First United Methodist Church
March 10th, 2024
Rev. Lauren Hall
Look Up and Live
In the movie, Forrest Gump, there is a scene in which the main character, Forrest, becomes a hero during the Vietnam War. His platoon has been overwhelmed by enemy fire, and Forest does what he has always done – he runs to safety. But then he realizes that his best friend is still in danger. So he goes back into the Jungle to look for him, only to find that several members of his platoon have been injured, and he carries them, again and again, to a safe place by a river, until he finally locates his friend, Bubba.
Bubba has received a fatal wound, and Forest realizes that, but he picks him up anyway and carries him to safety. When he places him on the ground, Bubba asks, “What happened?” “You got shot,” Forest responds. And then Bubba dies. As he reflects on that moment several years later, he says, “If I had known that that would be my last conversation with him, I might have said something different.”
Have you ever had an experience like that?
For me it would have been this Sunday in 2020.
Daylight Savings Time always throws me off for a couple of weeks. My phone and my watch reset themselves automatically, so I never have to worry about being late, but my internal clock takes a while to catch up. I started the day with my body saying, “No, it’s not time to get up.” My dog growled at me as if to say, “There’s no way I’m going outside right now,” and went back to sleep. My next brain-fog action was to place the wrong Keurig pod into my coffee maker – it was decaf and I didn’t realize it until I was headed out the door. I began worship by saying, “Welcome to Grace” and it had been 5 years since I served Grace Church. And then I told my congregation that “This is my least favorite day of the entire year.” If I knew that that would be the last time I greeted them in person for several months, I might have greeted them in a different way.
Hindsight can teach us a lot of things. If Peter and the other disciples truly understood Jesus’ mission, they might have spent their time with him in a different way as well. But life generally doesn’t work like that.
As we look back on past experiences, we are able to interpret these experiences with knowledge we didn’t have at the time. Although we can never live that exact same moment again, as we learn whatever we can from our past experiences, when a similar situation comes up, we can face it with a little more insight and grace.
When you think about that, this may be one of the reasons why Jesus reminds Nicodemus of the Israelis’ experience with the serpents. While it may not be as well known to us as it was to him, it gives us insight into how John understands and presents Jesus in his Gospel.
In case you are unfamiliar with this Scripture, this story from Numbers is about a time when the Israelites, on the way to the Promised Land, grew impatient and grumbled against Moses and the Lord (Numbers 21:4-9). The Lord is not pleased, and he afflicts them with poisonous snakes. But as is often the pattern in these stories, when the people repent, God relents. In this case, God instructs Moses to make a bronze serpent and put it on a pole so that every time someone is bitten, that person can look at the bronze serpent and be healed.
It isn’t hard to imagine the squeamishness of the Hebrew people to have a bronze snake on a pole in the midst of the camp while they were surrounded by snakes nipping at their heels. And we can be sure that their prayer was that God would move the snakes out of the way and give them a clear path on their journey. But God didn’t remove the serpents, or even stop them from biting, God chose a different way. God left the snakes around them, left them vulnerable to the poison that could kill them. Yet, God gave them a remedy, a solution to the danger that surrounded them.
As you might expect, this story isn’t really about snakes, and it isn’t about worshiping an odd sort of idol. It’s about acknowledging that we need help. We need a savior. By placing this well-known story from Israeli history alongside his explanation of how God planned to save the world, Jesus creates a metaphor that would only be understood through hindsight after his crucifixion and resurrection. To look ahead to Jesus’ “lifting up” through the lens of this story, we see two instruments of death – the serpents and the cross – be transformed into signs of healing.
Jesus gave Nicodemus a whole lot of stuff to think about. We don’t know how it all affected him or what he went away with that night. But we do know that he shows up at multiple points in John’s Gospel and he grows in his faith. His first two encounters occur in darkness, but the third occurs in broad daylight when he gathers up the crucified body of Jesus and wraps it up with about a hundred pounds of spices and puts it in the tomb of another Pharisee named Joseph. This is not an affirmation of his faith, by any means, but it does show that over time, Nicodemus is more willing to take risks publicly and openly regarding Jesus.
Even more though, I think this story says a lot not simply about Nicodemus but also about God. God is patient. God doesn’t give up. If God keeps working in and on and through Nicodemus across three years and sixteen chapters in John’s Gospel, God will keep working in and on and through us. No matter how long it takes.
After inviting Nicodemus to be born anew, Jesus tells him that God so loved the world that God sent his son to restore it. Therefore, when we read this Scripture, while we have enough hindsight to understand the metaphor, Nicodemus does not. Perhaps he made the connection after Christ’s crucifixion, or perhaps his understanding came at a different time – it doesn’t really matter. What we do know is that John uses this illustration to show that God always finds a way to wrest love from hate and life from death. Ultimately, love is where God begins and ends. This love, like grace, is a gift we do nothing to deserve. Again and again, love is our refrain. Before we act, think, or believe…love can be first for us also.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Jenny, a 32-yearold single mother, was already struggling. A mother of four children, she supplemented her hard work with SNAP benefits and family assistance. When the pandemic hit, she found local food prices rising. And when a severe storm left her mountainous community in eastern Kentucky without power, all the food she had in the refrigerator spoiled. She received a short-term replenishment at the emergency food pantry but was left to wonder how she would survive for the next two months. The United Methodist Committee on Relief was there, providing aid in ways other relief organizations fall short. Through an UMCOR Sheltering in Love COVID-19 Rapid Response grant, Jenny was able to feed her family for two more months.
UMCOR is a vital part of our shared ministry through The United Methodist Church. It helps us to live out God’s mission—missio Dei—and do the good works needed. In Ephesians, the writer encourages the people to live out their salvation in Christ. He wants the people to recognize that “God so loved the world” and sent Jesus to wake us up out of our self-absorbed, destructive ways. Throughout the Lenten season, we spend some time reflecting on the ways that we have fallen short of God’s expectations, and practice additional spiritual disciplines so that we might once again experience the mystery of God’s grace.
We have all experienced loss at some point in our lives. But we have also seen God’s love, mercy and grace at work both locally and globally. Think about the times you were able to help a neighbor or perhaps you received support from someone just at the right time. Caring for one another and receiving care breaks us out of our scarcity mentality. Giving of our time, our talents and our gifts frees us to live in God’s abundant grace. Through our mutual relationship in Christ, there is enough for everyone.
This is the good news. Living as Christ showed us to live is an awakening. We too can live resurrected lives. We don’t have to stay in a place of despair. When we recognize God loves us more than we can measure, how can we respond in any way except to pass on that love to others, living as God would want us to live?
God’s objective is salvation not condemnation, and John interprets eternal life as meaning abundant life in relation to Jesus now as well as in the future. When Jesus says, “God so loved the world,” he is pointing out that that God’s love is giving and purposeful. God not only rescues, but also gives new life, new hope, and relief.
But underneath it all is a call to commitment. When Moses held up a bronze serpent on a pole, he told the people to “Look Up and Live.” “Look up” doesn’t sound like much of a commitment, but it is a call to move out of ourselves and to allow someone else to take the lead, to take the center of our beings. “Look up and Live” means to see the hope for your own life so that you can shine the light of hope for those you love and indeed the whole world, not in yourself, but in the person of Jesus Christ and his redeeming grace. Let us pray:
Dear God, is it nearly impossible for us to understand just how profoundly you love us and how much you were willing to sacrifice for us. Let us therefore, abandon the quest of understanding your love and instead simply surrender to it so that we might share this light with those around us. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
