Last Sunday, our text was Deuteronomy 34 about Moses’ final vision of the Promised Land from Mt. Nebo. This Sunday as we return to the lectionary assigned texts for Lent, I find the Old Testament lesson from Numbers 21:4-9 connecting us back to Mt. Nebo, where a modern sculpture Giovanni Fantoni depicts a serpentine cross. It is a tangible illustration of how Jesus used the story of the bronze serpent in the wilderness to describe His own mission to die on the Cross for our salvation.
Our worship this Sunday will be a bit unusual because we have chosen to “fast” from any printed materials or PowerPoint slides. So we will use no bulletins, hymnals, Bibles or projected words. Our Scriptures will be offered up from memory and likewise the songs we sing together. It is partly a way to remember the various Christian groups in our world who cannot afford the luxury of the printed Word or who may not even have Bibles or worship resources in their own language.
This fast from print also reminds us the power of image and the Incarnation of the Word of God in Jesus. God’s word was made visible in Christ. Men, women and children didn’t just hear about it, but saw Him with their eyes. The Crucifixion, says Jesus in John 3:14, would lift up Jesus so that He could give eternal life to anyone who believes in Him, just as anyone who looked on Moses’ bronze serpent lifted up in the wilderness would be saved from death.
In some respects our society is becoming once again more visual as media proliferate and images are easily available and everywhere we look. Yet we also continue to live in the modern age of the printed word, also more ubiquitous and easily transmitted by text or tweet. What we may miss is the vital connection and integration of word and image, the incarnate nature of reality as embodying physically words and ideas which originate in God.
So it is good to have a Sunday to remember that God “speaks” in the visible world (as Psalm 19 said last Sunday) and that God chose physical things like a bronze serpent, but especially water, bread and wine, to be the effective sacraments of salvation. Let us look on those signs and on our Savior and live.