For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed (John 3:21)

If I’m honest - and I suspect I’m not alone among preachers in this - there are Sundays when I turn to the Lectionary to read the passage for the day and heave a deep sigh and think “What am I going to do with this?” This is one of them. What am I going to do with John’s use of Moses lifting up a bronze serpent in the desert? Sure I can go to the commentaries and I can tell you what they say about what John means, but how do I make it speak to today? How do I interpret it for today?

Because that’s what Scripture is for - to be interpreted and allowed to speak for the times we live in and for what’s going on and where we find God in the world we live in. That’s what John is doing here. He’s taking a story about Moses from what we call the Old Testament and he would have just called ‘Scripture’. That Scripture had been collected sometime during the Exile in Babylon by people trying to find meaning in them that spoke to them of the times they lived in. For them it spoke of the people of Israel turning from sin and returning to God to be healed. John saw Moses’s lifting up of the serpent as prefiguring the raising up of Jesus on the Cross to call humanity back to God, from the darkness to the light.

When we turn to Scripture that’s what we do - whether we think we are doing it or not - we are interpreting it; making sense of it. The trouble comes when we get to think that our interpretation is the only right one - that we have seen the light - while that lot over there; the ones who read it differently; they have embraced the darkness. We, the Church, have so often been at our worst when we have divided ourselves into two sides, each claiming to have seen the light and each claiming that the other side is walking in darkness. So forgive me if I don’t claim that what I’m saying is the only thing to take from this passage. That kind of thing has too often led into the darkness.

And it misses the point. We are Christians. Christianity is not founded on doctrines or theologies. It is not founded on denominations or sects. It is not founded not on our divisions and our debates, but on Christ. In turning from the darkness we turn to Christ. In understanding what Scripture means right here and now, we turn to Christ - the Christ raised up on the Cross to call humanity to turn from the darkness and come to the light.

For the darkness is where evil is done. We don’t talk much about evil these days - or sin for that matter. We are sophisticated, unsuperstitious, rational people; most of us living comfortable lives. Yet, deep down, we know about evil; we know what is done in the darkness. We know that fear that clutches at our hearts as we hurry down darkened streets. We know that fear when we are are faced by strong and powerful people who may not mean us well. We - some, more than others - fear violence lurks just around the corner; that evil lies waiting in the darkness.

As the face of a young woman that has looked out at us from the pages of newspapers and from our screens and monitors over the last few days reminds us, evil is very, very real. It’s not an abstraction, or a doctrine, or a forgotten myth of bygone times: it is here and now. It is, as John reminds us, what people do in the darkness. Real people. People like you and me.

And there’s the rub. It’s maybe the hardest thing to do when confronted by evil - to accept that it’s perpetrated by people like us because it revolts us: we want to thrust it from us. In particular when it’s one of our “our side” - our sect, our tribe, our gender, our race, our nationality. I’ll be honest, I’ve read a lot of things women have written and said in the wake of the murder of Sarah Everard in terms of male violence and part of me wants to deny it. To run away from it. To say, because I haven’t engaged in it, that it has nothing to do with me. But it does; because, as a Christian, I am called to turn away from the darkness, not to deny it.

In the story John refers to, Moses raised up a brass serpent in the midst snakes that were biting the Israelites and killing them. By paralleling that with the Cross of Christ John reminds us that that Cross was raised in the midst of the darkness; that Christ was a victim of the kinds of violence that people commit against against each other and, in particular, against those weaker and more vulnerable than themselves; that God, in Christ chose a side - he sided with those who are victims of the evil that people do. The light of the world walked right into the darkness to stand beside those who know it all too well.

John speaks of Christ as raised on the Cross to call people to the light - the light that stands against the darkness and we, as Christians are called to bear witness to the light. We cannot do it by denying it or pretending it has nothing to do with us or “our side”, whatever that may be. We are called to bear witness to the light in the face of darkness by recognising who “our side” really is; by turning to the Christ who was nailed to a wooden cross like so many others who have been, and are, victims of the evil that human beings like you and me inflict on each other; by standing beside those selfsame victims.

It means that if women are victims of violence at the hands of men my place, as a man, is to stand beside them. It means that if folk are victims of poverty and need my place, as someone who’s reasonably comfortable, is to stand beside them. It means that people of a race other than mine are victims of racism it is my place to stand beside them. If the evil that people do is done in the darkness then my place, as a Christian, is to stand beside them and speak for them.

There are those who will call that “woke”. I hate that term. Truth to tell it’s a way to belittle compassion and compassion is, ultimately, what the Gospel of Jesus Christ is all about. It’s about a God who had such compassion for humanity that he came and lived among us, as one of us and stood beside us in the darkness, offering us light. More, he lived among the victims of greed and inequality and, in Christ stood beside the weakest and most vulnerable victims of violence; standing in the darkness and offering us light. 

The light that reminds us who we are at our best; that reminds us that compassion for one another that transcends the barriers by which we divide ourselves is what makes us brilliant; that reminds us that kindness is stronger than indifference; that generosity is stronger than greed; that love is stronger than hate. Yes, evil is real and the darkness it creates makes too many victims. We can, if we like, pretend otherwise or that it has nothing to do with us. Or we can take up the challenge of the Cross and carry the light into the darkness.

Prayer