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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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Peter Kreeft on Suffering

Henceforth, when we feel the hammers of life beating on our heads or on our hearts, we can know – we must know – that he is here with us, taking our blows. Every tear we shed becomes his tear. He may not yet wipe them away, but he makes them his. Would we rather have our own dry eyes, or his tear-filled ones? He came. He is here. That is the salient fact. If he does not heal all our broken bones and loves and lives now, he comes into them and is broken, like bread, and we are nourished. And he shows us that we can henceforth use our very brokenness as nourishment for those we love. Since we are his body, we too are the bread that is broken for others. Our very failures help heal other lives; our very tears help wipe away tears; our being hated helps those we love. When those we love hang up on us, he keeps the lines open.

God’s answer to the problem of suffering not only really happened two thousand years ago, but it is still happening in our own lives. The solution to our suffering is our suffering! All our suffering can become part of his work, the greatest work ever done, the work of salvation, of helping to win for those we love eternal joy.

Peter Kreeft, “Making Sense Out of Suffering”. Read in “Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter“.

I’ve often pondered the connection between Jesus’ suffering on the cross and our suffering, and what it means to have a faith with a God who suffers like we suffer – God understands what we’re going through, and is not aloof. God is with us in our suffering, with understanding, and in some way, that helps – even if the suffering continues.

I don’t think I’ve thought about the next connection before: that when we suffer, it’s also a chance to join in that same work. Like Jesus suffering can help us feel understood and supported and sustained, our entering into suffering can help others feel understood and supported and sustained.

And somehow, that submission to suffering is the path to defeating it too. Keep suffering without quarreling or crying out, but instead showing mercy, until he leads justice to victory.

Calvary is Judo. The enemy’s own power is used to defeat him. Satan’s craftily orchestrated plot, rolled along according to plan by his agents Judas, Pilate, Herod, and Caiaphas, culminated in the death of God. And this very event, Satan’s conclusion, was God’s premise. Satan’s end was God’s means.

Peter Kreeft, “Making Sense Out of Suffering”. Read in “Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter“.

And in that, is the call, which is all to easy to ignore, to follow in the suffering way:

Does he descend into violence? Yes, by suffering it and leaving us the solution that to this day only a few brave souls have dared to try, the most notable in our memory not even a Christian but a Hindu.

Peter Kreeft, “Making Sense Out of Suffering”. Read in “Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter“.
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He too deserved to have the perfume poured on him

I’m reading “Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter” this lent and there’s another reading from The Gospel in Solentiname by Ernesto Cardenal. I’ve quoted a similar reading before from their advent book. They’re beautiful conversations.

They’re discussing the scene where Mary (sister of Martha and Lazarus) pours absurdly expensive perfume on Jesus. Maria’s comment astounded me on several levels:

William: But all that perfume. And the bottle. The alabaster bottle!

Padré: The alabaster bottle was sealed, and it had to be broken to use the perfume. The perfume could be used only once. And the Gospel says the whole house was filled with the fragrance of nard. It’s believed that nard was an ointment that came from India.

Teresita: Maybe a smuggler paid her with that.

Maria: Jesus was a poor man, too, and he too deserved to have the perfume poured on him.

The Gospel in Solentiname. I read it in “Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter”.
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Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg: Food. Money. Sex. Tech.

This post by Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg speaks of a spiritual practice for the month of Elul that she learned from her rabbi – Rabbi Alan Lew. It sounds like the whole month has a theme of preparation, reflection, and repentance in the lead up to the high holy days Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. I don’t know much about Jewish traditions – though the Wikipedia page’s section on customs has a decent introduction – but Lent feels like the closest parallel season in Christian calendars – and the practice she outlines I’d love to adopt for lent.

Rabbi Lew would suggest you spend a month paying close attention to one area of your life.

He would often to teach this around this time, as a way of helping people to wake up, to find a way to see their whole lives. 

Because once we get clear on what’s driving us– and what we’re resisting, and afraid of, and reacting to, and can start to figure out why– in one area of our life, the whole picture becomes illuminated all at once, sometimes. 

He would suggest that you pick one of the following three: 

Food, money, or sex.

given that things are– how they are now– I might suggest the following addition of a fourth contender for potential scrutiny. That is, I propose that we broaden the list to: 

Food, money, sex OR tech.

Pick one of them. Not all of them. One of those four things, and your relationship with it. 

And spend the next month paying really, really close attention.

Danya Ruttenberg in Food. Money. Sex. Tech.

The specific examples paint a picture of very intentional mindfulness on a particular area, with the view to self understanding, compassion, and maybe repentance.