O God, our help in ages past, our hope for
years to come, be thou our guide while life shall last, and our eternal home ☩ in the name of the Father,
Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.
Back in 2008, the 65-year-old Jim O’Neill went through what had to have been one of the scariest experiences we can imagine. There he was, at 5,000 feet in his Cessna flying from Scotland to a town just outside of London. He was an experienced pilot and all was going well on the relatively short flight. But about halfway through, something went wrong. No, it wasn’t engine failure or a problem with the instruments. The problem was Jim. He couldn’t see anything. Assuming that the bright sunlight had temporarily blinded him, he blinked his eyes a few times, fully expecting to again see the instrument panel when he opened his eyes. But nothing. Just darkness. Turns out that it wasn’t the sun that had blinded him, but a stroke had caused inflammation on his optic nerves to the point that he was blinded. So he feels around for the radio and sends out the call, “Mayday, mayday!”
Luckily
for O’Neill, an air traffic controller from the Royal Air Force responded almost
immediately. Based on the radar, they could tell that he was descending and
turning. They guided him towards a nearby RAF base, but as he got closer and
closer he couldn’t see the airfield, let alone the runway. Understandably, at
this point the panic and dread had started to set in. Not only for what would
likely be his own death, but the fear of accidentally taking out others in the
crash.
Well,
they directed O’Neill towards a larger base, one where an RAF flying instructor
was already in the air. Wing Commander Paul Gerrard brought his own plane
within about 150 feet of Jim’s and flew alongside him for about 40 minutes. As
they’d approach the runway for an attempted landing, O’Neill still couldn’t see
the target and was offline. So Gerrard would tell him “No problem, pull up,
turn left, left, left. Okay, we’re going to try this again.”
This
sense of desperation and doom is likely what the Hebrew people were feeling out
in the wilderness. Egypt was long behind them and who knew how long it was
until their arrival in the Promised Land. The people become impatient and start
to grumble. Next time you’re tempted to complain about the pandemic, just remember,
the Hebrew people wandered the wilderness for forty years. We can deal with a
few more months. Anyway, the complaining begins – “There’s no food or water out
here. And the food is terrible!” Wait a minute – I thought there was no food,
how can it taste bad? Just shows us how like the people in the Bible we all
are.
As
we saw in the Human Nature section of the Prayer Book Catechism last week, the
source of our disunity with God and others is our rebelliousness – we put ourselves
at the center of things, we forget that we are part of a community, we make our
own rules. In other words, we are idolaters who push God out of the center to
put ourselves there. The complaining done by the Hebrew people is rooted in
their impatience – things aren’t going on their timeline. Impatience is rooted
in our insatiable appetite for control. We want to decide when and how things
happen. And when we lose that control, we manipulate, we blame, we force things.
Goodness knows, we’ve seen this in this pandemic. It’s as if people think that
by pretending the virus is not real that it is not real. I actually saw someone
in the grocery store a few weeks ago wearing a mesh facemask – and it was clearly
done as a statement. Whatever statement he was intending, the true statement
was “I’m an impatient, selfish, and immature person.” To be fair though, we’re
all like that at times.
Then,
out come the poisonous serpents. Now they’ve really got something to complain
about. Can you imagine – just when you think things can’t get any worse, and
here come the vipers. Even the brave and adventurous Indiana Jones can’t stand
snakes. Of course, serpents remind us of sin in the Garden of Eden and of the untamable
sea monster referred to in the Psalms. It’s almost as if the people’s biting
complaints become physically manifest in these biting serpents.
And
these snakes get the people’s attention – they run to Moses and say, “We have sinned
by speaking against the Lord and
against you; pray to the Lord to
take away the serpents from us.” So Moses does pray. But God doesn’t tell Moses
how to get rid of the serpents, nor does God make them go away. Instead, God
tells the people how to deal with the venomous bite: fashion a serpent out of
bronze and put it on a stick. When someone is bitten, have them look at the
pole and they shall be healed. This is what scholars call an “apotropaic” gesture
– something that wards off evil. We do this still – ever see someone with a
horseshoe hanging in their house? How about someone searching for a four-leaf
clover? Even Jack-o-lanterns – the grotesque face carved in a pumpkin is
intended to ward off evil spirits.
It’s
interesting though that instead of eliminating the threat, God provides
healing. God does not save anyone from getting bitten, but provides comfort for
the bite. Preaching shortly after the tragic death of his son, a great preacher
of the 1980s, William Sloane Coffin said that what God provides for us is
minimum protection with maximum support. God does not get rid of the snakes,
God heals the bitten. And this happens by looking at the bronze snake. This is
why a snake on a pole is a symbol you’ll find on the side of ambulances and
hospitals – it is a symbol of healing. One Church Father notes that the bronze
serpent is not a type of snake, it is the contrast. The bronze serpent is
lifeless and harmless, and by looking at it, the bite of the living and
poisonous serpent is undone.
St.
John sees this as an obvious way of understanding the death of Jesus on the
Cross. He records Jesus saying, “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.” When Jesus is lifted up, he does so taking upon him the
Sin of the world and he dies. Much like the serpent is a symbol for evil and
death, Jesus on the Cross is a symbol of evil and death. And by looking at
Jesus on the Cross, we see that Sin and Death are rendered powerless. As St. Paul
quotes from an early hymn in his letter to the Corinthians, “Where, O death, is
your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?”
Yes,
the Cross is a ghastly, repulsive, and terrible sight. That is the point. When
we look at the Cross, we are supposed to see the horrors of Sin and the menace
of Death. But what we see on the Cross is not frightening, as, like the bronze
serpent, it is the antidote which cures us from the consequences of Sin and the
finality of Death. Just as the snakes are not removed and still have to be contended
with, their poisonous bite can be healed. We still live in a world plagued by
the effects of Sin and Death is still a reality that we must live with. But as
St. Paul goes on to write in 1 Corinthians – “Thanks be to God who through
Jesus Christ gives us the victory.”
The
question from the Catechism for today is, given our rebellious and idolatrous
separation from God, what help is there for us? And the response is – our help
is in God. O God our help in ages past, our hope for years to come. God rescued
the Hebrews who were plagued by the serpents and God rescued us when we were enslaved
to Sin and trapped by Death. We were absolutely stuck – there might as well be striking
vipers all around us: the good that we want to do is not what we do and the
evil that we do not want to do is exactly what we do. As St. Paul puts it in
the part of Ephesians that we heard this morning, “You were dead through the
trespasses and sins in which you once lived, following the course of this world.”
Yes, we were all dead and had no way to get out.
He
goes on to write, “But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with
which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive
together with Christ – by grace you have been saved.” In other words, God is
our helper. God came to our rescue. By just looking at the bronze serpent, the
people were healed. And, in the same way, we are saved by the grace of God, not
by our own works. And what is the purpose of this saving? Why does God rescue
us? Well, as that well-known verse tells us, “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.” The reason why God comes to our help is so that we might
have eternal life.
Now,
we misunderstand this great gift if we think that eternal life starts after we
die. That wouldn’t be “eternal,” now would it? No, eternal life is already
happening. Another, and perhaps better, way to translate “eterna life” is as “life
of the Age,” or “life in God’s time.” God did not send the Son into the world
to die a horrendous death so that something would happen after our deaths. No,
that’s far too light of a thing. Instead, God, out of love, gave his Son that
the light of God’s love might shine throughout all of Creation. Or, as we heard
in Ephesians, “For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good
works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.” The problem is
that the effects of Sin and the fear of Death were preventing us from living in
the way of love, the way of life that God intended for us from the foundations
of the world.
So in Jesus, God
gives us a sign that we are forgiven and that God’s love is stronger than
death. And that sign is Jesus lifted up on the Cross, just as the serpent was
put on a pole. As we heard in the Psalm, “God sent forth his word and healed
them and saved them from the grave” with the response being “Let them offer a
sacrifice of thanksgiving and tell of his acts with shouts of joy.” Our lives
can be lived in the grace and love of God. Though things got off track because
of our Sin, God has come to our help so that we can find peace and joy not only
on the other side of the grave, but in the midst of this gift of life that we have
been given.
Even when it feels
like we’re flying blind and don’t know how to land this plane, God is like that
Royal Air Force pilot who comes alongside us to guide us and shepherd us along
right pathways. It doesn’t matter how many times it takes for us to try to make
that landing, God is our helper. After several attempts, Jim O’Neill did land
that plane even though he wasn’t able to see the runway until he was already on
top of it. And though he couldn’t see what he was doing, he trusted the voice
of the person guiding him, telling him “It’s now safe to land.” Well, that’s
what the Cross is saying to us. God has forgiven our Sin and overcome Death –
so it’s safe to land in God’s grace and live in the light of God’s love. It is safe
to land.
