Strange remedy: facing brokenness on the road to Easter

The Lenten journey is a walk with intent. We're moving toward Easter, toward the cross, maybe with a restless need to find deeper meaning.

Nicodemus goes on a walk to meet Jesus. A nighttime walk. He seems to have a restlessness, an awareness of a deep need that isn't met in his usual religious life. And he seems to recognize that Jesus holds the wisdom of his need.

He ventures out at night. It's often at night that our inner voice of restlessness gets the better of us. In the Book of John, nighttime or darkness tends to represent being without vision, a lack of spiritual seeing or knowledge.

As he comes to join him in the darkness, Jesus responds to Nicodemus. Nicodemus hasn't yet asked a question of Jesus, but Jesus tells him what he's needing to hear anyway: "No one can see the kingdom of God without being born anew."

Now Nicodemus has questions. So Jesus explains. And then, just before coming to those wonderful words we all know so well, he says something quite curious.

Lifted up in the wilderness

"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."

In the epic story of Moses leading the people through the desert toward their promised land, there's a moment told of in the book of Numbers when they were plagued with fiery serpents whose venom was killing them. Moses was instructed by God to build a serpent of bronze, which was to be lifted up, and those who looked upon it would be healed from this venom.

This clearly continued to hold great significance for the early Israelites. There's evidence of a form of this practice and bronze serpent in Palestine up until sometime before Jesus' life.

"Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up."

So in John's gospel, this story from Israel's history, where an image of harm for the Israelites in the wilderness is lifted and looked upon as the means of their being healed from that very harm, this is linked with Jesus' invitation to life anew through him.

And our lectionary places this moment here in the second week of our Lenten walk, intentionally facing the way toward Jesus' passion and crucifixion.

The invitation to face our brokenness

Perhaps we see here the invitation in Jesus is to face our brokenness. For there lies the way of being led to God's healing.

To join in Christ's death, in that we accept a kind of dying to ourselves or to life as we thought it should be. For there is the way we can be led into and share with others the resurrected life with Christ that is everlasting.

Jan Richardson, reflecting on today's text, shares about her journey through devastated grief after the death of her husband, and how she found that when there is a brokenness so severe as to cause a kind of death, God's pervasive mercy and love made evident to us in Christ can bring us back to life.

Jan calls her reflection "Strange Remedy" and observes that just as in the story of the desert Israelites and the venom, the path to healing often unfolds by weird, inexplicable turns.

Perhaps you also, when you've had to walk through brokenness or devastating grief or pain, have found that there are strange moments, unexplainable, unexpected backwards and forward steps as we are led through, in the renewed life of Christ, towards healing and new life.

The way of surrender

Where is God calling you to surrender? Or what hard thing does God call you to walk through now with intent, with Christ lifted in your vision and your heart, toward that risen life of Christ being reborn in you?

What encouragement might you be to others of Christ's presence in darkness, in brokenness?

Sometimes it's when we are somehow brought to stop and look at the very thing that has struck us down, or the way we are resisting letting go, that God can bring us to the true everlasting life. The way of the surrendered, crucified and risen Christ whom we follow along the Lenten path.

May we believe, lean into, and reach out with Jesus' way of surrender, the way of the cross, that the life of the risen Christ continue being born anew in and around us for the sake of the world that God so loves.

Amen.