Serpents, Penguins, and Crosses

John 3:14-21

Lent 4, Year B

March 26, 2006

I. Much of the time in the gospel of John, we find Jesus using the simplest, everyday analogies to teach spiritual truths. It’s fascinating to listen to Jesus’ teachings in the Gospel of John. To listen to the teachings of Jesus is to listen to a master instructor. He always seems to know what image, what story, what comparison to use to teach His listeners. Jesus often teaches by using the most common, everyday objects.

When Jesus passes through Samaria and encounters the woman at the well, He finds himself striking up a conversation with a woman with whom He appears to have very little in common. She’s a female Samaritan, he’s a male Jew. She has been married multiple times, He has never been married. So many differences, so much that separates them; yet they’re both thirsty, and they’re at the same well. So Jesus uses the most obvious point of reference to reveal His identity to her. To this woman with a deep thirst, He announces that He is the source of living water, “and whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst.”

Later on, Jesus feeds 5,000 people with just five loaves and two fish. Everyone eats their fill, and the disciples gather up basketfuls of leftovers. And with that image of the overflowing baskets of bread still fresh in their minds, He says, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never be hungry.”

Then He’s walking down the road one day and sees a man who had been born blind, who lived his entire life in darkness. Just before He heals Him, Jesus declares, “I am the light of the world.” Then He touches the blind man’s eyes and removes the darkness.

Most of the time Jesus can get the message through with the simplest of analogies—water, bread, light—all used to reveal who He is. In the Gospel of John, it’s as if Jesus is saying, “You can start at any point in the universe—pick any spot—and it will lead you to me.”

But sometimes the people just don’t get it. Sometimes Jesus has to choose an unusual image to make His point. That’s what’s happening here. Jesus is in the middle of a discussion with Nicodemus, a Pharisee who has come to learn more about who Jesus is. We’re not sure why Nicodemus came. Maybe he was just at that stage of life so many people experience, in which there is a spiritual hunger gnawing away at their insides that cannot quite be identified. They just know they’re hungry. Even if they can’t quite put their finger on it, they know they want something more. Like a teenager standing in front of the refrigerator at midnight, peering in, scanning all the shelves, saying, “I’m hungry, but I don’t know what I want to eat.”

Nicodemus comes, seeking, wanting to find out more about Jesus. Jesus has used the image of the new birth, but Nicodemus doesn’t get it. Then Jesus compares the Spirit to the wind, blowing wherever He chooses, accomplishing God’s purposes with a sense of freedom. Nicodemus still doesn’t get it.

Finally, Jesus turns to a strange Old Testament story to make His point. In the days of their wilderness wanderings, Israel had sinned. There was grumbling about Moses, grumbling about God, and there was punishment. The punishment was, in part, to be snake-bitten. The Israelites cried out to God for deliverance, and God used the strangest thing to save them. Moses formed a bronze serpent, mounted it on a pole, and hoisted it toward the sky. When they looked up to it, they were healed/saved.

Strange, but I guess it’s just another way of showing God can use anything to accomplish His purposes.

Just as the serpent was lifted up in the wilderness, so will the Son of Man be lifted up [crucified & glorified]. God can use anything, anything at all, to bring about salvation. There is nothing so common that it can’t point to God. But even the “out of the ordinary” can be used to lead to salvation.

In his book Blue Like Jazz, Donald Miller recounts a conversation with his friend Tony. “You know what really helped me understand why I believe in Jesus, Tony?”

“What’s that?”

“Penguins.”

“Penguins?” Tony asked.

“Penguins,” Donald said. Then he goes on to describe the life cycle of penguins to his friend. The females lay their eggs, and then they turn them over to the males. The females leave, traveling for days back to the ocean, where they jump in and go fishing. All the males are left in an enormous circle, tending to the eggs. They huddle together for warmth, and kind of rotate the circle so none of them are on the outside all of the time. The males are sitting on the eggs for a month, when the females make their way back. And right when they do, almost to the day, the eggs are hatched.

Tony’s not so sure he sees the analogy, so Donald explains himself. The penguins “have this radar inside them that told them when and where to go and none of it made any sense, but they show up on the very day their babies are being born, and the radar always turns out to be right. I have a radar inside me that says to believe in Jesus. Somehow, penguin radar leads them perfectly well. Maybe it isn’t so foolish that I follow the radar that is inside of me.”

What kind of God do we serve, who can use serpents and penguins, and all manner of things to draw people to himself? We serve a God who can use any event in our lives to bring about salvation.

II. But in these days, Jesus announces, in these days salvation comes through Me. The Father has sent Me, the Son, to bring about salvation.

God can choose anything He desires to bring about the salvation of the world, and He has chosen Jesus Christ. God can still take any event and use that as the turning point in a life, but salvation comes through Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

And hear the good news: your name is on the list of people Christ has come to save. Your name is on that list the day you are born. Every one God has created is on the list of people Christ has come to save.

You and I might make the list differently. We divide the world into so many categories:

American/foreigner
White/black
Male/female
Yankee/southerner
Anglo/Hispanic
Rich/poor
Beautiful/homely
Productive/worthless

If we were making the list, we might be more selective. But God’s list is long. The list of people for whom Christ died includes all the world. There is no debate, no discussion, no waiting period. Every person born is added to God’s list.

III. Christ comes into our world, shining the light, looking for names on God’s list. Christ has come to seek you out. It takes awhile for some folks to hear that as good news. Some have the idea that Christ has come saying, “I’ve got a message from my Father: boy, is He ever mad at you!”

To those who would rather live in the darkness, to those who are hiding from God, for folks who are running from God, the light is a nuisance. An encounter with Christ makes them feel like they’ve been caught.

I remember, as a child, sitting in services where the truth of God had been so clearly proclaimed that I felt like a huge spotlight was shining on me. I felt like I had been caught. The light was shined into my life, and I preferred to stay in the darkness. If you’ve made up your mind that God is out to get you, you’re hesitant to step into the light.

Fred Craddock tells the story of his father, who spent years of his life hiding from the God who was seeking him out.

“When the pastor used to come from my mother’s church to call on him, my father would say, ‘You don’t care about me. I know how churches are. You want another pledge, another name, right? Another name, another pledge, isn’t that the whole point of church? Get another name, another pledge.’

My nervous mother would run to the kitchen, crying, for fear somebody’s feelings would be hurt. When we had an evangelistic campaign the pastor would bring the evangelist, introduce him to my father and then say, ‘Sic him, get him! Sic him, get him!’ May father would always say the same thing. ‘You don’t care about me! Another name, another pledge. Another name, another pledge! I know about churches.’

I guess I heard it a thousand times. One time he didn’t say it. He was at the Veteran’s Hospital. He was down to 74 pounds. They had taken out the throat, put in a metal tube, and said, ‘Mr. Craddock, you should have come earlier. But this cancer is awfully far advanced. We’ll give radium, but we don’t know.’

I went in to see him. In every window—potted plants and flowers. Everywhere there was a place to set them—potted plants and flowers. Even in that thing that swings out over your bed they put food on, there was a big flower. There was by his bed a stack of cards 10 or 15 inches deep. I looked at the cards sprinkled in the flowers. I read the cards beside his bed. And I want to tell you, every card, every blossom, every potted plant from groups, Sunday School classes, women’s groups, youth groups, men’s bible class, of my mother’s church—every one of them. My father saw me reading them. He could not speak, but he took a Kleenex box and wrote something on the side from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. . . . He wrote on the side, ‘In this harsh world, draw your breath in pain to tell my story.’ I said, ‘What is your story, Daddy?’ And he wrote, ‘I was wrong.’”

It is not until you know God is seeking you in love, not in condemnation; it is not until that moment that the gospel becomes Good News for you.

CONCLUSION

I always used to wonder why some folks would stand at football games holding a sign with the words “John 3:16.” “Who do they think that’s going to help?” I’d ask myself. “Don’t they know what an unlikely way that is to save someone?” That’s what I used to always ask. But I’m having second thoughts. If God can use bronze serpents and wooden crosses as means of salvation, then maybe a cardboard sign isn’t such a far-fetched idea after all. And if God truly desires that all the world would be saved, maybe getting the message out where all the world can see it just might be a good thing. For those that are lost, Christ has come searching. For those in the darkness, the light is shined. And everyone who believes in Jesus Christ will have eternal life.