Our family car was a 1956
Chevrolet Bel Air station wagon, turquoise and cream. We boys rode in the back
seat. My parents rode in the front. Looking over the driver’s shoulder I could
see out through the windshield to the front hood of the car. There in the
middle of it was a hood ornament, or as I called it, “the aimer”. I figured
when you drove you steered the car using the aimer as kind of a front sight,
like the one on the front of a rifle. With it you could steer your way down the
road to where you were going.
It acted as a sign,
pointing the way. I never mistook it for the road or for our destination. In
fact, I knew where we were going: our cousins’ house, for a family visit and a
vacation. “Are we there yet?”
The people of Israel, it
seems, sometimes mistook the sign for the thing it was pointing to – or looked
another way entirely. They had lost their way in the wilderness, at least
morally. Moses and the Lord had led them out of the bondage of slavery in
Egypt. They were ‘under the cloud’ – the pillar of cloud that guided them by
day – and they were being led by Moses, and the Lord, through the desert. They
complained a lot, though.
They murmured. In fact
today’s lesson records Murmur Number Five. And this time they complained, not
only about Moses, but also about the Lord – and that was not going to work.
“We have NO FOOD and NO
WATER and we detest THIS MISERABLE FOOD!”
They had water from the
rock – and manna, food from
Heaven. But – no thanks.
And so – something
happened. They were afflicted – and they were convicted.
With snakes they were
afflicted; of sin they were convicted.
Since everything comes
from God, the good and the bad, they must have reasoned, God sent even the
snakes – even the punishment that came to them. And that is how they took it,
as an affliction that recalled them to their senses. They repented. “We have
sinned against you and against God,” they said to Moses. Now save us already!
And then a strange thing
happened. God told Moses to make an image of the very thing that had been
killing them – the engine of their affliction – and put it up where everybody
could see it, and everyone who was bitten who turned and looked at it would be
saved.
Look to the snake on the
pole and you will be saved. A strange sign, indeed: but what does it point to?
It points to – we discover
– something stranger yet: the innocent person who took upon himself the sins of
us all, who was lifted up on a cross – the most excruciating of devices for
punitive humiliation and tortuous death, and thereby – by that very means –
became the source of our salvation.
If we look to Christ – if
we trust him, believe in him, put our faith in him – we find our way to life.
The wanderers in the
desert had received their freedom. They had water from the rock. They had bread
from heaven. And they had healing of this strange affliction.
We, who were wandering in
the wilderness of sin, have been given our freedom – we have been released from
our own captivity to the follies and destructive behaviors that kept us from
God. God has sustained us; everything we have, all we need to live, is a gift
of God. And we have received salvation – healing from more than sickness of the
body, we have received healing and wholeness of our souls, our inward life.
God has given us eternal
life. It is life in its fullness. It is life in right relationship to God, to
nature, to each other, and to our selves. It is life that comes to completion
in Christ; that finds its fulfillment in the presence of the Lord.
Jesus, whom everyone knew
was innocent, nevertheless gave himself up – gave his life over – as a
testimony and a witness to the truth – the truth of God’s love for humankind.
And so he was lifted up –
raised up, onto the cross at Calvary, and raised up, into the new life in the
resurrection – and in this dying and in this rising was the saving of the
world.
If we look to Christ – if
we trust him, believe in him, put our faith in him – we find our way to life.
This good news came to the
people of Ireland in a strange way – a godly way.
A young patrician, a
teenager from a prosperous family of Roman Britons, was spending his time by
the seaside, at a waterfront property of his family, convenient to the coast –
and convenient for pirates. Irish rovers came across the sea and stole him
away, kidnapped him, and made him a slave. They sold him on, to a farmer in
Ireland.
Young Patrick, as he came
to be called, found himself tending cattle on the backside of beyond, way over
on the west coast of this distant and foreign island.
And that is how he spent
his teenage years. They were teenage years – formative years – but not his only
formation for adulthood, for he found his way to freedom, and to a spiritual
re-formation.
Patrick first found his
way to physical freedom. He walked out, somehow, away from his master, and
escaped across Ireland and the sea. He journeyed far, into France, and there he
found a spiritual freedom. He encountered a spiritual master, Martin of Tours,
founder of a monastery and a movement. Martin took him in and taught him the
Christian way – the way of the Cross.
Patrick learned from
Martin – and gained a blessing that he was meant to share. For Patrick had a
dream – not a daydream, but a vision: he was being called back, across the sea,
to bring the good news of the freedom of the spirit, the gospel of God, to the
very people who had enslaved his body. And he answered the call.
Rough-hewn and mystical,
Patrick was the perfect apostle to bring the good news to the Celtic peoples.
He returned to Ireland. And he did something there that was much more
significant than any legendary miracle.
Legends like driving all
the snakes from Ireland. (There were not snakes in Ireland to begin with.) The
point is not what he drove out; the point is what he brought in.
He brought into Ireland
and to its people the good news that in Christ was to be found their
completion, their wholeness, and their salvation. He brought the gospel to a
people that had been enslaved by greed, ignorance and sin, a people lost in
darkness. He brought to them the light of Christ.
And they in turn became a
light to the world. From the Celtic lands, from the people he taught the
gospel, came in time a series of monastic missionaries, adventurers on the seas
of the world, who sought holiness and brought salvation to the people they
encountered, all across the continent of Europe.
The learned monks of
Ireland, in the centuries following Patrick’s mission, studied and shared the
great gifts of civilization – and beyond civilization they brought the saving
news of Jesus Christ.
Patrick never drove the
snakes out of Ireland. What he drove out, under the Master’s guidance, was the
fear and the ignorance that kept the Irish people in bondage to sin.
What the Lord did in
Ireland through Patrick and all the Irish saints to follow was to establish an
outpost of courage, hope, generosity, and freedom; a beacon that shone across
Europe with the light of Christ.
What God brings to us to
day is the good news of salvation: we look to the Cross – for salvation, for
Jesus was lifted up so that we, and all people, may receive the gift of life.
And what calls us today is
the mission of the kingdom. We carry with us into our world, our place and
time, to those around us, those we know already and those we must seek out, the
message of hope and the means of salvation, the abundant grace that is found in
the Cross of Christ.
O God, who made the world
and made it good, and who redeemed the world you made when we had fallen into
sin and wandered far from your purpose for our lives, you who redeemed Patrick
from bondage, sending him on a mission as your apostle of freedom, compassion,
and grace, so bless your servants here with courage and hospitality, generosity
and faith, that your spirit may abide in the hearts of this congregation and
that this church may be to your world a beacon of hope and a light of your
salvation. Amen.
John 3:14-21, Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22.
JRL+
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