What if I set today’s Old Testament lesson in a contemporary context? Do you think it might help us understand this strange story about bronze snakes on a pole? Or help us compare them with Christ on the Cross? Well, let’s see. I can imagine a group of refugees from one of the war-torn nations of our globe who might have been resettled in
“Make an image of a tornado out of copper wire—a terrible image filled with death and debris and sharp, fearsome wind gusts—and attach it to a pole and walk around through the center of the destroyed town with it. And whoever has been harmed by one of the twisters has only to look upon this copper image and be healed, with property and health restored.”
What silliness, we might say to this story! First of all, God doesn’t send tornadoes to punish poor, homesick refugees. Second of all, what kind of primitive, magical view of religion would portray someone looking at a model of destruction in order to be healed? Sure, they tell those of us who are afraid of spiders to stick our hands in a jar of them in order to lose our fear, so I suppose that there is something to be said for looking the thing that we fear squarely in the face. But wouldn’t wrapping the fearsome power of the tornado in copper wire make of it an idol, a man-made image that heals in God’s place?
I don’t think that I can justify either the biblical story of Moses and the serpents or my modern story about the tornadoes. They are both full of some ancient assumptions about God and magic that I no longer hold. But what about John’s use of that image to talk about Jesus Christ? “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,” writes John, “so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” How do we human beings, some cheerful, some grumbling, seeking refuge from the hurts and disasters of this world, look up at God lifted high on a cross and thereby grasp eternal life?
Imagine that you are one of those refugees who just lost all of your possessions in that tornado. You have already given up so much, already endured so many losses. You are strong, but as you lie there in the rubble, you might start to feel pretty sorry for yourself, and rightly so. You remember how you have been chased from your country by cruel, murderous soldiers who hate you only because of the tribe in which you were born; you think about your parents’ house and the beautiful fields that you were forced to leave in enemy hands. You feel like the utter victim that you are, a victim of colonialism and poverty and cruel, power-hungry men. You look up with empty, victim-eyes at the copper tornado being brought through the streets of your town and the emptiness fills your soul. You feel hopeless, abandoned and punished by God. “God should be punishing my oppressors,” you cry, and your hopelessness is ringed with hatred. You call down God’s judgment on your enemies. Suddenly, though, you look up, and the copper tornado image has become God …. God, suffering like you are, bloody and nailed to a cross, and you are confused.
“How did Almighty God wind up on that cross?” you might wonder. Your fevered brain wanders back to memories of that frail old man whose food rations you stole at the refugee camp to feed your hungry little brother. You remember how you lied to the authorities to get some of the paperwork that you needed to get to this country. You see the family who was just beneath you on the list, huddled and weeping in the dust. You remember how, when the winds came this day, you ran for cover without helping along the elderly couple who lived next door to you. You remember grumbling about the hardships of life in your new country, and you remember the terrifying winds that came right afterwards. Your empty eyes begin to fill with the tears of the oppressor, guilty in so many ways of making others into victims, too. “If I call down God’s judgment on my oppressors, then God is going to have to judge me, too,” you realize. “Wasn’t I yelling, ‘Crucify him!’ when they were condemning Jesus to die? Woe is me, I am covered in guilt and deserving of punishment.”
If a refugee lying in the street amid the rubble of his life is both victim and oppressor, are not we comfortably cosseted Christians the same? We too can be victims in many ways, but, at the same time, we are oppressors, the constant creator of new victims, caught up in a whirlwind of destructive systems that break apart everything that we build in this world. We bully and are bullied; we have things taken from us, and we take more than we need in return; we hurt, while our very lifestyle hurts someone else living thousands of miles away. Left to our own judging devices, or left in the hands of a judging God, we have no hope. If God is looking down on each of us from some cloud and punishing the oppressors, then we are all doomed.
The good news--the wonderful news--is that, despite what we hear sometimes from the televangelists, we do not have a condemning God. It says so right here in our Gospel lesson. We have a God who loves the world, who saves the world, who refuses to condemn the world. God loves the whole of this swirling, whirling, broken and beautiful world. God’s light shines wherever it can in this world and seeks to transform the dark, closed off places, not to destroy them. God the Father chooses not to judge the world. Instead, God sends God’s Son into the midst of it.
Jesus is a human being who, like us, lived in the broken systems of our world. As God, though, he was not a part of those systems. Jesus is the only one who oppressed no one, yet he was definitely oppressed. Without deserving it, he was nailed to a Cross to die a shameful and painful death. Jesus is the only perfect victim. It sometimes sounds as if we think that God punished Jesus just to fill some kind of punishment requirement, but why would a loving God do that? Jesus had to suffer not for some abstract reason but because real, live individuals lie in fields torn up by tornadoes and hatred. God knows that I cannot look into Jesus’ suffering eyes without looking into the eyes of each of my victims and seeing them look back at me. God knows that I cannot look into Jesus’ suffering eyes without asking forgiveness of all those whom I oppress, without acknowledging that my only hope is in seeing Jesus in those whom I have condemned. When we look into Jesus’ suffering eyes and see both God’s love for the oppressors and our victims’ pain looking back at us, then we are covered in divine grace. If we trust that the Cross is not the last word, if we trust that the end of Jesus’ story is new life and resurrection and the defeat of all of the crosses in our world, then we know that there is hope beyond our destructiveness. Faith is trust in this new life that transcends the death-dealing bonds of victims and oppressors.[1]
Lying on our backs and looking up at the Son of Man lifted up on the Cross, we are able to rise from the rubble, free from judging and from guilt. That is the healing boost that we need. We can rise to begin to make amends for the wrongs that we have done and to reach out to strangers and former enemies. We can put one foot in front of the other because we know that suffering is “embedded in an inexhaustible life” full of resources and possibilities beyond those that we can see.[2] On this St. Patrick’s Day weekend, I am reminded of the ancient Celtic prayer that we call the Breastplate of St. Patrick. Like our Gospel lesson, it names the sacredness of God’s beloved Creation; it names the swirling powers and broken relationships that hold us captive in this world; and it uses the imagery of a soul “binding” Christ to itself as a strong armor of protection.
Christ be with me, Christ within me,
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me,
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me,
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.
Living such lives “in Christ” each day, is the eternal life found in Christ lifted up, like the serpent in the wilderness, perfect victim and only judge.
[1]This whole victim/ oppressor reflection is based on the discussion inRowan Williams’ book, Resurrection, p. 3-21.
[2]Ibid., 17-18.
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