Hope Lifted Up

Numbers 21:4-9 and John 3:14-15

Moses and the Brazen Serpent, Augustus John 1898 PD

During the age of exploration, secret wars were waged on the high seas. 

Naval vessels served on the front lines for various European powers who wanted to avoid committing ground troops to long and drawn out battles and wars. 

In an effort to hide the identities of the vessels that fought in these secret wars, monarchies hired privateers, private sailors who served as mercenary soldiers, preying on vessels that were tasked with shipping gold, timber, and other resources back to Europe. 

Eventually, the practice became frowned on and privateers were no longer utilized as naval warfare ended up being waged openly during the Napoleonic Wars. 

This left a void for the privateers who now lacked the resources that were once provided by European powers. 

Privateers turned to the only thing they knew; preying on merchant vessels transporting goods between South, Central, and North American Colonies back to Europe. 

Lacking the ammunition, vessels, rations, and financial backing those European powers once provided, these privateers ended up using faster and smaller ships, known as sloops. 

They also found that their most powerful weapon did not require resupply or private funding. 

Lacking plentiful supplies of powder and shot, or even the skilled marksmen and sailors they once drew from, they relied on their reputations as pirates. 

The image most associated with piracy to this day, is the image of the Black Flag, also known as the Jolly Roger. 

The symbol has been incorporated into everyday life, most often depicted in one of the most commonly known manifestations of the flag:  the skull and crossbones. 

You can find it on poisonous substances around your home and in your garage, symbolizing the warning of possible death. 

The skull and crossbones was but one version of the many flags pirates flew. 

Some portrayed an arm wielding a sword, while others portrayed skeletons and demons wielding a lance being thrust into a heart with an hour glass in the other hand which signaled that time was running out. 

The Black Flag became the most powerful tool for piracy, because the cruelty of the pirates became legendary. 

Any vessel that did not surrender under a white flag allowing themselves to be boarded and raided by the pirates upon seeing the Black Flag, would then face no quarter or no mercy when the Red Flag was raised. 

The red flag was rarely raised, because most merchant vessels feared the Black Flag, even vessels whose crew had never seen a pirate. 

It wasn’t really the pirates they feared, it was the Jolly Roger, the Black  Flag. 

File released to Public Domain from openclipart.org 

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Our first lesson and our gospel today both reference the raising of another symbol. 

A symbol that signifies the exact same thing as the Jolly Roger; Death. 

For the Hebrew people wandering in the wilderness, they have become overconfident in themselves and doubtful about the leadership of Moses, and what is worse, the power of God. 

In Chapter 21 of Numbers the first three verses briefly describe their defeat of the Canaanites in Hormah. 

Coming down off this victory, a victory that should be accredited to God, they become impatient and instead of going around Edom they would rather go through Edom. 

Again, waging senseless war and destruction, inflicting death upon the Edomites. 

The Hebrew people are not only becoming arrogant, but they are forgetting that they themselves are meant to serve as a symbol of life and light to all the world, not a symbol of death and destruction. 

It really is human nature that when we become confident in our place as the powerful, as the victors, we forget what death and destruction really looks like. 

We see it as a useful tool in serving our own needs, rather than a last resort that leaves lasting scars on lands and on people. 

So the response is uncomfortable for many of us. It is why so many will probably hear a much more popular verse from John 3:16 in most congregations this morning, rather than the direct connection between verses 14-15 of our gospel and the first lesson. 

But the response from God is an important one. 

God responds by sending poisonous, sometimes even referred to as “fiery”, serpents upon the Hebrew people. 

Because they have not only forgotten the power of God, but they have forgotten what it means to be vulnerable and susceptible to death, they have forgotten the value of LIFE!

So God reminds them of the fragility of life. God reminds them of its value, but God is merciful and God is abounding in steadfast love, so just as God shows the people a valuable lesson in the law, God also shows the beauty of God’s grace. 

Following the confession of the Hebrew people, God instructs Moses to take a serpent, a symbol of fear and death, and raise it up on a pole. 

It seems odd, maybe even a bit dumb to us, but that is because for most of us we don’t have to live in fear of snakes or the cross. 

Perhaps this is the reason we keep seeing and hearing about the decline of the church in our society, 

Because the Christian faith is actually growing rapidly in places like Africa and Asia, where people long  to cling desperately to a message of life in the midst of death. 

Places where people cling to the waters of life in the midst of deserts of death. 

God’s remedy is to look upon death, without fear or reservation, confident that through any power, including the power of sin and death, God can and will bring life. 

Moses fixes the brazen Serpent on a pole
from Figures de la Bible, Illustrated by Gerard Hoet 1728

Upon returning from Eagle Eyrie, the Baptist Conference Center where our 5th and 6th grade synod youth retreat was held last weekend, I began to think about all the time I have spent there for retreats and gatherings. 

As I said, Eagle Eyrie is a Baptist Conference Center and there are a couple crosses found planted in the ground in select locations around their campus, but it is hard to find any crosses inside the buildings there. 

I realized this once when I led worship and I found myself frantically searching for a cross to place on the altar. 

I never found one. 

Driving home Sunday night, it made me think about all the different expressions of Christian faith and where the cross is placed in the midst of worship. 

Many protestants have distanced themselves from the cross and most have removed the crucifix and the Christus Rex from their sanctuaries for fear of being “too Catholic,” and even claiming it serves as an idol.

Even for Lutherans in the United States it is a symbol seldom seen, in spite of our own strong connection to the crucifix, encouraged by Luther himself. 

We rarely see that image in Lutheran churches today. 

As I reflected on this, it reminded me of a good friend and classmate of mine from years ago. 

She is a pastor in Richmond, at First African Baptist Church, where the cross is found prominently displayed throughout their sanctuary. 

She helped me grow a lot in our time together during seminary, and she still does today. 

Black Theologian, Dr. James Cone, was required reading during our studies at Union. 

Oftentimes a controversial figure, his views discouraged and angered many of my classmates and I. 

I remember talking to my friend Jess, now the Reverend Jessica Townes, about the cross and the reverence for the cross in many African American faith traditions. 

I even called her this past week to talk with her about it and as we talked about it, Dr. Cone’s words came flooding back to me. 

Cone claims that in black theology the cross is associated with the violence inflicted upon slaves and their descendants throughout American History. 

And while public lynchings are a painful piece of history, that most Americans avoid, it is a powerful symbol for Cone and many African American Christians. 

He says that for most Christians “The cross has been transformed into a harmless, non-offensive ornament that Christians wear around their necks. Rather than reminding us of the “cost of discipleship,” it has become a form of “cheap grace,” an easy way to salvation that doesn’t force us to confront the power of Christ’s message and mission.”

What Cone proposes in his book, The Cross and the Lynching Tree is that we learn to “see the cross and the lynching tree together” as a more tangible reminder of what the cross signifies. 

Dr. Cone was a tough pill for me to swallow, probably pretty tough for many of us here today, so I will let Reverend Townes take the edge off a little bit. 

She said it to me this way, “Yeah, the cross is everywhere for us. You can’t avoid it. Because he didn’t do anything, he was innocent, he was condemned, and he was killed. And for us, that was and is the reality of our history for many of us. We know that this life is between Good Friday and the Easter Resurrection. So, we don’t run away from the cross or the pain of our history. We see it for what it is, and that is death but it is also the beauty and hope in that death. We don’t have to be scared of it anymore, even if we see it burning on our front lawn.”

As you can tell, Jess is a beautiful and gifted Pastor, but what makes her particularly beautiful and gifted is that she is so willing to share that beauty and gift of the cross with me and now with you today. 

Ku Klux Klan members and a burning cross, Denver 1921 PD

Jesus obviously points back to our first lesson as he is being visited by Nicodemus when he proclaims “just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so too must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life”

Just as the Jolly Roger, the lynching tree, and the serpent all symbolized death, so too does the cross. 

But unlike those symbols, the cross is changed because of what we see through the man who will be raised on it, because through Christ we see a hope and a promise.

This word, lifted, that is used in John’s Gospel is used again (John 12:32), when Jesus describes himself being lifted up from this earth, drawing all people to him. 

Lifted up on the cross, so that we too may be lifted up with him into a new reality. 

A new reality that is eternal life. 

A reality that isn’t promised in some distant future but right here and right now, if we can look upon that cross and accept the beauty of its bitterness, the joy in its pain, the hope in its hopelessness. 

But if we use the cross to condemn, we are lifting up death not life. 

This is why the figure of the Christ is so important. 

It is why the bronze serpent became an idol much later on in 2 Kings when King Hezekiah breaks the bronze serpent into pieces, after the people began making offerings to it. 

We aren’t called to worship or value death, not the death that is inflicted on us or the death that we can inflict upon others. 

We are called to worship and value life. 

Death divides us but the life we see up on the cross, the hope we find in that promise invites to celebrate LIFE, even while death looks us squarely in the eye. 

In Christ, we don’t have to surrender under a white flag when we see the Jolly Roger. 

We also don’t need to raise a red flag signaling no quarter out of fear and anger. 

We are called to lift high the cross, proclaiming the love shone to the world through Christ by the One who first loved us. 

Amen

Sources

Cone, James H. The Cross and the Lynching Tree. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2011.

Cordingly, David. Under the Black Flag: The Romance and the Reality of Life among the Pirates. 2006 Random House trade pbk. ed. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2006.

Luther, Martin, Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, and Helmut T. Lehmann. Luther’s Works. Vol. 22 [...]: Sermons on the Gospel of St. John: Chapters 1 - 4 [...]. Saint Louis, Mo. u.a: Concordia Publ. House u.a, 1957. 

Luther, Martin, Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, and Helmut T. Lehmann. Luther’s Works. 40: Church and Ministry: 2. American ed. Saint Louis, Mo.: Concordia Publ. House [u.a.], 1958.