Numbers 21: 4 – 9 / Psalm 107: 1 – 3, 17 – 22 / Ephesians 2: 1 – 10 / John 3: 14 – 21
This is the homily prepared for St.
John’s, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania by Fr. Gene Tucker for March 14, 2021.
“A VACCINE FOR THE SOUL”
(Homily
texts: Numbers 21: 4 – 9 & John 3: 14
– 21)
Vaccines are very much in the news, and in our
consciousness, these days. We’ve now had three vaccines made available to
protect us from COVID-19, and more and more people are receiving them. In a
former time (one I can remember vividly) it was the polio vaccine which spared
so many people, many of them children, from the ravages of that dread disease.
And before the polio vaccine, it was the smallpox vaccine which protected us
from that awful illness.
My knowledge of vaccines and how they work is
strictly of the lay person’s level of knowledge. That said, I believe I’d be
right in saying that a vaccine introduces into a person’s body a mild form of
the disease that’s being protected against, so that the body’s own immune
system will be primed and prompted to fight the disease off, should the virus
make an entry into the system.
In a very real sense, our Old Testament reading
from Numbers and our appointed Gospel text, which is part of Jesus’ nighttime
conversation with the Pharisee Nicodemus, work along the principles of a
vaccine.
This statement might need some explanation.
Jesus refers to the incident in the wilderness in
which God’s people were being bitten by poisonous snakes (our reading from
Numbers). God tells Moses to fashion a bronze serpent and put it on a pole, so
that when people are bitten, they may look at that bronze serpent and be
delivered from the ill effects of the snake’s bite.[1]
The Lord then connects the saving effects of the
bronze serpent to His own coming death, saying that, “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.” (John 3:14)
In each case, the reality of death becomes the way
of deliverance. In each case, it is the waywardness of individual people which
brings about the threat of death and destruction. In the wilderness, it was the
complaints lodged against God and against Moses. In the time of Jesus’ earthly
ministry, it was the opposition to the light of God, coming into the darkness
of the world.
The bronze serpent and the cross of our Lord offer
protection against death, a temporal death in the wilderness and an eternal
death in the time of our Lord’s visitation. Those very things that would
threaten us – the things that have the power to destroy us - become the barrier
between us, our illnesses and our destruction.
A vaccine is useless unless it is received. God’s
people in the wilderness had to have faith that the bronze serpent would be the
way of deliverance. We, too, must look by faith at the cross of Christ, and
realize that it has the power to deliver us from the way of sin and death. AMEN.
[1] This symbol has become associated with the medical profession. Look for it the next time you’re in a doctor’s office.
