The Fourth Sunday in Lent: Once Bitten, Twice Shy

Numbers 21:4-9; Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22; Ephesians 2:1-10; John 3:14-21

This is yet another of those times when the connection between the various lectionary texts is rather easy to make. The Numbers and John passages make reference to the same event: Yahweh sending poisonous snakes to attack rebellious Israelites, then Moses setting up an image of a snake that people would just look toward and be healed. This is now enshrined in the hymn, "Look and Live:

"Look and live, my brother live!
Look to Jesus now and live!
'Tis recorded in his word, hallelujah!
It is only that you look and live!

Later on, this snake image that Moses is to have set up in the wilderness--and never mind the Second Commandment implications--was removed as part of King Hezekiah's reform efforts. But Jesus uses the image--or John's Jesus uses the image, or John suggests that Jesus might have used the image, or the Johannine community had the theological framework in which Jesus might or might not have used such an image (I'm gonna bang my head against the wall)--as an analogy to what is going to happen to himself soon enough. He is the ultimate thing to be lifted up at God's command for the salvation of humanity.

The Psalms and Ephesians texts also seem to move in the same circles. This is not at all to suggest--as if anyone would think that I would suggest such a thing--that whoever wrote the Ephesians passage had the Psalm text in mind, but it is interesting when things written from a vastly different perspective and several thousands of years apart hit on the same theme independently. Both talk about having moved out of a previous sinful existence and having gone on to a new way. Even though we were "rich" in trespasses, God was richer in mercy and poured out that mercy upon us.

You know what? I don't think there's anything more to be said about that. Amen.