams, undeveloped possibilities, unrealized hopes. And you say, “Scrambled eggs, again?” And who’s to blame? Your boss, your wife, your children, God?
  “Then the LORD sent poisonous snakes among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died.” In his commentary on this text, Lloyd Bailey points out that there are three different kinds of poisonous snakes in this area. One of those, the Cerastes Viper, buries itself in the sand out of sight and then lunges out at its victim.1 That would be scary.
  The vipers had been a potential threat all along, but somehow they had now become a problem. Life didn’t work for them anymore. Things were out of sync, out of balance, and out of harmony. Life in the desert became toxic, poisonous, and dangerous.
  The people prayed for the serpents to be taken away. Walter Wink says that we are not easily reduced to prayer. They were at the end of their ropes. The LORD said to Moses, “Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.”
  The serpents were not being taken away. In a sense, they became divine messengers that there is nothing life-giving in complaining. But when the people look up, when they look up to the pole, when they look up to God as the source of life, not the source of their misery, but as the source of their salvation, then they are healed.
  We don’t know why Nicodemus came to Jesus that night. It was not a politically correct thing to do. This nocturnal visitation would not advance his career. One thing is very sure. He knew this ancient story of the fiery serpents. Jesus did not randomly pick this story out of the air. In some way that Jesus understood, this story was relevant to whatever it was that Nicodemus needed. Could it be that in all of his religious devotion and service, something was missing for Nicodemus? Could it be that he was looking for some meaning in his religious life? Could it be that Nicodemus had a hard time getting out of the bed on Sunday morning?
  Biblical scholar Beverly Gaventa says, “What connects the two instances of ‘lifting up’ is that both function to save God’s people.”2 Save us from what? Sin? Yes, certainly, in all that that means. “The sting of death is sin,” Paul says. But also to save us from the temptation of daily ennui: the boredom and the sameness of living; to save us from the all the temptations in the ordinary by giving a deep and rich meaning in the midst of the sameness of life.
  George turned over in bed and looked at the clock. He could not sleep and he began to feel guilty. It was just not like him to stay in bed like this on a Sunday morning. He got up and decided to go on to church.
  The pastor had already started the sermon when George slipped in the back door. He tried to focus on what was being said, but it seemed so predictable, so ordinary. He looked around the room and wondered if this was meaningful to anyone.
  He had not heard a thing the preacher had said when his eyes drifted up to the cross behind the choir. He noticed the shadow of the world on that cross and he was struck by how beautiful it was.
His focus was interrupted when he heard the preacher shout, “Look . . . and live.”3 He was startled at first, almost as though the preacher had said something directly to him, but then he realized that the preacher was simply reading the text. But in that minute, George felt a surge of emotion. It was exactly what he needed to hear. His self pity party was not about how bad life was. George had lost his sense of meaning and purpose. Somehow, in the ordinariness of living, he has lost sight of the fact that Christ came so that we might have life and have it more abundantly. “Look . . . and live.” In the midst of daily living, he had simply lost his ability to look up.
When the service was over, he searched out his family. The kids said, “Dad, can we eat at McDonald’s today?” Mom quickly and perceptively interrupted, “Your dad is in no mood for McDonald’s today. We will let him decide.” But George answered, “No, I think that McDonald’s is just about right for today. In fact, I think I am in the mood for the usual.”
  “Look . . . and live.”

1 Lloyd Bailey, Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary, “Leviticus-Numbers,” p. 510.
2 Beverly Gaventa, Texts for Preaching: Year B, p. 227.
3 Ibid., p. 222.