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Staring at the curse

We’re heading into the Easter weekend.

I’ve been reading Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter as a way of engaging with the story and reflecting. I’ve loved the Advent book by the same team, and so I bought the Lent / Easter book, and tried to read it a few years ago, but struggled. I find the Easter story harder to engage with than the Christmas story. Christmas calls out that God being born among us as the baby Jesus, and by God becoming human it lifts the dignity and worth of every human. Easter tells the story of Jesus being killed, made to suffer, abandoned and betrayed and scorned. And being killed, by us. Which is harder.

And I found it even harder to engage with, because one of the key religious beliefs I learned in school and church was usually something like “substitutionary atonement” – the idea that Jesus death was in our place, and that somehow, it was required to satisfy God’s sense of justice, to take away God’s anger at how lousy we were. Which to my taste, makes God seem like an aggressive person I’d rather avoid. I kind of saw where it was coming from, but it was nothing like the God I knew.

I knew enough to know this wasn’t the only way of looking at Jesus’ death on the cross and understanding its meaning. I bought an NT Wright book to try to explore that more, but never got through it.

This year, even though I still don’t really understand what to think about it, I feel like I’ve found value in putting this story, the suffering of Jesus, front and center.

And a Henry Nouwen reading from this book referenced this quote from a conversation Jesus had, and the imagery behind it:

Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life.

John 3:14-15

I remember the first time my friend Justin pointed out the connection here to me. Before then I thought it was a pretty weird reference, but then, a lot of what Jesus says is pretty weird.

The “snake in the wilderness” story is from Numbers 21 in the Hebrew bible. The story is set years after the people had escaped from Egypt, but before they’d made it to Israel, they’re still wandering the desert living day-to-day from the special food God provided on the ground each morning (“manna”).

(Once again, this story is weird. Once again, it makes God seem angry and vindictive in a way that is just not my experience. But once you hear the story, Jesus’ comment about being lifted up like a snake suddenly becomes more interesting!)

Then the people of Israel set out from Mount Hor, taking the road to the Red Sea to go around the land of Edom. But the people grew impatient with the long journey, and they began to speak against God and Moses. “Why have you brought us out of Egypt to die here in the wilderness?” they complained. “There is nothing to eat here and nothing to drink. And we hate this horrible manna!”

So the Lord sent poisonous snakes among the people, and many were bitten and died. Then the people came to Moses and cried out, “We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you. Pray that the Lord will take away the snakes.” So Moses prayed for the people.

Then the LORD told him, “Make a replica of a poisonous snake and attach it to a pole. All who are bitten will live if they simply look at it!” So Moses made a snake out of bronze and attached it to a pole. Then anyone who was bitten by a snake could look at the bronze snake and be healed!

Numbers 21:4-9

So the people in the desert have done something wrong, and are suffering a curse – a plague of poisonous snakes that were biting them and killing them1 2.

Then when Moses prays, and God wants to stop it, he makes Moses craft a replica of a snake3. A picture of the very curse they are suffering. And when people look at the curse, somehow, they are healed.

And this brings me back to Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus, right at the start of his public life, several years before he was executed on a cross.

There was a man named Nicodemus, a Jewish religious leader who was a Pharisee. After dark one evening, he came to speak with Jesus. “Rabbi,” he said, “we all know that God has sent you to teach us. Your miraculous signs are evidence that God is with you.”

Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, unless you are born again, you cannot see the Kingdom of God.”

“What do you mean?” exclaimed Nicodemus. “How can an old man go back into his mother’s womb and be born again?”

Jesus replied, “I assure you, no one can enter the Kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit. Humans can reproduce only human life, but the Holy Spirit gives birth to spiritual life. So don’t be surprised when I say, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows wherever it wants. Just as you can hear the wind but can’t tell where it comes from or where it is going, so you can’t explain how people are born of the Spirit.”

“How are these things possible?” Nicodemus asked.

Jesus replied, “You are a respected Jewish teacher, and yet you don’t understand these things? I assure you, we tell you what we know and have seen, and yet you won’t believe our testimony. But if you don’t believe me when I tell you about earthly things, how can you possibly believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ever gone to heaven and returned. But the Son of Man has come down from heaven. And as Moses lifted up the bronze snake on a pole in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him will have eternal life.

“For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him.

“There is no judgment against anyone who believes in him. But anyone who does not believe in him has already been judged for not believing in God’s one and only Son. And the judgment is based on this fact: God’s light came into the world, but people loved the darkness more than the light, for their actions were evil. All who do evil hate the light and refuse to go near it for fear their sins will be exposed. But those who do what is right come to the light so others can see that they are doing what God wants.”

John 3 (emphasis mine)

So in this rolling, imagery rich conversation Jesus is painting a picture of God wanting to save the world, because he loves the world. And part of how he does that, is by Jesus “being lifted up”, like the “snake in the wilderness”.

In that desert story, the people were suffering a curse, but when they fixed their eyes on the image of the snake, the picture of the curse, they found themselves healed.

And that’s what it’s like when Jesus is lifted, hanging from a cross at the top of a hill called Calvary.

He’s the image of all that we are cursed by.

There is all of his suffering. The death. The betrayal. The abandonment. The ridicule. The rejection from those he came to love. Unfair judgement. The feeling of abandonment from God. The shame. The helplessness.

And also there’s so many awful things in the picture that condemns us: the crowd that cheered for him a few days earlier and then turned on him. The mockery. The “I wash my hands of this” stance of Pilate while still being complicit. The absolute hypocrisy of the priests who have no problem paying blood money for his betrayal, but then have an issue with that money being in their treasury. The friends who couldn’t stay awake when he needed them. Who thought they would die for him, but then cowered in the moment.

Everything about the story is confronting – it makes us face the very worst in humanity. In the conversation Jesus pivots straight from this snake image to “God so loved the world” to talking about light and darkness, good and evil.

“All who do evil hate the light and refuse to go near it for fear their sins will be exposed.“

When we look at the cross, and we look at the curse, somehow all of this comes into perspective. The worst of us is exposed.

And I still don’t know what I think about theological frameworks for “substitutionary atonement” and the like, and I still feel like the old trope of an angry God needing a blood sacrifice just doesn’t fit what I’ve known of God.

Yet somehow, when I look at the cross, when I stare at the curse, I see clearly the worst of the world, and the best of God. And I understand that somehow, what Jesus did that day, is for our healing.

The weight of the world
Too much for the souls of man
But somehow you hold it all
Up on the cross

Calvary’s enough, calvary’s enough.
When I know nothing
When I know too much
What I choose to know right now is:
Calvary’s enough

Brooke Ligertwood “Calvary’s Enough”

  1. I don’t really want to read this literally, the idea that God was angry at their ungratefulness and so killed a bunch of people… I’m leaving that as something to hold loosely for now, and I’ll stick to what my experience of God is like, and come back to for more study later. ↩︎
  2. If you’re looking for lighter content about poisonous and non-poisonous snakes, this data visualisation project from my Di is a favourite: https://didoesdigital.com/project/snakes/ ↩︎
  3. I wondered if the medical symbol was related to this story. Turns out it’s a similar sounding snake-on-a-stick from Greek mythology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod_of_Asclepius. Also while on this Wikipedia rabbit-hold, I found out there’s a story from much later in Jewish history about this snake Moses made being used in idol worship and then destroyed by Hezekiah. Clearly Snakes on Sticks was a whole thing in ancient religion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nehushtan ↩︎
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Easter Saturday

A photo of a ploughed field with no life in it yet. Blue sky, greenand a town in the background, but mostly just a rocky lifeless field.
Photo by Dave Robinson on Unsplash - https://unsplash.com/@redevo

Listen carefully: Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over. In the same way, anyone who holds on to life just as it is destroys that life. But if you let it go, reckless in your love, you’ll have it forever, real and eternal.

Jesus (John 12:24 paraphrased in “The Message” bible)

The big days of Easter are Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

Good Friday is all about death, suffering, abandonment, sacrifice, grief.

Easter Sunday is all about life, resurrection, power, restoration, hope.

Australian’s even get a public holiday on the Monday for some reason. But the Saturday… it’s just a normal Saturday. Life goes on.

…

As I’ve been walking my own path of grief over the last few months with a relationship breakdown, I’ve had this short teaching from Jesus rolling around in my head: “Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground… it is never any more than a grain of wheat”. For me, I had to let something go, watch it fall to the ground, watch it die. And trust for something new, something with new life, something as yet unknown, was going to emerge on the other side.

But between the death, and the resurrection, is the Saturday. The day where the body is lying in the ground.

It’s not hard to imagine what that day felt like for those closest to Jesus.

The shock of the day before, the grief, the loss. Apparently he’d hinted at a resurrection but it doesn’t seem like any of them were feeling that hope on Saturday. The lifeless body had a finality to it. They wouldn’t see his smile again, hear his voice again, eat a meal with him again.

And just as their friend’s body was lifeless, so too all the hope they had tied up in him as their leader would have felt lifeless… it was over, it was futile. The talk of “the coming Kingdom” felt real at the time, but it amounted to nothing.

The Saturday is rough.

And it’s a key part of human experience.

The thing you knew is dead and buried. And there’s no sign of new life yet. And for now, this is where you are, and this is it.

There’s a certain grace in this story that Jesus’ death came as the Sabbath started… the rhythms of life went on, but the rhythms told his friends and family to stop, to rest. To not try figure out the next steps. Not yet.

There is hope. That’s the Easter story. But on the Saturday you probably won’t feel any of that.

And that’s okay, because the resurrection doesn’t require us to do anything. It doesn’t even require us to believe anything or maintain a minimum level of hope. The new life that is going to come isn’t something we need to organise or lobby for or make happen. It will be given, it will be undeserved, it will be grace.

And that’s good, because when it’s Easter Saturday, we probably don’t have it in us to do anything. The grief is real, the hopelessness is real. We just wait.

(And if we can, rest.)

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Imagine believing in the resurrection

It’s a bit of a “clickbait” title, and if you heard someone say it you’d probably imagine them being incredulous, dripping with cynicism: “imagine believing in that! I can’t even imagine how your brain gets to a point where you think a corpse coming back to life and walking out of a tomb isn’t ridiculous…” At some points of my life I’ve been convinced it’s true, and some points not, and well, eh 🤷‍♂️ That’s not what I’m thinking about today.

Instead, imagine, actually think about what it would be like, when someone believes and internalizes the idea that Jesus came back to life, never to die again. That there’s a life beyond this one, overlapping with this one, that means death is not the end. That those who mean the world to us who passed away we will see again, laugh with, eat with, embrace again. That this life isn’t the final life and so the end of this story isn’t the end of the story. Imagine that resurrection means there’s a chance for justice and restoration and hope even when this life has only been injustice, neglect and despair.

What would be different if someone really believed that? If you really believed that?

Imagining in this way isn’t an exercise in futility. One of the books that most impacted me is “The Prophetic Imagination” by Walter Brueggemann, which drove home the point that if you can’t picture a different future, if you can’t imagine it, then you can’t find the energy to start moving toward it. “Without vision the people perish”; but when you can imagine something new, an alternative future with new possibilities opens up.

So what alternate future is unlocked if people really believe in the resurrection?

As a start, the despair of losing someone to death is gone. The death of a loved one is always going to be painful, and life after will hold a sense of loneliness and loss, but “death has lost its sting”. When you believe they’ll live again, and you’ll see them again, and when you do it will be different, a life without the same suffering… then even though it’s hard, there’s an anchor of hope, both hope for you and hope for them.

Then there’s your own fear of death. You might still fear the fate of those left behind – even Jesus on the day of his death was asking his friend to care for his mum. But your own fear of death wouldn’t be the same. Instead of fearing the unknown, or fearing nothingness, if you believe wholeheartedly that after death comes life, and life without the same suffering… then there’s no fear in that. Instead hope, maybe even longing. That side of death looks “better by far”.

And if you don’t fear death, then you’re harder to control. Think of how much evil in the world is sustained because those in power can threaten to kill anyone who tries to stop them. If you don’t fear death, and even more, if you don’t fear missing out on your dreams for this life – because you trust your life will continue and be made new and right after death – then you’re free from that fear and intimidation, and you can act according to your conscience and your sense of justice. If a whole community believes that, it would be impossible to subdue them without eliminating them. They would have so much courage in the face of injustice and persecution… and courage can be very contagious.

And imagine you believe not just that there’s life after death, but you also believe the full good news message: that all will be set right. That those who weep now will laugh, those who are hungry now will be filled, those who have lived in poverty now will inherit the kingdom… all of a sudden you would see so much more dignity in the lowly parts of life. Any suffering, any wrongdoing, any injustice… you could filter it through your understanding of an eternity set right, and all those unbearably hard things would seem “light and momentary”. You could find hope to endure all of life’s hardships, and probably do so with joy.

And because your perspective has shifted and you know those who are suffering are destined for better things… you would feel compelled to bring that future forward, and work hard to help them today, not waiting for the final act to set things right.

(This is not unlike the stories I’ve heard of the first few centuries of the Christian church…)

So, ignoring the question of if it’s true… can you see the impact on the world if you were to believe the resurrection, living like it is true, and embodying resurrection as a driving force in your life?

So, this morning on Easter Sunday, when I stand with hundreds of other people and sing “Hallelujah, death has lost its grip on me” – I am encouraged. There is a way of life that stands in defiance of fear of death. The resurrection story frees us to imagine an alternative future, and pulls us forward into a new life, a resurrection life. And that life offers not just a bright hope for tomorrow, but strength and courage and clarity for today. And this morning as the voices of my church sang out and claimed this resurrection to be real, not just as history but present life and power, it helps me believe too.

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Is God so angry that he has to kill his child? Probably not.

It’s Good Friday, and my faith is changing.

One key thing that’s changing: my view around why Jesus died. There’s a cognitive dissonance when you speak of a “God of love” who loves you so much that he will punish another to satisfy his own rage, or to satiate his sense of honour. We condemn honour killings, but it’s okay for God?

I still believe in God (though, what I mean by that statement, is also something that is changing). But if it’s Jesus that I’m attracted to, and it’s Jesus that showed us what the god behind the universe is really like as a person, then I don’t think God is the sort that wants to kill people to defend his sense of honour and justice. In fact, one of the stories I like most is of Jesus non-violently de-escalating a situation, saving a woman from being the victim of an honour killing.

So what did Jesus death on the cross mean?  It’s something I want to learn more about.  I want to read NT Wright and I want to hear about the “new perspective on Paul” that is actually decades old.  But I read an article today that had good food for thought.

He became the lightning rod where the pent up oppositional energy of the powers that be (the world) became focused. In bearing the hate, evil and animosity of the world, he exposed it and exhausted it, thus overcoming it..

We, too, are called, on behalf of the kingdom of God, on behalf of mercy and justice, on behalf of what is good, right, true and just, to be lightning rods, to bear the hate of the world without returning it, so that it might be exposed and so that forgiveness is given a chance.

Here it is:

It’s time to end the hands-off attitude to substitionary atonement