This morning the lectionary gives us two readings from the Bible, one from the Old Testament and one from the New Testament, that not only deal with the same theme as is often the case. These two lessons refer to the same event. The event is somewhat strange, especially to twenty-first century, scientifically oriented people.
According to the Book of Exodus, the descendants of Abraham and Sarah, the Israelites, lived in Egypt for several generations, multiplying and becoming enslaved by the Egyptians. Moses led his fellow Israelites out of their slavery in Egypt across the Sinai Peninsula toward Canaan, on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. The people, numbering in the thousands, wandered in the wilderness for years before reaching their hoped-for destination. They experienced hunger and thirst among other difficulties.
At one point they complained bitterly to Moses, in effect castigating God as well as Moses for leading them into a situation where they had only the barest of food and very little water for sustenance. Moses passed the complaint on to God, with whom he spoke regularly. According to this morning's first reading, God sent poisonous snakes among the wandering Israelites as punishment for their displeasure. That's the way some of the Old Testament writers understood God. They saw God in very human terms, possessing very human emotions and acting in very human ways.
Moses took this new disaster to God, who provided a cure for any man or woman bitten by the poisonous snakes that had invaded the Israelite camp. God told Moses to fashion a snake out of bronze and put it up at the top of a pole, so that people could see it. Anyone who was bitten by a snake could look at the bronze snake or serpent and be cured of the otherwise fatal consequences of the bite.
The author of the fourth Gospel, writing thirteen or fourteen centuries after the legendary invasion of the snakes in the Sinai Peninsula, likened the crucified Jesus to the bronze serpent Moses had fashioned as a cure for the stricken Israelites. John the Gospel writer was making the point that there is healing power in looking at the crucified Jesus. What we look at makes a difference.
It is certainly not necessary to read the story of the Sinai snakes as a western-style historical account. It is cloaked in what some Biblical scholars call "legendary ecretion." Interestingly enough, the New York Times ran an article three years ago almost to the day about a massive effort to eradicate Nigerian Guinea worm disease, in the words of the Times, "thought to be the 'fiery serpent' described in the Old Testament." [New York Times, March 26, 2006 "Dose of Tenacity Wears Down a Horrific Disease" by Donald G. McNeil, Jr.] Often Biblical stories given a religious context by their authors have their origins in events recorded or told about in unrelated settings.
Centuries ago some people may have believed that looking at a bronze serpent could cure the effects of snakebite. In fiction or folklore it is common understanding that vampires are repelled by looking at crosses or crucifixes. Much more to the point for you and me is the contemporary debate about the effects on children of watching violent motion pictures or television programs. What we look at can make a difference.
Even more to the point is a comment made to me this past week by a man whose life is in turmoil. His employment is uncertain; his family is going through a difficult time. He said to me, "I just want to get away and look at the ocean for a few days. Looking at the ocean has always helped to calm me down." I could identify with him. In my first job as a minister, while I was dealing with loneliness and a congregation that had never had an associate pastor before, I would drive from Houston to Galveston as often as I could to swim in the Gulf of Mexico and then sit on the beach and watch the waves roll in. It was calming and restorative. What we look at makes a difference.
Friday afternoon I took a train to Princeton, met my wife, and took another train to Philadelphia. We went to the Philadelphia Museum of Art to see their much-praised exhibit Cézanne and Beyond. It was worth the trip. The exhibition is designed to show how Cézanne changed the practice of painting and the extent to which he influenced artists like Matisse and Picasso. The organizers have brought in paintings from the great museums of the world—from Paris, London, Moscow, and St. Petersburg. Room after room of masterpieces that interpret or re-interpret what the artists were looking at! In one room there was a photograph of a harbor taken by the Canadian artist Jeff Hall. His photograph echoes a painting by Cézanne of the Mediterranean harbor where Cézanne spent much of his life. Both are masterpieces. In commenting on the importance of Cézanne, Jeff Hall said "He changed the focus of painting from drama to seeing."
What we look at makes a difference. I left the Philadelphia Museum grateful for the opportunity to see so much beauty so well presented and so well interpreted in the audio tour that is part of the exhibition. And on the train trip back through some of the worst neighborhoods of Philadelphia, I saw the graffiti on the walls of abandoned buildings, some of it violent. I thought how tragic it is that so many city schools have had to eliminate trips to museums because of budget cuts. I wonder where inner city kids in Philadelphia and New York as well as Paris and London get to see the beauty in great art and how often they get to experience the wonder of the ocean or the mountains. I believe the outcry over the AIG bonuses is coming at least in part from a sense that our national priorities have been out of order and from a longing to restore some kind of balance in the distribution of wealth.
What do you look at? This past week Julia Roberts was on Good Morning America, talking about her new movie Duplicity, which got a rave review in the Times on Friday. In the course of the conversation she was asked for a definition of beauty. She said, "Beauty is looking at someone who loves you." I said out loud, even though she couldn't hear me, "Julia, you just preached my sermon." Beauty is looking at someone who loves you. You can check it out on the Good Morning America tape of last Thursday.
That really is what the writer of the fourth Gospel is saying. "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him (or really sees him) may have eternal life," which means deeply satisfying life as well as on-going life.
I like to ask for feedback on my preaching, and one of the things I've heard is that it's mostly variations on a single theme—the theme of God's love. There is some truth in that, and I'm not unhappy acknowledging it. For me the central theme of the Christian faith is the grace of God or the unconditional, affirming, accepting love of God. They are the same thing. Everything else flows from that.
I often say that my goal in a particular sermon is to connect Biblical truth with the world we live in now and with the lives you and I are living every day. If I were to summarize the truth of our two readings this morning and re-phrase it for 2009, I would say that what we look at, what we stare at, what we spend time seeing can make a big difference in how we feel about ourselves and the world around us. It can affect our behavior as well as our understanding. If we look at ugliness, we will pay the price. If we look at violence, there will be consequences. If we find ourselves bitten by snakes that find their way into our world—snakes like greed, envy, prejudice, and hatred—we can find a cure.
The cure, to paraphrase Julia Roberts, is to look at someone who loves you, to look at your partner, your spouse, your friends, your children, your pets—the ones who really love you. And as you look at the one or ones who really love you, you will want to be the best self you can be. You will want to be more caring, more generous, more open to making love the defining characteristic of who you are.
And if that can happen when you look at human beings who love you, think what can happen when you look at, gaze at, the mysterious symbol of ultimate love, cosmic love as it self-expressed on a Cross. As we sang in the hymn that preceded this sermon,
O Cross that liftest up my head, I dare not ask to fly from thee,
I lay in dust life's glory dead,
And from the ground there blossoms red
Life that shall endless be.