"Just a Look!"

And as Moses lifted up the bronze snake on a pole in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him will have eternal life. John 3:14-15

To me, this has always been one of the strangest passages in Scripture. Yes, when you spend your life studying the Bible there are some passages that just keep tumbling around in your soul, never quite making the sense you want it to and you have this deep sense that there is much more to be learned from your questions about this passage. John 3:14-15 has been one of those passages for me. Last week I had lunch with one of my mentors, Dr. Fulton Buntain. As we sat talking about all our memories over the last 25 years, Fulton asked me about this passage in John. He too has spent his life troubled by this passage. But he shared that God had shown him something about it just that week.

The passage is referring to a time when the nation of Israel was traveling through the wilderness and they were being bit by poisonous snakes and dying from those bites. And so God told Moses to make an image of a snake and hold it up for people to look at. Fulton told me that he was sure that part of what was going on was that the people needed to look beyond the poisonous snakes—they needed to look away from all their fears crawling around near their feet. Fulton went on to sharethat we have to look away from yesterday and ahead to today and tomorrow. And an important part of becoming a Christian is just to look- - - it’s not as much of a theological struggle as people might suspect. No one completely understands the meaning of a Savior crucified on the cross, but ifpeople will just take one look they may find their lives transformed forever as they meet the eyes of Jesus.

What poisonous challenges do you need to look away from? And what would life be like if we could keep eye contact with the Savior on the cross? One look at Jackie Svangren when I was 16 years old and my life was changed. One look at our newborn babies started an adventure (that we still are in the middle of today). One look at the dream of building a great caring network together with the good people of Washington Cathedral, and our lives were marked forever. One look at the Savior really does a lot. It is so simple and yet inexhaustibly profound.

Your friend for the rest of my life,

Pastor Tim White