Everything Old is New

Scripture: Laetare, A.D. 2015 B

Sermon:

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  AMEN.

Sunday worship is the greatest Bible study on earth. Every week, Christians the world over read four sections of Scripture: two from the Old Testament and two from the New. The New Testament, we believe, is hidden within the Old, and the Old Testament is fulfilled by the New. They can only be understood together. A sermon is then preached to “give the sense” of the texts, and—one hopes—the discussion may then continue in fellowship, Christian education, and daily life throughout the rest of the week. Next Sunday we’ll take on four new readings.

In this way we not only tell the story of God’s people to one another, but also live out the story for ourselves. We have been adopted into the people of God, you and I. The Bible is our story now; its great figures are our ancestors, our sisters and brothers. At heart the Scriptures are ever a love story between God and human beings, and the story continues in us today, as the living Body of Christ still at work in this world.

Oftentimes people claim a great disconnect between the Old Testament, the story of Israel, and the New Testament, the story of Jesus Christ. The God of the Old Testament is vengeful and stern, they say, whereas the God of the New Testament is gracious and merciful. Obviously many people have rejected the New Testament as incompatible with the Old, and some early Christians—Marcionites by name—tried to reject the Old Testament, along with any part of the New that came across as too Jewish for their tastes.

This is all hogwash. The God of the Old Testament is extremely merciful, forgiving and forgiving and forgiving no matter how many times He is wronged and abandoned by His people. And the God of the New Testament has some extremely harsh things to say about those who ignore or abuse vulnerable peoples, who dress up in the garb of religion only to exult themselves amongst the masses. Jesus got quite angry at unrepented sin. Besides, all the major figures of the New Testament are people of the Old. Jesus, Mary, Joseph, Peter, Matthew, John, Paul—they were all faithful, practicing Jews. They knew and loved the Old Testament as God’s own Word.

Let me show you what I’m talking about. Our first reading today is from the book of Numbers. This takes place right after the Exodus—you know, Moses, Pharaoh, Ten Plagues, parting the Red Sea—Mt. Sinai, Ten Commandments, all that. God has just worked amazing wonders to lay low the most powerful nation on earth, all for the benefit of lowly slaves. Many of us spend entire lives hoping to witness a miracle; the Israelites of the Exodus witnessed them daily for 40 years. And how did they respond? By whining. Constantly, forever whining. Doubting God. Cursing God. Yearning to return to the yoke of Egyptian servitude and all the cruelties there entailed.

God gets sick of it, sick of the faithlessness of His chosen people. I think anyone with small children can relate. “So the Lord,” it says, “sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died.” And the people come to God’s servant Moses, realizing how foolish and wicked they have been, begging forgiveness. And it is immediately granted. The Lord tells Moses to fashion a bronze serpent and stick it on a high pole, that whoever might look upon it—simply look to the serpent—might be healed and live. Good story.

Our Gospel reading, meanwhile, contains perhaps the most famous and beloved verses of the entire Bible: “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.” Wow.

Now at first blush this seems like the classic Old Testament / New Testament divide I mentioned earlier. In the story of Moses you have a scary, testy God who throws vipers at you when you’re naughty. In the story of Jesus, you have a merciful, nonjudgmental God who loves everyone and grants the world a get-out-of-jail-free card by believing in His Son. But that’s just a lazy reading fraught with poor theology. Jesus Himself connects the two.

God does show His wrath in the Old Testament, just like Jesus shows His wrath in driving the moneychangers out of the Jerusalem Temple. But God’s wrath is not fickle or arbitrary. He doesn’t just fly into rages at the drop of a hat. God hates sin because sin separates us from God—and God is deeply in love with humankind. Naturally, when you love someone, you hate anything that separates you from them. But the thing about love is that it cannot force itself upon you.

When people turn from God, when they demand that God leave them to their own devices, no matter how foolish, God must in love relent. It is His nature. When Adam and Eve decided to try figuring out good and evil for themselves, rather than trusting God to do it for them, God allowed them to do so—no matter how terrible an idea that was. We’ve seen how well that’s all worked out.

When God’s people Israel throughout the Old Testament abandon God time and again, demanding that God just leave them alone already, God mournfully grants their request, knowing full well how much our rebellion will hurt us. But He also stands ever ready, reaching out to us, waiting to welcome us home in joy when we turn back to Him. Such is the nature of love, and what love must suffer for the beloved.

This isn’t just my hippy-dippy postmodern interpretation. The Bible itself speaks in these terms. The Prophets of the Old Testament make it clear that when the Scriptures talk of God’s wrath what they’re really describing is God tearfully removing His merciful hand of protection, that we might strike out on our own, and suffer the natural consequences of our actions. The Gospels make this even clearer: “This is the judgment,” John proclaims, “that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.”

God’s judgment is not a cranky old man whacking us with his cane. God’s judgment is simply the truth of a loving Father allowing His children to strike out on our own, and standing ready to welcome us home when we come back to our senses. So it’s not that God throws poisonous snakes at His people. It’s that the Hebrews of the story demand that God go away, to stop working the protection of His good will—and when He does just that, they start to die of all the usual things that kill you in the desert.

Now about that bronze serpent. How weird is that? Doesn’t God know that He just gave to His people atop Mt. Sinai a Commandment clearly forbidding graven images and false idols? Yet here He specifically commands Moses to fashion a graven image in order to deliver His people from death. Talk about your mixed messages. What’s up with that? Couldn’t God just have snapped His fingers and made them all better? Why make a bronze serpent?

It’s a prophecy, you see. Someday there will be a true and authorized visible Image of the invisible God: Jesus Christ, our God made flesh. And Jesus will be lifted up on a pole for all the world to see: the wooden pole of the Cross. And all who look to Him, not just in Israel but amongst every nation of the earth, will live. We will be healed, we will be saved, by looking to the Crucified and Risen Savior of the world. The story of Jesus is hidden in the story of Moses.

Now I don’t mean that the next time you’re bitten by a rattlesnake you should look at a crucifix instead of rushing to the hospital. The serpents from which Jesus saves us are not just of the physical but of the spiritual variety, for the Bible often refers to the devil and his fallen angels as serpents—wily, cunning, hidden and deadly. A man bitten by such a serpent cannot hope to live. But if he simply look to the Cross, to the Son of Man lifted up for all the world to see, the devil shall have no power over him. He shall be healed. He shall live. Christ may look like a sinner, a serpent, a convicted criminal hanging on a pole. But in fact He is made of bronze, which is how the ancients described the flesh of gods.

Thus is fulfilled the ancient prophecy of Genesis, that the seed of the woman will crush the serpent’s head, even as the serpent strikes His heel. And His wounds prove our salvation.

The New Testament is hidden within the Old. The Old Testament is fulfilled in the New. For indeed, all of Scripture points to Jesus Christ.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. AMEN.