Strange Remedy: Facing Brokenness on the Lenten Path

A Nighttime Walk Toward Jesus

The Lenten journey—our walk with Jesus toward Easter, on the road to the cross—is a walk with intent, walking perhaps with a restless need to find deeper meaning.

Nicodemus, in our second Lent gospel reading, goes on a walk to meet with Jesus. A nighttime walk. He seems to have a restlessness, an awareness of a deep need that isn't met in his usual religious life. And he seems to recognize that Jesus holds the wisdom for his need.

He ventures out at night. It seems often at night that our inner voice of restlessness gets the better of us. In the Book of John, nighttime or darkness also tends to represent being without vision—a lack of spiritual seeing or knowledge.

As Nicodemus comes to join him in the darkness, Jesus responds. Nicodemus hasn't yet asked a question, but Jesus tells him what he's needing to hear anyway:

No one can see the kingdom of God without being born anew.

Now Nicodemus has questions, so Jesus explains. And then, just before coming to those wonderful words we all know so well, he says quite a curious thing:

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.

The Serpent in the Wilderness

In the epic story of Moses leading the people through the desert toward their promised land, there's a moment told of in the Book of Numbers when they were plagued with fiery serpents whose venom was killing them. Moses was instructed by God to build a serpent of bronze, which was to be lifted up—and those who looked upon it would be healed from the venom.

This clearly continued to hold great significance for the early Israelites, as there's evidence of a form of this practice and bronze serpent in Palestine up until sometime before Jesus' life.

So in John's Gospel, this story from Israel's history—where an image of harm for the Israelites in the wilderness is lifted up and looked upon as the means of their being healed from that very harm—is linked with Jesus' invitation to life made new through him.

Facing Brokenness as the Way to Healing

Our lectionary places this moment here in the second week of our Lenten walk, intentionally facing the way toward Jesus' passion and crucifixion.

Perhaps we see here the invitation in Jesus to face our brokenness, for there lies the way of being led to God's healing. To join in Christ's death—in that we accept a kind of dying to ourselves, or to life as we thought it should be—for there is the way we can be led into, and share with others, the resurrected life with Christ that is everlasting.

Strange Remedy

Jan Richardson, reflecting on today's text, shares about her journey through devastating grief after the death of her husband, and how she found that when there is a brokenness so severe as to cause a kind of death, God's pervasive mercy and love—made evident to us in Christ—can bring us back to life.

Jan calls her reflection "Strange Remedy" and observes that just as in the story of the desert Israelites and the venom, the path to healing often unfolds by weird, inexplicable turns.

Perhaps you also, when you've had to walk through brokenness or devastating grief or pain, have found that there are strange moments—unexplainable, unexpected, backwards and forward steps—as we are led through into the renewed life of Christ, toward healing and new life.

Questions for the Journey

• Where is God calling you to surrender?
• What hard thing does God call you to walk through now, with intent, with Christ lifted in your vision and your heart toward that risen life of Christ being reborn in you?
• What encouragement might you be to others of Christ's presence in darkness, in brokenness?

Sometimes it's when we are somehow brought to stop and look at the very thing that has struck us down—or the way we are resisting letting go—that God can bring us to the true everlasting life: the way of the surrendered, crucified, and risen Christ whom we follow along the Lenten path.

May we believe, lean into, and reach out with Jesus' way of surrender—the way of the cross—that the life of the risen Christ continue being born anew in and around us, for the sake of the world that God so loves. Amen.