What would it be like to be with the children of God in the desert? Hungry, tired, the blazing sun has dried up all our moisture.  We have been following Moses through the desert, getting nowhere, for a long time – years. I too would gripe: “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food.”

They forgot that God sent them into the wilderness. God called them to become God’s people rather than no people enslaved by the Egyptians. They forgot that the miserable food was manna miraculously sent by God that very morning so they could live.

Then the poisonous snakes appear. People fall and die. Screaming to Moses “We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you; pray to the Lord to take away the serpents from us.” Save us again!

But God did not take away the serpents. They still swarmed and struck.

God told Moses “Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.”

Moses wept for his people but, like a true hero, he tore his thoughts away to do what God asked. First gather bronze implements, here take them from the tabernacle. Make a fire hot enough to melt the bronze. Fashion the bronze into a serpent, twist it onto a pole. Then raise it high enough for the people to see.  See, the light of the sun flashes off it! God is here! God is here!

To see it, the people had to look up, away from the snakes on the ground where children were screaming. Look up to see the serpent on the pole. Look up for life! God is with us in the desert. Hold up the children to see. We could only see ourselves until the snakes came. Now God has revealed God’s presence in the wilderness through the very pain that blinded us.

Cut to Jerusalem, 1500 years later. Jesus reminds Nicodemus the Pharisee of this story: “just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life”. This gospel lesson is from John. John writes from a post-Easter perspective. He tells the story of Jesus’ life with its meaning made clear. John‘s gospel is told from God’s point of view, as God remembers it sitting in heaven with the Trinity.

Here on earth, we are on a Lenten journey.  At this point, we are called to stand at the foot of the cross and look up.  When we see Jesus on the cross, we see ourselves exposed - we see what “sin” really means.  What the cross and the bronze snake held up by Moses point to is that Life and God are to be found precisely in the places and moments of deepest darkness and hopelessness.

This is also what what Paul tells us in the Ephesians lesson.  We were dead - cut off from God and Life, slaves to powers of darkness and destruction.  But God does not turn away from us. God is “rich in mercy” and does not leave us to a living death.  Instead, God resurrects us in Christ. 

Every time John uses the phrase eternal life, he puts a present tense verb with it-- usually "have". Eternal life is something believers have now. It begins now and lasts forever. Eternal life is participating in God’s life – as Paul says, God made us alive together with Christ. Eternal life is loving the light.

The light is that lifting inside you when you feel joy. Eternal life is the difference between physical healing and soul healing. It is the difference between life being saved in real time and life being transformed so others see the light through the saved life. We can’t do this for ourselves. Eternal life is a secret we sometimes know … and then not, as Rumi says. We must become aware of it over and over, because it is not complete on this earth.

Eternal life can happen in this life when we get that Easter sensation. At the Easter vigil we hear the salvation story of the people of God while we sit in darkness. Then suddenly the lights come up and we ring our bells in a wild clanging delight. Eternal life is what we feel every Sunday when we pass the peace. We can be so moved that we look in each other’s faces and hold hands and even hug each other. Sometimes we feel it in the music, in the organ playing, the voices of the choir filling us. Eternal life is where we know God holds us, now and through eternity. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, yes God gave God’s own life, so we could see what it means. So that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Let us live now in eternal life.