Grace, Peace, and Mercy to you from the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.  Amen.

Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole.  And if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live.

Forty years before our reading in Numbers, God brought His people out of slavery in Egypt.  It was spectacle upon spectacle with ten plagues building on themselves until the great Passover, when every home in Egypt mourned but those who had posted the blood of the lamb on their doors.  Israel left their slavery singing and dancing, little realizing the most glorious was yet to come. 

They passed through the Red Sea and heard it crash down behind them on their enemies.  Mount Sinai shook and the Lord, their Savior, appeared.  The mountain quaked; they were afraid.  They begged God to come indirectly, to speak through Moses, to hide His glory.

So God did.  And forgetting His majesty, they began to complain.  It didn’t just happen once.  They complained about food; they had cucumbers and melons in Egypt.  God gave them miracle manna day in and day out.  They complained about a religion that had no graven images, like they had in Egypt with gods with the head of an eagle or a crocodile.  God gave them a tabernacle, to show that they could not imagine His image, but also so they would not doubt His presence.

Finally, they complained that the Promised Land God said He would give into their hands was filled with mighty warriors.  So God gave them no enemies for 40 years but their own complaining selves.  He told them they could wander for 40 years until the complaining generation died and the next one was ready for their inheritance.

That’s when we come to our reading.  It’s the next generation.  They’re ready, almost, to take their land.  And because they have to take the long way around, they complain.  They complain.

Some things don’t change.  If God comes with miracles and all His power, we are overcome.  It’s too much for us.  If God comes quietly, hiding His glory, we complain.

I do mean “we.”  It’s not just generations long ago in Palestine.  God gives us what we need to live and we don’t know how to value it.

Consider what bread they called “worthless.”  It was the miracle manna that had sustained them for forty years.  It wasn’t just food, though- because God gave it to them each morning, it was a sign that He still cared for them day by day.

Jesus said His Word is Bread from Heaven, a gift of life.  This Word is food for eternal life, spiritual vigor, a fountain of love within our hearts.  But we also complain about it.  Sometimes we don’t like its laws.  Sometimes it’s the form- words upon words instead of an inner voice, a mystic vision, or ecstatic experiences.

But let’s leave aside the excuses.  Whatever reasons we do it, we do it.  God comes to us. He speaks to us.  We yawn.  We complain.  We wander off.  We find other things to do.

Then if we get snake-bit, if we lose something, if we’re hurting, we run back to God.  And then, when things are fine, because God cares for us and shepherds us, well, we wander off again.

Think of it from God’s perspective.  If He comes in His glory and majesty, we are overcome.  If He comes hidden in sermons and baptisms, we are underwhelmed.  How can He draw us to Him?

This is why the cross becomes holy.  God comes to us as one of us.  When the Son of God is hidden in our flesh, we are, predictably, underwhelmed.  The religious teachers are jealous of Jesus.  They reject Him.  The people follow, but only for a miracle, wandering off when the miracles stop.  The politicians finally decide to kill Him.

And, yes, I said this is how the cross becomes holy.  God in the flesh takes all this.  He gets snake bit in our place.  He takes the wrath of God onto His own body.

The cross had been a symbol of Roman domination.  The Romans dotted the landscape of the nations they conquered with those ugly torturous symbols of death.  Bodies were left on the crosses to draw out their fearful impact.  A Roman citizen was kept from crucifixion, so the conquered peoples knew.  The cross was a symbol of what Rome could do to them.

But think of it from God’s perspective.  Looking down on us, loving all peoples, Romans and barbarians, for God, the cross summarized the depths to which we would go when power was put into our hands.  Each crucified criminal was, to God, still a man made in God’s image, still a unique treasure.  And humanity’s supposed best and brightest, the Roman Empire, used the cross to inflict agony and fear.

So God took the worst of us and made it holy.  He took the cross and made it His instrument of redemption and atonement.  Jesus was lifted up, exalted, through the darkest depths we could imagine.  God imagines better.

Now the cross is a symbol of how wondrously far God’s reversals reach.  There is no going too far away from Him, no being too sinful, not when He uses the cross to redeem.  You may see your own sins true, see how black they are, and yet God pours out a cleansing in baptism that removes the darkest stains.

There is no plan of man too twisted to entangle us.  Jesus was caught in the plans of the Sanhedrin, the Roman Empire, Herod, and even a broken friend, Judas.  Jesus submitted to their plans, trusting His Father’s plan was greater still. It was and is.  No matter the darkness of the plans others have for you, the cross shines.  Your Father will raise you up, too.

And sometimes it’s not other’s plans, but our own lack of planning, the mistakes that seem too set in crushing stone.  Sometimes we think we have backed ourselves too far into a corner.  But what was the cross, if not the harshest of corners, with death taking his time.

Look to the cross!  Christ was crucified and Christ is risen!  When Jesus was born, we rejoiced that Immanuel, God with us, had come to us.  But at the holy cross, we see just how close He comes.  He comes into webs of other men’s traps.  He comes into the pits of our own mistaken digging.  He comes where only death is left in the darkness and He, Jesus, the crucified one, is the light of world.

He makes light out of our darkness.  So we gather together around His light.  We don’t just fall into the old rhythms of running home then slipping away.  We encourage each other.  We bear one another up.  We confess together and are remade again together. 

This is the joy of baptism.  It’s a handful of words and a handful of water, but the Holy Spirit hides here.  He hides here and reveals His fruit in the children He anoints.  He draws us together, people from all over, but now family.  He draws us around the blood of Jesus’ cross, still making peace long after the Pax Romana is gone.  Look to His holy cross and live!  Amen.