Sermon; Lent 4B; Numb. 21: 4-9; John 3:14-21; Lent 4 Collect

When I was in seminary, my homiletics professor had this piece of advice when it came to preaching on the Gospel of John: Don't. But then you get to days like today and run into texts with poisonous serpents killing the Israelites and Moses sticking a snake on a stick to heal those who had been bitten. This is paired with a gospel passage from John that picks up in the middle of a dialogue with Nicodemus and talks about eternal life, condemnation, light, and dark. Add to that a Collect of the Day which addresses none of the day's scriptural topics but instead is a Collect geared toward “Mothering Sunday,” the half-way point in Lent when people would celebrate with a feast and make offerings at the mother church (cathedral).

So what do do with readings that have poisonous snakes, light, dark, condemnation, and a Collect focused on a mid-Lenten feast? I don't know what you would do with all of that, but I began to look for similarities.

In Numbers the Israelites are traveling through the wilderness, and, like young children (or even older children for that matter) on a family road trip, become impatient. Cries of, “Are we there yet?” and, “Why did we have to take this stupid trip anyway?” and, “We don't have any food, and the stuff you give us is gross!” rise up through the camp.

God sends poisonous serpents which begin biting and killing the Israelites. Side Note: the story never states that it was BECAUSE of their griping that God sent the serpents. Anyway . . .

so they ask Moses to pray to God on their behalf. Moses makes a bronze serpent, sticks it on a pole, and those who looked at the serpent statue are healed.

In the gospel we break into that famous conversation between Nicodemus and Jesus – the one where Nicodemus is confused about the whole born again/from above thing.

In the passage today Jesus references Moses and the serpent. Like the serpent was lifted up so will the Son of Man be lifted up. He then goes on to say that God gave his only Son so that people would not perish, and that the Son wasn't sent to condemn but to save.

And the Collect for this Mothering Sunday acknowledges Jesus as the bread of life and petitions God for that bread so that he may live in us and we in him.

We may not see it at first, but the similarity between these three – lesson, gospel, and Collect – is that at their core they all have to do with healing. And not just any healing, but, as I read in a few places, a form of spiritual homeopathy in which like-heals-like. Or, in the physical realm, how vaccines work – where your body is introduced to a very low dose/harmless amount of a disease (polio, measles, mumps, COVID) in order to create antibodies and heal.

In the wilderness the serpent on the pole allowed for the healing of those who were bitten by serpents. The Son of Man is broken (crucified) in order to heal a broken world. We who are hungry are fed with the bread of life so that we ourselves may feed and heal others. For those of you familiar with Henri Nouwen, this is along the lines of his most famous work, The Wounded Healer.

There is something here to which we need to pay attention. Our society has built up this myth of rugged individualism and pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps. That myth has been so ingrained into us that we often fail to see it's not true. America was built on the backs of slave labor, of uncredited women and minorities, and of working together, not separately. One way toward healing our nation might be in recognizing that the brokenness of the nation has in some way also broken us, and then as we begin to heal ourselves we might find ways to use those wounds to help heal the nation.

Personally we often try to hide our faults and shortcomings. In times of need or distress or hurt, we shut people out, often with a lame excuse of needing to walk this path alone. But we will never heal by walking alone. In the wilderness, those who tried to deal with their bites alone, or refused to acknowledge the need for help, died. The people who lived were the ones who recognized they needed help. In the same way, we also need to ask for help when we are broken or wounded, and we need to allow those who can understand our pain to step in and help heal us. This is why grief support groups or groups like AA, NA, OA, and others can be so successful.

The gospel tells us that God sent the Son to save the world, not to condemn it. According to the Gospel of John, those who try to save themselves, or who refuse to acknowledge the need for help, live in the darkness of their own judgment and are therefore self-condemned. Those who recognize they are broken can turn to the one who was also broken – crucified – and will be healed.

And on this Mothering Sunday, many of us have returned not to the cathedral but to our mother church of Saint John's. As a mother feeds and nourishes her children, we are fed and nourished by this church, our spiritual mother. It is here where we are fed with the bread of heaven that sustains and heals us. It is here where, by feeding on that bread, Christ lives in us and we in him. And like the bronze serpent healed those bitten, and the broken body of Christ heals our broken bodies, we can use our brokenness to heal others.

These passage and this Collect remind us that we are not rugged individuals, but that we are broken and damaged people whom God works to heal and who works through us to heal others,. It is our brokenness and faithfulness that will help bring healing and light to the world, not our attempts at perfection and self-reliance.

As we begin the process of regathering, both in here in the church and in other places around our city, state, and country, may we understand that we have been broken, wounded, and malnourished, and then let us work to heal and nourish others as we ourselves have been fed, nourished, and healed by God.

Amen.