This Sunday’s reading from the Gospel of John includes what’s arguably the most famous verse in the Bible: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” This week, we hear that sentence in context – spoken to someone trying to understand what life actually is, and grounded in a strange comparison to a wilderness story from the Hebrew Bible.
In the book of Numbers, the Israelites, worn down by fear and exhaustion, are bitten by poisonous snakes. God does not remove the snakes or erase the danger. Instead, Moses is told to lift up a bronze serpent. Those who are able to look at it–to turn their attention toward the very image of what is harming them–live.
Jesus takes up this image in John’s Gospel. Just as the serpent was lifted up in the wilderness, he says, so must the Son of Man be lifted up. Healing does not come through escape, denial, or certainty. It comes through attention–through facing what is dealing us death, and discovering where God is already present.
In a chaotic and often unjust world, this is an invitation not to flinch away from truth, but to stay with it and be changed by it. Staying with truth may not feel like hope at first. But disillusionment–loosening our grip on old, death-dealing assumptions–may be precisely the beginning Jesus describes: movement toward the way of living fully in the world that he calls eternal life.
On Sunday, we’ll reflect together on this story, listen for how God might be inviting us toward that fullness of life, and hear from some guest musicians. As we lean further into Epiphany and a time of spiritual transformation, it seemed fitting to hear from a few musical innovators in our own congregation and their collaborators. Leading into worship, jazz flutist Maria Rehakova, bassist Micah DeSelms, and keyboardist Ziv Dudnik will set the tone with a piece by John Coltrane, and Merle will join them in leading us through a variety of traditional hymns and folk songs reimagined to meet this moment in time. Come be refreshed, inspired, and transformed!
Image credit: Fantoni, Giovanni. Brazen Serpent, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.
