For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
John 3:16 (NIV)
The Snake on the Pole
Two of the street lights on that block buzz, and they come on later than the rest. She’s walking the six blocks to the office on her day off for the one thing that wouldn’t keep until Monday, coat over what she slept in, badge in her teeth while she works the door. A man out with a dog says good evening and she answers without taking the badge out of her mouth, so he gets a noise instead of an answer.
Nicodemus came to Jesus at night, a Pharisee on the ruling council, and opened with a compliment about the signs. The conversation that followed is where John 3:16 comes from, and Jesus makes a comparison in it you’ll never see on a coffee cup. Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up.
The snake is out of Numbers. The people complained about the road and the food, the Lord sent venomous snakes among them, and many Israelites died of the bites. God told Moses to make a snake and put it up on a pole, and anyone who was bitten could look at it and live. There was nothing to bring and nothing to perform. You looked, or you didn’t.
Set beside that pole, whoever believes in him comes down to a motion of the neck. Nobody in the camp was asked how sure he was, or graded on the quality of his looking. They were poisoned people who turned their heads toward what God had put up where they could see it, and the turning was all of it.
John writes whoever, and that word lets in the foreigner and the man whose belief is thin this morning. The people in the camp had spoken against God and against Moses before any of them looked up. People with nothing impressive to bring are already inside it.
Jesus puts himself on the pole’s side of the comparison. The Son of Man must be lifted up, he says, the way Moses raised the snake where the whole camp could see, and believing in him stands where the looking stood. The giving in John’s sentence is that lifting up. God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, and gave him to a pole.
Her badge works on the third try. She’d had both hands full and a badge in her teeth, and still got her head around far enough to answer him.
A Prayer to Remember
My grip isn’t strong today. Some mornings I couldn’t tell anyone what I believe without stumbling over it, Lord. I can turn my head toward you and keep it turned, and I’m doing that now. Don’t ask me this morning for a certainty I’d have to manufacture.
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
