Our wilderness
Sermon by Pr. Sharai Jacob on Holy Cross Day + Saturday, September 13, 2025.
The verse John 3:16 was the first piece of scripture I memorized. I remember choosing it because it was the easiest and shortest, not really for any important meaning. I had often heard it used to tell others that they were not going to be saved because they weren’t Christians. Or to tell me I don’t believe hard enough. But even by reading the verses before and after John 3:16 we can see that this verse is not meant to be a condemnation. It’s a promise of hope. What was surprising when reading our Gospel text this week, was how difficult it was to find that promise of hope, buried under verse 14’s reference to the serpent raised up in the wilderness.
The serpent in the wilderness comes from a story in chapter 21 of Numbers. Which was actually our Hebrew bible reading today! After setting them free from slavery in Egypt, God leads the people, by way of Moses, through the wilderness. The wilderness is often a place of hopelessness and struggle in the Hebrew Bible. A place of suffering. And the people in this story are suffering. They barely have enough food and water. So they complain, they are angry and hungry. They say to Moses, You’ve brought us out of slavery to die in the wilderness. And in response, they are plagued by fiery serpents sent by God. Serpents that bite with deadly venom. It’s a painful text to wrestle with. I won’t deny that I recoiled while reading it. Why would God send a plague of snakes to already suffering people?
The serpent that is lifted up, also comes from God. God sends a bronze serpent lifted up on a staff, that would save the people from death. The rest of the snakes are still there. They’re still biting the people. But the bronze snake is there to stop the venom from overtaking them.
Why would Jesus reference this weird and upsetting story in the same breath as a promise of hope? “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.” The staff from Numbers is compared to the Cross and the bronze serpent that saves the people is compared to Jesus who offers salvation through God’s grace. So, what about the fiery serpents that God sent in Numbers? What are they compared to? How do they fit into the promise of hope?
When Jesus came into the world, he was met with violence resulting in his murder on the cross. Like a mirror, the cross shows us not just our sin, but our suffering. The violence of Empire that beats down upon us - as well as our own complicity in it – by what we have done and by what we have left undone. Because how could we ever bring an end to the violence around us, if we are unable to see the ways in which we are contributing to it, complicit in it? When our own sin is made apparent, it can feel as though those fiery snakes are attacking us while we are suffering in the wilderness. But remember this Gospel text is not a condemnation, it’s a promise. The Cross doesn’t only reveal our sin to us, it mirrors for us our suffering and puts Jesus in the middle of it with us. Through Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, God offers us a way towards hope, a cure for the venom.
The people who would have first read this Gospel, would have fresh in their minds the memory of a lost revolt against Rome. The memory of loved ones lost, their communities shattered, and their hearts hopeless. We read this text today surrounded by crumbling hopes, as we watch the Palestinian genocide broadcasted on social media, only to look up from our phones and see neighbors unjustly dragged away from their homes and communities by ICE agents. And for most of us there is the usual wilderness surrounding us as well. The pains of life like losing a loved one, fear for the future, health issues, homesickness.
Whatever wildernesses we find ourselves in, the cross offers us a reminder that Jesus is with us in our suffering, and in our broken world, Jesus offers us hope. Because of the cross of Christ, we are not alone in our suffering, not alone in our work for justice, not alone in our resolve to share hope with the world. Jesus offers us new life, abundant life, eternal life, not just in some distant future, but right now, today.
Amen.
