4 Lent 2018

Sermon Notes
Grace Episcopal Church, Galveston
4 Lent 2018
The Rev. David C. Dearman

"Hope is the Feathered thing that Perches in the Soul - Emily Dickinson, American Poet as quoted by Meg Murray in A Wrinkle in Time."

A new movie is out this weekend based on Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time.  I have not seen the movie but can heartily recommend the book.

L'Engle died in 2007 but her influence lives on into a new generation.  You should know that she was an Episcopalian, and her faith informed her writing.  Although I met her only once, I can claim her as a spiritual mentor because I have read and reread her journal-based books on theology, art, and Christian life. The books are so personal, it's like she's sitting next to me sharing her life story.

I don't want to give away the plot of "Wrinkle," but will say that it is a story of good versus evil, of how we must struggle to know our value against forces that tempt us to think we are not worthy of love.  It is a story in which faith, hope, and love are gifts we have been given to sustain us and to allow us to battle the adversary.

The story enfleshes the idea that, when you boil it down, there really are only two choices in life, two ways of seeing, two frameworks, two paradigms, two ways to live your life in each moment: love and fear.  Love is related to faith and hope...but the greatest of these is love.

In our reading from the Book of Numbers we see that our spiritual ancestors were having a crisis of faith.  Their wilderness journey was becoming tedious; the power of God to save them from the Egyptians was a distant memory; the miraculous manna now seemed dull and repetitious.  Life in the wilderness was no picnic and there seemed to be no end in sight.  The people lost faith and with it their hope that something better was coming.  Some may have wanted to return to slavery in Egypt, a small price to pay for better food and security.  The people became angry and looked to blame God and Moses...and to make matters worse, they came to believe that God was punishing their lack of faith with an infestation of poisonous snakes.  The people were in a pickle and given the choice between love and fear, they had taken the route of fear, hook, line, and sinker.

In desperation, the people asked Moses to plead with God on their behalf.  God heard them and gave Moses the instruction to create a sign of hope for the people:  Moses created out of bronze the image of a snake and lifted it on a staff for the people to see.  

It is hard for us to see the import of this symbol because the snake has such negative connotations.  (Garden of Eden, visceral, subconscious reaction we've inherited from our ancestors, etc.) In history and legend, the snake was a symbol of healing, perhaps due originally to the snake's ability to slip out of its skin and emerge anew.  I'm also reminded that the anti-venom needed to counteract a snake's poison is made from that same poison. Even today, we often see the staff of Asclepius (one snake coiled around a staff) or the Caduceus of Hermes (two snakes around a staff in a double helix) used in the medical profession.

In our reading from the Gospel According to John, Jesus speaks of the snake lifted up for healing in the wilderness as a kind of prefiguring of his own death on the cross.  The cross is a negative symbol if there ever was one... it signified state execution, after all.  It was something that evoked fear and shame at the same time.  But, God's love has transformed the Cross into a sign of our healing.  Jesus was lifted up, so that by faith, we might have the power to choose love over fear.

In Lent, we remember that life is a wilderness.  Madeleine L'Engle taught that God does not promise us a life without challenge.  "A comfort zone was never part of the deal." (Anyone with mileage knows that is an understatement.)  In times of stress, we are called to gaze upon the Cross, so to speak, to seek healing and transformation in this tangible sign of God's love for us. 

I close with my favorite Madeleine L'Engle quote: "Faith is what makes life bearable with all its tragedies and ambiguities and sudden, startling joys." from Walking on Water, Chapter One "Cosmos from Chaos." AMEN.