Look At What Is

based on John 3:1-17 | Second Sunday of Lent

Anyone remember the Exodus wilderness story?

The people are being bitten by snakes. They are dying. And they go to Moses complaining, talking about how this whole idea to follow Moses and Miriam seemed great. GREAT. Until they were now in the wilderness, hungry, and being bitten by snakes.

So they tell Moses to go see God and get God to fix it. No more snakes.

And so Moses goes to God. And God does respond. But not as a singular sky-daddy savior swooping in to erase the problem. God collaborates. God tells Moses to make a bronze serpent and put it on a pole. If people want to live, they’re going to have to look at that snake on the pole.

In other words, they have to take a good look at exactly what’s killing them.

God does not remove the snakes. God invites the people into participation in the pathway toward living.
Life abundant requires their involvement, literally looking at what’s killing them.

If they want to move forward, they cannot outsource the issue to God alone. This work must be done together, with God.

Now we fast forward to Nicodemus. He comes to Jesus at night. He asks good questions. He recognizes that God is at work in Jesus. But then he gets obtuse about things. He shifts the conversation into technicalities. Biology. Literalism.

“How DOES one go back into the womb once they’re already born? Hmmm?”

Maybe because at the core of all these effects and signs Jesus is showing, Nicodemus is noticing problems with his understanding of right and wrong and the powers of the world. Maybe it’s because if Nicodemus doesn’t get obtuse, the only other option is to admit how much more he also proverbially sees, and doesn’t really want to see, about his current world.

For example:

• How religion and empire are intertwined, and working together to harm people.
• How “laws” supposedly built to help and protect are only serving people who really don’t need more protection.
• How these orderly systems for serving people in need are also crushing the very life they claim to be there to protect and serve.

And Jesus’ response to Nicodemus is just the same as God’s reply to Moses in the wilderness.

This is a collaborative effort. You are a participant.

Just as Moses lifted up the serpent, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.

And Nicodemus knows the story Jesus is referencing. Nicodemus knows that if he’s going to live the life he’s hoping to live, a life abundant and full of love, he can’t stay obtuse. He’s going to have to go ahead and look, and admit what he knows.

Not at an abstract problem. You can see why he maybe wanted to stay “in the dark” with this one.

But Jesus is telling him he’s going to have to take a look and be honest about the way this world works. About who and what it’s killing. Who and what it’s harming. Who and what it’s claiming to protect. The contradictions, the lies, the inaccuracies. All its complexities and difficulties.


And I suspect this is where we get to be a bit like Nicodemus, from time to time...

Preferring that beautiful blackness and chilling on a back step with Jesus. It feels a little safer there, I suppose. A spot where we might be able to say we don’t quite understand how it can all work together. Where we might be able to claim it’s all far beyond our abilities and thus the only hope is magical intervention from Sky-Daddy God themself.

But the pattern presented for us is consistent. If we want life, we must be willing to look at what is.
Not just as isolated individuals, but also collectively at the systemic stuff we create together too.

We must look at the uncomfortable what-is of our world and where we’re complicit. At systems that preserve themselves at the expense of the vulnerable. At patterns in our own lives that cooperate with that preservation and maintain the status quo.

Anyone who has lived inside something destructive knows this. You are not responsible for the damage done to you, but you learn eventually that damage stops when you are willing to acknowledge what is actually happening and then take next logical steps.

In Luther’s famous terms: we must call the thing a thing.

Those naming moments can feel destabilizing. And I think we sometimes get confused, thinking calling the thing a thing is a condemnation of sorts. But it is not necessarily a condemnation. Or even the end. It’s the start of being able to navigate toward what’s next.

God did not come into the world to condemn the world. God came into the world so that the world might live.

And life requires participation, collaboration, and honesty at what we’re seeing. The serpent lifted up, and looked at. Jesus on a cross, lifted up, and looked at with honesty. All those awful complicities that led to one singularly not-guilty man up there on a cross.

Not so an angry sky-daddy God can take out their wrath upon us. No.

But so that we can see clearly enough to move, together with God, toward dismantling the oppressive systems that bind.

Toward living more closely in the way of Jesus.

Toward helping to bring in the Reign of God.

Toward that kingdom of heaven, already come near.

with joy,
​Pr. Sam