Numbers 21.4-9 -
From Mount Hor they left by way of the Red Sea to march round the flank of Edom. But on the way the people grew impatient and spoke against God and Moses. ‘Why have you brought us up from Egypt’, they said, ‘to die in the desert where there is neither food nor water? We are heartily sick of this miserable fare.’ Then the LORD sent venomous snakes among them, and they bit the Israelites so that many of them died. The people came to Moses and said, ‘We sinned when we spoke against the LORD and you. Plead with the LORD to rid us of the snakes.’ Moses interceded for the people, and the LORD told him to make a serpent and erect it as a standard, so that anyone who had been bitten could look at it and recover. So Moses made a bronze serpent and erected it as a standard, in order that anyone bitten by a snake could look at the bronze serpent and recover.
Luke 14.27-33 -
Jesus said, ‘No one who does not carry his cross and come with me can be a disciple of mine. Would any of you think of building a tower without first sitting down and calculating the cost, to see whether he could afford to finish it? Otherwise, if he has laid its foundation and then is unable to complete it, everyone who sees it will laugh at him. “There goes the man”, they will say, “who started to build and could not finish.” Or what king will march to battle against another king, without first sitting down to consider whether with ten thousand men he can face an enemy coming to meet him with twenty thousand? If he cannot, then, long before the enemy approaches, he sends envoys and asks for terms. So also, if you are not prepared to leave all your possessions behind, you cannot be my disciples.’
Our first reading tonight - from the Book of Numbers - gives us one possible origin of the snake around a staff symbol you often see at pharmacies, although the snake as a sign of healing also has an origin within the pagan religion of the Greeks. You may think it strange that a snake should be a symbol of healing, when you consider that in Genesis chapter 3 the snake is declared to be humankind’s mortal enemy. Anyway, in the Book of Numbers God sends snakes to punish the people for their rebellious moaning; and then he relents, and the snake becomes a symbol that ensures their recovery from the venomous bites they’ve received.
Now if I’m honest, I don’t very often read the Book of Numbers. In fact, one of my bibles has most of this book printed in very small type, almost as if the editors expected it wouldn’t be much used. But tonight’s little reading, and the idea that something as harmful as a snake should become instead a symbol of hope and healing and recovery - well, this does connect I think with the New Testament reading that came next.
And so it should, since these are set readings for today in the Common Lectionary. You see, the cross was also a fearful sign, a disgraceful sign, people shrank away from the very idea of the cross; and now Jesus in Luke chapter 14 is telling us we must accept the cross and take it up if we’re to follow him.
The very earliest Christian meeting places didn’t display the cross as a sign. Christians mostly had to meet in secret, as their faith was not one of the permitted religions of the Roman Empire; so they used signs to guide those who could understand them to the place, probably an ordinary house, where the Christian people of a town or city met for worship. The fish was the best known of those signs, not just because of the fishermen that Jesus first called to be his disciples, but because the Greek word for fish, Ichthus, was made up of the initial letters of the words that in Greek spelled out “Jesus Christ Son of God Saviour”.
Most people would walk by a sign like that chalked on a wall as just so much graffiti; but those in the know would recognise it for what it was. Whereas the cross would be too much a mark of disgrace to be used in such a way. Crucifixion was much used by the Romans, a very public and quite horrific form of punishment, and one way of demonstrating to the rebellious element among the people that the might of Rome would always win.
One other sign, though, that’s been found in Roman ruins in several places, including Silchester in Hampshire, is a simple acrostic, of five words each of five letters, which reads ROTAS OPERA TENET AREPO SATOR. It’s quite clever: those five read the same across left to right from the top, or across right to left from the bottom, or down starting at the top left, or up starting at the bottom right. The words themselves don’t mean anything very sensible, but someone discovered that if you unpack the letters and form them instead into a cross, you get A PATERNOSTER O reading across, the arms of the cross, and the same A PATERNOSTER O reading down, the upright of the cross. That’s Alpha and Omega, the first and last letters of the Green alphabet and a symbol of the almighty and eternal God, and “Our Father”, the first words of the Lord’s Prayer.
So that was another secret Christian sign, but this one needed to be turned into a cross in order to be understood; and that was perhaps the first use of the cross as a symbol by the early Christian church.
Paul in several places, for example Philippians chapter 3, writes about the ways in which he is sharing in the sufferings of Jesus. Peter in chapter 4 of his First Letter tells his readers that they should “rejoice in so far as you share in the sufferings of Christ.” And in our reading from Luke 14 Jesus is clearly saying, “There will be a cost, if you’re serious about following me. It won’t be an easy ride.”
There were many people who didn’t get that. The twelve disciples themselves often didn’t get that. Look at that time when James and John pestered Jesus to have the best thrones, one on his right and the other on his left. Victory was assured, they thought. But what was to happen in Jerusalem wasn’t going to look like victory to any of them, not at that time. It would involve a cross - and no-one could imagine the Messiah hanging and dying on a cross.
Those who follow me must leave all their possessions behind, says Jesus. But how could any of us do that? Well, I suppose some people do, to become monks or nuns. Here’s a story I was told long ago. A thief down on his luck begged a room for the night in a monastery. Snooping round, he found in the cell of one of the monks that man’s only possession, an old and finely bound bible. Hoping to get some money for it, he stole it; and the next day, having made his way to a nearby town, he took it to a buyer of old books to see what he could get. The bookseller examined the book, suggested a figure, but added “Before I pay for it I’ll ask a friend, an expert on books like this, for a second opinion.”
The thief reluctantly left the bible with him, and came back the next day as arranged, to complete the trade. He entered the shop to find to his horror that the expert the bookseller had called in was none other than the monk from which he’d stolen the book. But to his amazement, the monk looked at him and smiled, and assured the bookseller that the bible was worth every penny of the price he’d offered. Stunned and confused, the thief told the bookseller he’d changed his mind, and wasn’t selling after all.
He waited near the shop until the monk came out on the street, then followed him a short way, caught up with him, and tearfully offered him the book. “Keep it, my son,” said the monk. “But don’t sell it, read it.” The thief did so, and in due course entered the same monastery as a brother. Even the one possession the monk had kept he regarded as really not his own, but the Lord’s.
We get weighed down by our possessions. Each one of them has the potential to become a mini-god, an idol that distracts from where we should be. Yet Jesus hasn’t I think called me and you to be monks or nuns; or to leave our homes and our loved ones; or to dispense altogether with our possessions. What he does call us to do is to place all we are and all we have at his disposal. Like the monk with his bible.
That phrase “Take up your cross and follow me,” says to us that our way to life involves complete surrender - all we are, all we have, given to God. Paul writes of himself as a runner or a boxer in strict training, and like him we should be aiming as high as we can. But we’re not doing that to persuade God to favour is, or to earn ourselves a place in heaven: we’re doing it as a thank offering - because Jesus has already done what we never could: he has completely surrendered, laying down even his life itself.
And that’s what turns the cross from being a sign of the ultimate victory of tyranny over freedom, of dark over light, of the forces of this world driving their tanks and war machines over the flowers of peace and hope into what it now is. The cross which spoke only of terror and pain and waste and confusion and the end of all that is good has become instead a signpost to point the way, the throne on which love is acclaimed and honoured, a symbol to treasure as our promise of life.
With typical bluntness, Jesus tells us that it’s not worth our starting the journey unless we’re prepared to go all the way. We may stray, lose the path, get things wrong, mess things up, like the pilgrim in John Bunyan’s great “Pilgrim’s Progress” - but we mustn’t turn back; that’s not an option. The cross is marked on us when we are baptized, but it only becomes visible when we start to live what it stands for. Under the sign of the cross, we share the same Great Commission as the first apostles who met with the risen Christ on a mountain top in Galilee: “Go into all the world, and make disciples of every nation.”
And we do this in both actions and words, and we do it in love, and we do it because we have been claimed by grace, which is the word we use for a saving love that’s simply there for us without preconditions. As Paul wrote in Romans chapter 5 verse 8, “God demonstrates his own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” So the cross, which was such a wretched sign that early Christians kept it hidden, has been turned into a symbol of grace; and, set free ourselves, we must share the good news of our freedom with all the world.
I can see now that the bronze snake made by Moses was also a symbol of grace. For though the people of Israel had deserved all they got from the snakes, God is a forgiving God. Despite their wrong-headed stubbornness, his favour still rested on his people. So grace touched them as well; but now grace is offered to all the world, and the cross is a sign for everyone. No-one is excluded from the love of God, no-one is beyond its reach. And, for those parts of our Christian lives when it’s a struggle, those parts when we do maybe think we’ve taken on more than we can manage, the cross is a sign that the ultimate victory is already won. As a verse in our last hymn tonight reminds us, “Days of darkness still come o’er me; sorrow’s paths I often tread; but the Saviour still is with me, by his hand I’m safely led.” Amen.
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