Sermon for November 22nd, 2015
Numbers 21:4-9
4From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom; but the people became impatient on the way. 5The people spoke against God and against Moses, “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.” 6Then the LORD sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died. 7The people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned by speaking against the LORD and against you; pray to the LORD to take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. 8And the LORD said to Moses, “Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.” 9So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.
John 3:11-15
11“Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. 12If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? 13No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. 14And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
The Year In Glass, Part II
I have always been fascinated by windows. This probably goes back to my earliest days as a student, staring out of them, daydreaming about what was outside them, and basically doing anything possible to avoid what was being taught at the front of the classroom. Church windows were even better: They were already full of colorful pictures and symbols, and in any case it never took too much to distract me from the sermon send me on a stained glass flight of imagination.
Ironically, years later I became the one talking at the front of the room--first as a high school teacher, and now as a pastor. So if you're ever tempted to ignore me and just stare at the windows, please know that at the very least, I sympathize with you. And today, we're all going to indulge in that temptation, and let the windows do the preaching.
Incidentally, Pope Gregory the Great (the man John Calvin called "the last good pope") recognized as far back as the 6th century that art and images in the church functioned as the poor man's Bible. Here in our own sanctuary, the entire story of the scriptures is told in beautiful stained glass. Last week we walked through the story of the Hebrew Bible, or the Old Testament, which is found on the West wall, beginning with the creation story and ending with the establishment of Priests, Prophets and Kings in Israel--God's messengers to his people.
Today we cross over to the East wall to follow the story of another messenger sent from God--his own son, Jesus Christ, as told by the gospels of the New Testament.
I mentioned last week that there are approximately 40 steps between these two walls, representing 400 years of silence, darkness, and waiting between the two testaments. But after the long night, come the earliest rays of light in the morning.
Our first New Testament window represents the season of Advent (which begins for us next week). Advent is a season of preparation for the coming of Christ, and in this window we see the rising sun, representing the dawn of a new era for God's people, and we see the star of Bethlehem which leads the way to the humble stable where Christ will be born. This window is directly across from the Creation window, and reminds us that Christ is the new Adam, and in Christ we are God's new creation.
The next window is the Christmas window, the nativity window. The rose is an ancient symbol for Christ, the "rose that blooms in the desert." In our own congregation, whenever a baby is born among us, we place a single rose on the communion table to celebrate that birth, and remind us of the birth of our savior. Above the rose in this window is a crown--one of four in our windows--indicating that already at his birth, Jesus was hailed as the king of heaven and earth.
“People are like stained – glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.”
– Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
