March 14, 2021 | Worship

Good morning!

I bring you groggy salutations on this “Spring Ahead” morning! I still feel like I’m reeling from last spring when we did this whole time change ahead, but then, last spring left us a lot to reel over. It has officially been a year. March 15^th was our last Sunday in person, and that feels like a wild ride. How are we here at the one year point? How are we still worshiping online?

But, here we are. I shared this poem by Lynn Ungar last year, and I’ll read it again now. I’m curious how it hits you, after a year in this.

Pandemic

What if you thought of it
as the Jews consider the Sabbath—
the most sacred of times?
Cease from travel.
Cease from buying and selling.
Give up, just for now,
on trying to make the world
different than it is.
Sing. Pray. Touch only those
to whom you commit your life.
Center down.
 
And when your body has become still,
reach out with your heart.
Know that we are connected
in ways that are terrifying and beautiful.
(You could hardly deny it now.)
Know that our lives
are in one another’s hands.
(Surely, that has come clear.)
Do not reach out your hands.
Reach out your heart.
Reach out your words.
Reach out all the tendrils
of compassion that move, invisibly,
where we cannot touch.
 
Promise this world your love–
for better or for worse,
in sickness and in health,
so long as we all shall live.
 
–Lynn Ungar 3/11/20

Personally, I feel like we’ve taken this advice seriously at Grace. We’ve centered down in ways we’d never dreamed of. We’ve reached out with our hearts instead of our hands. I know our deacons keep the phone lines busy checking in on everyone, a ministry which I am utterly grateful for. We’ve found ways to connect and create warmth in digital spaces that we never had considered channels for holding the sacred in the past. And, in true Lenten spirit, we have braved this wilderness together.

Speaking of wilderness…our readings this morning touch on so many fascinating visuals, poisonous snakes, “the gates of death,” love, and light. I am grateful that the lectionary puts the gospels in conversation with the Hebrew scriptures, especially on bleary mornings like this where that stolen hour of sleep might fail to make me curious about what on earth it means in the Gospel of John when he talks about Moses lifting the serpent in the wilderness. Instead, we have the beautiful context of God providing healing relief in the wilderness, life saving and life giving reprieve from deadly snake venom. But first, the Israelites were whiny.

They had been traveling out of Egypt, and the farther they got from Egypt, the more fondly the remembered it. Let’s keep in mind that these were enslaved people, but even so, hardship can be a powerful eraser of past evils, and the longer they journeyed, the farther they went, the more they longed for the “good ol’ days” in Egypt. They weren’t remembering the back breaking work, the soul-crunching days of toil, but they were remembering that they had steady food. Not like, great food, but at least they knew it was coming. Not knowing for sure when or where they would settle, they did what seems to be human nature. They got whiny. They got irritable. They quarreled with each other, they got mad at God for giving up on them, they accused moses of being a terrible leader. They weren’t actually starving, even though they complained that they were in the same way my kids do when we’ve run out of cheez-its and all we have left is carrots and apples to snack on. God had been steadily sending the Israelites manna. So much manna. Manna, manna, manna. They were basically just…impatient. Over it. Lashing out. And you know, God usually responds to lament. Not this time.

Which brings up a lot of weird feelings for me, to be honest. I love the stories where God is all love, but these ones where God is suddenly harsh and sending snakes to bite people. What’s that all about?

Last week during our time for families, I talked about covenant, and what it means to live in covenant. It’s a pretty huge give and take, and there’s a lot of trust that has to be had by everyone involved. It’s more than a simple contractual obligation in that it lives, shifts, and adapts with every bump that those in covenant encounter. But this, this was a pretty big bump. So God did what God did. People died. God then went into loving God mode, the part I am comfortable with, and told Moses what to do to keep people from dying from these painful, poisonous bites.

Whenever I am struck with discomfort by a piece of scripture, I usually linger there for a bit to figure out what the discomfort stems from. That’s why, when I’ve promised to talk about the psalms all Lent, I’ve strayed over the Numbers.

I ask myself when I don’t understand a text, what this text has to offer. Now, the simple version is to say “God will punish you if you’re a big whiney crybaby and you’re not satisfied with your manna.” And that’s certainly something we can find evidence of in the text. But why was this part of the story so essential that it survived years and years and years of oral tradition, was written, was translated, was canonized, and has been preserved for us? What function did this story serve in ancient times? How was it perceived when it was told? How has this story saved lives? How has it held lives captive through manipulation of the text?

I don’t have answers to these questions, but I do hear a striking, loud, and clear tone coming from it for our times, and this could act as a cautionary tale to us. The Israelites weren’t the only people who ever experienced a rosy retrospection. Anyone who has ever uttered a “back in my day” grumbling about today’s youth has fallen prey to this one, any time we’ve longed for a simpler time, or wanted to go back to the way things were—or maybe to just go back to life pre-covid has experienced this. But the reality is this: things weren’t nearly as good as our brains would fool us into thinking. Not only are our minds capable of filtering out bad, traumatic stuff, but we also only saw the past from our own perspective, which is not as universal as we’d like to think. When thinking about this especially in a pre-COVID light, I think about how toxic our working environments were, how harsh and unforgiving our capitalist structures are when they’re not forced to change. And yet, when I think about life pre-March 2020, I think only of going to live theatre or hugging my best friend and talking over coffee for hours. I don’t think about the ways that same pre-COVID system had me convinced that I was only worth as much as I was able to produce, which kept me even busier than I am now. And I certainly don’t consider how much harder it was for anyone else who didn’t had as many protections and privileges as me. COVID has been hard, but it has also forced a slow-down and has caused many companies who in the past would have never allowed accommodations like working from home for those whose health may have benefited from it to seriously consider it, or to have to cease operations. We’ve gotten a better view of the cracks in our society. But with rosy-retrospection, it’s harder to see and remember these things, we just want things to be good again. You notice which tagline I’ve been avoiding saying, right? Yeah. That’s a whole other “people grumbling about being starved while having a ton of manna” sermon, but I allow you to fill in the gaps this morning. It is important for us, as we encounter difficult texts to look at them from all kinds of angles and to grapple with the reasons they are hard. This morning, I’m wrestling with the times I have been the one complaining in the wilderness and wishing for the good old days, the simpler times. I am asking God to forgive me for not seeing the bigger picture, but instead wanting what I want in a petulant tone. I am grateful for all the times God didn’t send snakes my way, and I give praise for all the snake pits in my self-inflicted wildernesses I’ve encountered when God already had the bronze snake on a stick ready for me.

To circle back home, this line about Moses and holding up the serpent in the wilderness is the lesser known part to one of the most widely quoted bits of scripture out there. With this baffling serpent throwback story, we hear the lines, “for God so loved the word that he gave his only son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed God did not send the son to condemn the world, but in order that the world may be saved through him.”

When we read all of these things together, we see that god is motivated by love for a repentant people in sending the serpent that heals in the Numbers story. The writer of John uses this as a historical reference, a way of rooting what will be said next. A way for those who are reading or hearing this to already know what to expect. God is, again, acting out of love, but in order to save the whole world from venomous, painful, deadly, evil snakebites this time. It is a wider covenantal love, one that is constantly adjusting as the darkness grows or fades, and is tweaking the ways in which that love can be lived out. While this love is spread over us like a warm blanket on a chilly day, it is important that we uphold our part of the covenant by loving God, loving ourselves, and loving our neighbors in forward thinking ways that rely less on rosy retrospection and more on creating a world filled with light and truth.

Before we go, I would like to share with you this meditation that I found on Worship Ways. Please get into a comfortable position.

Settle into your seats and close your eyes.

Visualize a place of emptiness, of shadows.

What comes up for you?

(If this first image is too disturbing,

find another place of imagination that offers you comfort and peace.)

Imagine your presence there.

Now imagine that with you 

is the presence of Jesus as a glimmer of light.

What does that light look like?

Stay there a moment with Jesus, the Light.

As you focus your attention on the glimmer of light, hear this:

For God so loved the World that God gave God’s only begotten child

For God so loved the World that God gave

For God so loved the World

For God so loved

So loved

The World

God

God so loves the world!
May God your Maker
send you back into the world with creative energies refreshed.
May Christ the Light
illuminate your fearful moments.
And may the Holy Spirit of steadfast love
guide you until we worship together again.
This day and forevermore. Amen!