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In the past, you’ve heard me talk about my service in Washington, D.C. with the AmeriCorps program City Year, which puts young people in schools to serve as mentors and tutors to students.
These aren’t just any schools we get put in. City Year goes into schools that are struggling the most, particularly from an academic stance. Yet schools that are struggling often do so in many ways. In many of our cases, the area around the school was struggling too.
So, not terribly surprisingly, I learned towards the middle of the school year that the bus stop I got off at to get to my school was the worst crime intersection in D.C.
I never felt unsafe though. As part of our service in City Year, we had to wear uniforms (preparing me, a bit, for having a job with a uniform now). These uniforms included a bright red jacket with the words “City Year” plastered on the back and on the front. Everyone who saw us knew who we were. They knew why we were there too. We were there to help the kids. We were there to help lift them up so that they could make the most out of their lives and be the best that they can be. We were a sign of a better life. We were a sign of hope.
Our readings today are full of signs to look at to know all will be well. Our readings tell of some of the biggest signs of hope we have in Scripture.
We see this first in our reading from Numbers. There we get one of those great and obscure details in Scripture. We get the story of the Bronze Serpent.
Now this serpent was the result of the Israelites’ folie. Instead of doing what they should be doing and listening to God, they are griping and complaining. At this point they have been freed by God from slavery, and all they can think about is what they had before. Instead of enduring the hardships of freedom, they were whining about not having enough food to fill their bellies.
The vision I have of God in times like these, especially in Torah, is God waving His hands saying, “Hey, I’m trying to show you the right path. But if you don’t follow me, there are a lot of things out there that want to hurt you. You’re gonna get in trouble if you try to do things on your own.”
That’s exactly what happens. The Israelites find themselves surrounded by a lot of venomous snakes that end up bitting them. They find themselves in trouble. They find themselves on the brink of death.
Yet God, in His Mercy, provides for the Israelites. The Lord tells Moses to put up a Bronze Serpent. Anyone who gets bit just needs to look up at the Serpent and they will be healed from their wounds.
This serpent becomes a key image Jesus uses in his nighttime talk with Nicodemus, a learned Pharisee who wishes to know more from Jesus. Our Lord tells Nicodemus that just as Moses lifted up the Serpent in the wilderness, so too will the Son of Man be lifted up.
Ephesians spells out what Jesus means. By being lifted up on the Cross, Jesus, like the Bronze Serpent, provides healing for all willing to look upon Him. Instead of healing from venomous bites though, Jesus provides healing for our souls.
A lifetime in the church has shown me just how broken we all are as people. We cannot save ourselves. Ask anyone who has been addicted to anything, or even ask the loved ones of an addict. What we have to remember is that when it comes to sin, we all are addicts. We all are broken. None of us can do the work to save ourselves.
Ephesians reminds us of this truth. It also reminds us that there is one who can save us, and He does so without any help or work from us. That person is Jesus.
In the most famous words from our Gospel today, Jesus tells us, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, to the end that all that believe in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
This is the core of our Faith. We cannot save ourselves, but we do not have to. God the Son has done the work for us. We just need to look on Him and accept the gift of Grace He has offered us. We just need to look on the Exalted Son with the eyes of belief for us to be saved.
There are signs all around us, in this church even, of the wonderful gift of Grace we receive from Jesus being lifted up upon the Cross. They are not the only signs though. We can be those signs too.
As much as we struggle, Ephesians reminds us that even though we have no power to save ourselves, we are still “created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.”
We are meant to be as good as God declared us to be at the moment of our creation, all the way back in Genesis. We let following our own path get in the way of the one which God has laid out for us. We don’t need to let it though. We don’t need to be mean, nasty, or even unwelcoming to each other. We can recognize our faults. We can recognize that we are not perfect, and we can reveal to others that God loves us and redeems us anyways. We can then reveal to others that God loves them and will redeem them. God loves you too and will redeem you as well. If we can do the work of revealing that love to others, then we will become a sign pointing back to Jesus. If we can do that, then the saving work of the Uplifted Jesus will be bestowed on another person in addition to us.