Covenant: What Keeps Our Focus; a sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Lent

John 3:14-21

¹⁴And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, ¹⁵that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

16 ‘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.

17 ‘Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. ¹⁸Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. ¹⁹And this is the judgement, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. ²⁰For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. ²¹But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.’ 

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
   be acceptable to you,
   O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

Late in the year 312, the Roman Emperor Constantine was preparing to do battle with Maxentius, and was pondering how to better his chances because Maxentius’ forces seemed daunting. The historian Eusebius records what the emperor told him:

[Constantine] said that about noon, when the day was already beginning to decline, he saw with his own eyes the trophy of a cross of light in the heavens, above the sun, and bearing the inscription, CONQUER BY THIS.

Eusebius then describes the sign that Constantine constructed: a standard with a bar set across it to make a cross, and from the bar hung Constantine’s banner; and above the banner the first two greek letters of the word, “Christ”.

Under that standard, Constantine defeated Maxentius. He later declared safety for all Christians in the empire and set up a very comfortable system that made the Church an extraordinary beneficiary of the unclaimed properties of the empire.

Essentially, because God gave Constantine the victory, he legalized Christianity and set up Christendom.

Now, for folks who prefer the story of Joshua as a guide to international disputes, that’s a really cool and promising story. For folks who prefer the Sermon on the Mount, it’s a bit troublesome.

Constantine’s claim is that the cross and name of Christ led him to victory, and that victory enabled and encouraged him to set up Christianity as the authorized religion of the empire.

The cross and the name of Christ is the standard under which Constantine ruled.

I point that out NOT to suggest what today’s political leaders ought to do, and for any number of reasons that we really don’t need to go into today. I point out Constantine’s example because today we consider what it is to look at the cross of Christ, raised up so that all who behold that standard might be saved.

Constantine, by his own account, was empowered and saved, militarily, by the cross and the name of Christ.

But do we uphold the cross of Christ today?

Rather, do we look to the cross that Jesus is talking about?

Constantine held up a cross of victory, and imposed his own banner upon it.

What John is quoting is Jesus referring to a different kind of cross entirely.

John can picture the old Roman cross that was used to bring to light and humiliate criminals who threatened the state.

John can picture Christ on that cross, so he remembers Jesus pointing out how

the Son of Man [must] be lifted up.

But look at our cross today. It’s gilded, polished, shiny. It’s heavy for its size but it’s little. For all its glimmer, it’s just a shadow of what John pictures.

And, strangest of all, it’s empty.

And that’s the cross we’re accustomed to seeing. An empty cross. A strong statement of the resurrection, but only if we remember the brutality that the cross embodied before Jesus of Nazareth was removed from it.

Without that memory, without Jesus’ complete self-giving on that ancient instrument of torture, there is no power in the cross at all.

When Moses lifted up the bronze snake on his own standard, it was a brutal reminder of the power God had exercised, and apparently still was exercising on the people. It was a reminder of who it was who had brought them so far, and who the only One would be to deliver them into the promised land. It was a reminder of their own thanklessness and grumbling, of their own guilt and their need to repent.

And so, looking to the standard of the serpent was an opportunity to turn back to YHWH who had brought them out of slavery and toward sovereignty.

Do you hear the psalmist remembering that time?

¹⁷ Some were sick through their sinful ways,
   and because of their iniquities endured affliction;
¹⁸ they loathed any kind of food,
   and they drew near to the gates of death.
¹⁹ Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,
   and he saved them from their distress;
²⁰ he sent out his word and healed them,
   and delivered them from destruction.

Kind of sounds like what we deal with today, too.

Our sin, our shortcoming, our impoverished choices lead to death, to suffering in our souls and often to stress and suffering in our bodies as well. More often than we realize, our sin leads to suffering for other people, and far more than we usually suffer on our own.

But John reminds us that there is One to whom we can look to deliver us from that cycle of sin and destruction. There is one standard upon which we are called to focus.

Jesus is our standard for living together.

Jesus is our standard for forgiveness.

Jesus is our standard for mercy.

Jesus is our standard for peace.

Jesus is our standard for hope.

Jesus is our standard for holiness.

Jesus is our standard for deliverance.

Jesus is our standard for suffering.

Yes, Jesus is our standard for walking with each other even through the valley of the shadow of death.

Jesus is the standard for which we give all we are, because Jesus gives all he is, every day, every moment, for us.

Because God loves the world so much that God gives us Jesus, every day, in every moment and thought and interaction of our lives, as a standard, a living standard lifted up, suffering and bleeding and gasping on the cross, so that all of creation - τον κοσμον - might be saved.

Lift up your eyes. Don’t look for the sun, or for a model for your own banner, or for a brass snake on a stick. Look upon the cross. That cross upon which Jesus hangs today, the cross of Christ, the gift of everything that God is, given completely and utterly, that we might live.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.