Becoming Sin

4th Sunday in Lent
a reflection on John 3:14-21

Karl had been walking fields all day. It was a good stand of wheat, high and full. No change from yesterday, or the day before. No reason to keep fussing over it. If you praised Karl’s farming, he would brag on his great-grandfather’s good fortune and practical wisdom. Ask him how things were at home, and Karl would answer, “Well, I better go see how the crop’s coming.”

Along the back forty east of his farm Karl found some blighted wheat. It was plain to see what needed to be done, which was a comfort. Karl was looking for problems he could solve, difficulties he could manage easily. A breach of trust, on the other hand; broken promises, the blight on Karl’s relationship with his family, these were not like the seeds or the soil that he was used to working.

Karl kicked at a clod of dirt and swore. He cursed his luck, cursed his circumstances, cursed everyone and everything weighing him down. I’m a good man, he thought. I made a mistake. He wondered if it would be best to just leave, but Karl heard the lie for what it was. Turning from the field, and the failure, and the feelings he did not want to face, Karl spotted a snake on a rock in the ditch. It sat up, alert to Karl’s presence, unblinking, unflinching, without sympathy or remorse. In an instant, Karl saw the lie – and his own sin – for what it was.

He found his wife busy at her sewing. “Mathilda,” she looked up. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Please forgive me.”

“So 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.” ~Numbers 21:9