Fourth Sunday in Lent (B)—Numbers 21:4–9 and John 3:14–21; Ephesians 2:1–10

Keith Haring, Altarpiece: The Life of Christ, 1990

Bronze with white gold leaf patina.

Numbers 21:4–9 and John 3:14–21

 

Lifted Up

 

Oh, how bizarre!—I'm sure you cry—

To read this text, where lifted high

Above the ground is some old snake

That Moses made for Israel's sake!

 

First, why on earth did Yahweh choose

To send those snakes, when they abused

The generosity God showed

When freedom on them, God bestowed?

 

Who knows? And yet a remedy

For lack of faith is what we see

God gives, whenever we are blind

To how God longs to be defined.

 

It also seems a funny thing

The praise of Christ who's killed to sing,

Since dying seems less victory

Than something contradictory.

 

Why would it that this faithful man,

Condemned to death, be some game plan

For how the world might finally see

The love that sets all people free?

 

Who knows? And yet, it matters not

The things that up God's sleeve, God's got!

Love backed not down, and thus displayed

Extravagance God shows today.

 

When snake or Son are lifted high,

The thing to see in your mind's eye

Is God who always demonstrates

The saving grace which love creates.

 

Scott L. Barton

 

From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom; but the people became impatient on the way. The people spoke against God and against Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food.” Then the Lord sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died. The people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you; pray to the Lord to take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. And 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.” So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.
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And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. “For God so loved the world 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 into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.”

 

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Ephesians 2:1–10

 

Way of Life = Way to Life = Life

 

How strange the writer says I'm dead

When by each day's desires I'm fed,

And with the things that I desire

It's only death that I acquire;

Instead, the kindness that I need

Is what from God each day proceeds;

And if this is a thing I know,

Then life, not death, will my life show.

 

Scott L. Barton

 

You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient. All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else.

 

But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.