3/11/18 “A Wrinkle in Time” by Nancy Petty

Text: Numbers 21:4-9, John 3:14-21

It’s not true. God didn’t send snakes to bite the Israelites as they wandered about in the wilderness complaining about the dry bread they had been asked to eat going on nearly forty years. Furthermore, a bronze snakehead on a pole won’t cure you if a North Carolina Copperhead bites you. Medicine will save your life. And it’s not true, either. God didn’t send his only Son to die a horrifying death on a cross to save you and me from some perceived original sin so that we could have eternal life.

Let me state it with more relevance: when something bad happens to you or someone you love it is not God’s punishment on you because of something you did wrong or bad or that your loved one did. Our sins and struggles, our perfectly flawed humanity, our imperfect world is God’s design and God does not punish us for being who God created us to be. That is not to say that there are not serious consequences when we choose hate and violence and injustice over love, peace, and justice both as individuals and as a humanity. There are natural bad consequences to bad decisions. But God is a loving God whose nature it is to guide us to wholeness (or if you rather use the word salvation) through grace and mercy—not snake bites and executions. Yes, I know, God is also a just God. Both are true; but I will make the argument any day all day long, based on scripture and experience, that God’s love, mercy, grace, and compassion are ultimate and that God’s preferential treatment toward humanity is always unconditional love.So, again, let me state it with relevance for faith today: fear is not God’s way. Love is. John 3:16, possibly the most familiar verse in all of scripture, has been used to promote God’s love through an atonement theology that is based in fear. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” Preachers, evangelists, and the institutional church have pointed to this very scripture to say that it was God’s purpose and intent that Jesus die on cross so that we could have eternal life. Furthermore, this one verse has been used and misused to make the ecclesial argument that Jesus is the only way—to God, to afterlife, and more directly stated by the church, to avoid the flames of hell. Fear!

The truth is that Jesus was killed by a political system that was threatened by his truth telling. His vision of a world where all are equal, where everyone has enough because no one takes more than they need, and the only real power is the power of love and that is the reason Jesus hung on that cross. God, I don’t believe, “gave” his son as atonement for our sin. There is redemption in the cross. That is true. Love is represented on the cross. That is true. But John 3:16 is not “an injunction for judgment”, it is “a claim of assurance.” It is not “a threat for those unwilling to accept God’s love”, it is a statement about Jesus’ love for justice-love for all people and what his love was willing to give. It is not a “summons to exclude those we think God does not love,” it is an invitation for us to participate in such transforming love. (phrases in parenthesis are attributed to Karoline Lewis)

Now, maybe you are thinking that my thinking is too literal. Of course, God didn’t send snakes to bite the people and kill them just for complaining about the food. The story, you say, is an allegory. And even John uses it as an allegory to compare the snake being lifted on the pole to “save” the Israelites just as Jesus was lifted on the cross to “save” us. But as one theologian writes:

“The obvious danger of allegory, a long-employed method in biblical study it must be agreed, is that my allegory is just as good as yours. In other words, there is no check on meaning if it is merely my imagination over against yours. Maybe the snake story is about something other than Jesus. Maybe the snakes are the enemies of Israel whose bite is death for the nation, and Moses’ serpent pole is a figure of the weapons needed to defeat those enemies? Well, why not? Allegory [this writer concludes] is a very weak bridge over which to cross the river to some sort of meaning.
(John C. Colbert, Patheos)

So, what do we do with texts like these? How do we find meaning in them, if indeed they have meaning? As I struggled with that question all week, engaging both the young adults and the lectionary group (who both were helpful), in the end I decided to use one of my lifelines. Do you remember the show Who Wants to be a Millionaire? Remember on that show if you were having trouble answering a question you could use one of three lifelines: 50/50 in which the computer eliminated two of the four options meaning that you had a 50/50 chance of picking the correct answer; ask the audience in which each audience member had a device on which they could indicate which answer they thought was correct and then the player was shown which answer had the highest percentage of response; and last was phone a friend. This lifeline gave the player the option of calling someone on a pre-approved list to ask for help.

This week I used my phone a friend lifeline, except I used email instead of a phone. I emailed a friend who is a very prominent Old Testament scholar and theologian, and is widely considered one of the most influential Old Testament scholars of the last several decades. In my email, with the subject line reading “Need help with text,” I wrote:

I am reaching out for help with one of the lectionary texts for this week—Numbers 21:4-9. I want to speak to this text as it is linked to the gospel reading for this fourth Sunday in Lent. As you encourage us pastors to do, I have studied, struggled, and argued with this text for the past three days. Honestly, my struggling has gotten me no further than seeing it as representing a dreadful theology when it comes to the character of God. I am inclined to say that it is texts like this that have encouraged a kind of theology and understanding of God that teaches that when something bad happens to us it is God’s punishment on us—a God whose wrath is quick-tempered and easily provoked. When I read this text, I think about how so many Christian people/pastors used AIDS as God’s judgment on gay people. Or how a natural disaster like Katrina was God’s judgment on a certain people, the poor people of New Orleans. It is the same feeling I get about atonement theology—that something bad had to happen (Jesus being crucified on a cross) because humanity is so bad. John compares the raising up of the snake on a pole to Jesus being raised up on a cross to heal us/save us from what I don’t know.

If you have time, any thoughts you might share as to this text or how one might preach on it would be greatly appreciated. For now, all I can say about it is that I don’t believe God sends snakes to bite people who grumble and complain because they are impatient for God’s goodness. If you don’t have time to respond to this, I certainly understand. Simply take this email as a way of me letting you know that I think of you often, and continue to be grateful for your presence in this world and for what I have learned from you.

My friend, the Old Testament scholar and theologian, writes back:

Nancy, I am glad to hear from you and glad it goes well for you.

As to that text in Numbers, I have not a clue. I do not understand it nor do I understand why it is in the lectionary. My only counsel is to do a different text. Or you might preach just what you have written [about] it, how bad it is and what it has produced. It gives a chance to make the case that the Bible is not settled but is rather (like our lives) an arena of contestation between what is true and what is destructive. We have to participate in that contestation and we may do so by exposing this text.

After I looked up what the word “contestation” means and how to pronounce it, I took this scholar and theologian’s words to heart.

So, with my friend, the scholar and theologian’s permission here is what I think we do with texts like Numbers 21:4-9 and John 3:16. First, we put them in context. And the context for which they were written is very different from the context in which we live. In other words, there is a wrinkle in time. These words were written and these narratives formed and told in a time when, as theologian John Holbert describes, “magic was real, and knowledge of reasonable explanations for actions and reactions were few. It is an age that we can surely study, but one that we need not drag into our century as a credible way of understanding the will and way of our God.” Holbert continues: “We, you and I, simply must divest ourselves of the last vestige of such primitive claims for God lest we make ourselves ludicrous before our world of reasonable science and fail miserably to present the saving word of the gospel to a world in desperate need of what it has to offer.” In other words, we must recognize and name the distance between then and now and interpret these texts so that they have meaning and relevance for our time, if indeed there is relevance. We must iron out the wrinkle so as to bridge the essence of the text to our time.

And what is the essence of these two texts? I submit it is love. In Numbers, it is God’s sustaining love even when the people choose to blame God for the tragedy that had befallen them. And that context has not changed. We are like that, us humans. We need someone to blame when bad things happen to us. And because we have these stories imprinted on our minds, it is easy and convenient to blame God—to ascribe all that happens to us, especially the bad, to God, rather than look within ourselves. But God’s love remains steadfast because God’s love, mercy, grace, and compassion are ultimate and God’s preferential treatment toward humanity is always radical love. Even when we engage in dreadful blaming theology, God’s love persists.

Tuesday night as the young adults discussed these texts, I was taken aback by the comments of one of the young adults. She said, and I paraphrase here: You know it’s true. I know that God doesn’t cause bad things to happen to us but when something bad happens to me there is always that little voice in my head that says why is God punishing me. What did I do to cause this bad thing to happen to me? Having grown up in the church, in her case the Catholic church, these messages of a punishing God were imprinted in her mind and soul. They were imprinted in my young mind, too, growing up in the Baptist church. The predominate message was not of a God whose love is radical. We have to start healing those neuropathways in our brain and create new ones. God’s way is not fear based. God’s way is love based.

As for John 3:16, the essence there is love, too. But we have even made that love a blaming love. We ascribe Jesus on the cross to God’s purposes. But here’s the thing. I believe John 3:16 should read this way: “For Jesus, the man from Nazareth, so loved the world that he gave his life because love doesn’t opt out.” No, Love gives, it always gives. The cross is not something God did to Jesus. Facing the cross, Jesus didn’t opt out. Instead, he followed his love to the ultimate sacrifice; because love is that way. And love always gives.

I will leave you with this. The narrative is flawed. It is not settled but is rather (like our lives) an arena of contestation between what is true and what is destructive. And it is this narrative that our faith tradition has handed down to us. And in that flawed narrative, the character of God is most clearly revealed in Jesus. And Jesus was about revealing God’s radical love. And radical love wants to give. And that costs. And that, my friends, has both meaning and relevance for us today. These texts ask of us: How will we bear witness to a love that seeks to give, while accepting the cost of that love?