And 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.
- Our word from Bishop Johnson today is... Study.
- Faced with the quandary of something we don't understand, we have at least four choices:
- Make the time to look into it; Dig and dig and dig until we understand or come close to understanding.
- Realize we don't understand, stare at it, and come to a place of peace with our lack of understanding; in other words, live with the mystery.
- Ignore it and walk away as if not knowing or understanding didn't matter.
- Pretend we understand and go on with our day.
- In truth, there are some things we'll never understand and we must simply contemplate, like the nature of love, why my pie crust isn't as flaky as yours, the infield fly rule in baseball, and why God permits evil to happen.
- I'll never understand the pie crust thing, but I'll contemplate the mystery by eating your wonderful pie! I really don't care about the infield fly rule, so I don't sweat it. I don't understand love, but I'd rather experience it anyway. As to why a good God permits evil... that's a forever argument, one that the Book of Job handles better than I and still comes to no completely satisfying conclusion. This question is also seen in the “lifting up” of Jesus on the cross, where Jesus confronts evil in the world in his own flesh.
- This passage from John's Gospel is a very good example of the value of study. When it come to the Scripture. If we take the reading at face value only, we are left with questions. Moses? Serpent? Wilderness? Son of Man? Eternal life? World? The name of the Son of God? Light? Darkness? Who is Jesus talking to? And that's just 8 verses in one of the more hard-to-comprehend books of the Bible.
- Now study doesn't require years in the Scriptorium or a Doctorate. It requires curiosity and the thirst to know. It also requires a respect for the limits of the human mind, especially of our own human minds. The human desire to know leads us on, all the while understanding that we may come to the limit of what we can know and of what can be known.
- Sounds complex, I know, but it's really quite simple. We all want to know. To live without knowing is not satisfying unless an effort is made to subdue curiosity or a decision is made to accept what is not known. To follow curiosity takes what is know as study. Study can be a formal class. In our case, it can be a simple Bible study. It can be the reading of a book. It can be a continued series of questions that any of us might list and take the time to ask someone about. What is most important is the desire to know and the willingness to go and find answers.
- Take this portion of John's Gospel. Jesus is talking to Nicodemus, an important member of the Pharisees, who has come to Jesus in the dark of night – a symbol for his lack of knowledge. Both he and Jesus speak the same words, but Jesus uses the words to mean something other than what Nicodemus expects. Light, darkness, “born again”, “lifted up” - all have unexpected meanings and only study on our part will help us decode what John the Evangelist has Jesus saying.
- To understand how John writes takes some study. To hear what Jesus says in John's Gospel takes some study. To see where Nicodemus reappears in John's Gospel takes a little study, but the meaning of his reappearance takes a bit more study. In John's Gospel, things often mean more than they seem.
- If we look at Jesus' insistence that he will be lifted up, we find that he is making a reference to Moses' lifting up the bronze serpent in the desert to counteract the bites of the poisonous snakes the infest the camp. (They used to be called 'seraph serpents' in older Bible translations because of their fiery bite, Seraphs being angels of fire.) This was our first reading today, and if we were reading this by ourselves, it would be a simple matter to look at the notes in our Bible to see this. That too falls under the heading of study.
- Now, is study required for our salvation? The simple answer is “no” for study doesn't necessarily lead to faith. Having said that, our desire to follow Christ in faith may lead us to want to know more and to know Jesus and what Jesus taught more deeply.
- In Lutheran congregations, there is a deep respect for study and education. We can see this in the respect for the Small Catechism of Martin Luther that congregations have. There is also a deep aversion to both study and education, as if they were reserved for theologians. We'd all best remember that we are all theologians, interpreting the teaching of Christ to our own setting, homes, family,and selves, and study on some level will aid us in that.
- Study doesn't end with Confirmation. Confirmation is a public affirmation of faith that means entry into adult membership and a renewal of our commitment to being members of the church and of this congregation in particular. It doesn't mean “graduation from study.” So we involve ourselves in Bible study' We ask questions; we read books and magazine articles. And we do it all for a very simple and very profound reason – to know Jesus better and to better tell others of his meaning in our lives.
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.
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