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Rescue Me A sermon
preached by Rev. Ginger Gaines-Cirelli at Capitol Hill United Methodist
Church March 26, 2006, the Fourth Sunday in Lent. Text: Numbers 21:4-9, John 3:14-21 --------------- Ophidiophobia. If you have it, you have an irrational fear of snakes. Symptoms of ophidiophobia: Seeing a snake or only thinking about a snake can result in the following symptoms: breathlessness, dizziness, excessive sweating, nausea, dry mouth, feeling sick, shaking, heart palpitations, inability to speak or think clearly, a fear of dying, becoming mad or losing control, a sensation of detachment from reality or a full-blown anxiety attack. (1) Let's face it…even if you don't suffer from ophidiophobia, life can be very scary. Life can be so hard. We all find ourselves in the proverbial "wilderness" sometimes…when we are aware of dangers, toils, snares, when our fears loom large and we are vulnerable to harm. We lose jobs, lose loved ones; we lose a sense of our own being. We struggle with illness in our bodies or in the bodies of ones we love. We suffer from depression, despair, frustration, feeling in a rut or caught in deadend cycles…we wrestle with problems in our relationships…we rail against a world gone mad with violence and thoughtless abuses of people and creation as a whole. Our fears and phobias and struggles take many forms. But we all have them. We all sojourn from time to time in the wilderness in which those fears and phobias are especially prone to attack. Today we
catch up with the Israelites during one of their long wilderness sojourns.
They are not happy. They're having to take a detour to get to where they're
going and this really sets them off…they begin to complain, to murmur,
to speak against not only Moses, but God! (this is the only passage in
which the people speak against God directly) This long stretch of wandering
in the wilderness-being made longer by the current detour-has left the
people impatient (literally translated: "short of soul"). Their
total frustration is clear in their mumbled outburst: "Why have you
brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food
and no water, and we detest this miserable food." If there's no food,
how can it be miserable? It calls to mind those moments when Anthony catches
me standing in front of my closet mumbling, "I don't have anything
to wear! I hate these clothes!" Nonsense. Frustration…impatient…short
of soul. It should come as no surprise that the people assume that God has sent the snakes. Plagues and natural disasters of all kinds have often been attributed to God as punishment for sinful human behavior. I want to state clearly that this is absolutely not the belief of this pastor or this congregation or this denomination-or, frankly of most of mainline Christendom. However, we cannot sidestep the fact that this idea appears throughout much-though not all!-of the Hebrew scriptures, and remains firm among some monotheists today. Beyond that disclaimer, though, I think we also must acknowledge how common it is for even the most sophisticated among us to wonder, at times, about what God is up to…Why? we ask…Why suffering? Why death? Why loss? Why confusion? Why deadly snakes? Why?! The Israelites ask Moses, their intercessor, to pray to God for relief. Moses does this and what is the response? God tells Moses to make an image of a snake and put it on a pole; everyone who is bitten and looks at this image will live. What's up with that? One explanation for this resides in the cultic life of the ancient Israelites. This story serves as an explanation for the fact that the image of a snake was placed in the Jerusalem temple as a cult object for the healing or prevention of a snakebite. But it seems to me that something more important, more universally "saving" is going on here. God is saying, in essence, "Gaze upon that which you fear-trusting in me-and you will live." Aha! Here is something we can dig into and work with….Confront the object of your fear in the assurance that God is not only with you but will save you. Confront the object of your fear in faith, trusting that God wants you to live and has the power to make it so. What might this mean for us? Well, we know that our fears bind us. Our fear of flying keeps us from traveling; our fear of heights keeps us from climbing; our fear of germs or disease keeps us from enjoying certain foods or experiences; our fear of failure keeps us from trying; our fear of losing keeps us from loving; our fear of being hurt keeps us in the prison of our own defenses; our fear of difference keeps us from experiencing the fullness of true communion; our fear of hurting keeps us from feeling; our fear of death deeps us from living. Our fear of death, of nothingness, of loss, of sacrifice…isn't that underneath all of our fears? A deadly snake, a savior crucified, dead, and buried…these are what are lifted up for us to gaze into…confront the object of your fear, your ultimate fear of death, in faith…and you will live… The sad truth is that in the face of our fears, we so often retreat to the shadows; we recoil at the prospect of standing face to face with the thing that scares and binds us, choosing instead to keep it in the dark, as far from the light as possible. And so our brokenness is hidden from others for fear of ridicule and judgment, allowing it to fester and rot within us. Our grief or anger is denied and channeled into places like overwork or destructive, addictive behaviors. Our fear of loss and being out of control manifests in clutching, controlling, self-centered behavior. We try in myriad ways to deny the sheer weight of the fact that we cannot, by strength of our own will, create light or life or health--and therefore, we inevitably end up feeling like failures…or we blame God. (and the more strong and capable we are, the more angry we become at the fact we can't fix things!) The sad truth is that we don't want to acknowledge that, at the heart of the Gospel is the fact that we are insufficient in ourselves, that we do, in fact, need to be rescued, that we do, in fact, need to be saved. We, like the Israelites get impatient with our situation-we grow "short of soul," our faith wanes. In these "soul-short" moments, we would do well to call on the "Queen of Soul" Aretha Franklin and hear her soulful voice cry out, "Rescue me/Oh take me in your arms/Rescue me/I want your tender charms/ 'Coz I'm lonely and I'm blue/ I need you and your love too!" In the moments of mountaintop and fertile plain, we want to believe, in our sophistication, that our Christian faith is "about spiritual enlightenment or ethical ideals or the broad love of God that inspires tolerance…" But in the wilderness spaces, the moments when we find ourselves standing in front of the coffin of our dead mother or father, when we find ourselves barren and despairing, when we find ourselves crying in the shower or sitting and staring blankly out the window at the kitchen table or at work, when we don't know where the next meal will come from or if there is a place or job for us in the world; when our own families reject us or deny us the love we so desperately need, when we feel alone, isolated, and forgotten; THEN we may remember-if we're lucky-that our faith is more than ethics or enlightenment or even inclusion. Our faith is, at its core, a story of salvation, of rescue. Part of the way God rescues us is by showing us, in Jesus Christ, that we can face our fears-even the ultimate fear of death and suffering and loss and sacrifice, trusting in the love of God. And that when, in faith, we bring our worst fears, our messiest brokenness, and deepest pain into the light, God will in the mystery of God's love, offer the gift of healing, freedom, salvation, new life. "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. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him." (John 3:16-17) As much as we want to deny or avoid or will our way through our pain and fear, we know-through Jesus Christ- that the only way to resurrection is to stand face to face with suffering, cross, even tomb, trusting that as we walk into and through the fear we don't walk alone… God is with us and will rescue us. So even the most sophisticated among us need to remember that perhaps the best prayer we can utter is "Rescue me… 'coz I'm lonely and I'm blue…I need you…and your love, too…" (1) Homiletics,
March-April 2006, Vol. 18, Num. 2, p. 29.
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Sermons from other years:
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Capitol Hill United Methodist
Church is a Reconciling Congregation. |
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