This week’s Gospel lectionary is John 3:14-21.

This week’s Gospel lectionary contains one of the iconic verses of Christian belief: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life” (John 3:16 NRSV). These words express the unfathomable love of God, who moves toward the world in a posture of self-emptying reconciliation. And all we have to do is believe.

As a child I learned this verse apart from the passage that surrounds it. And perhaps rightly so—it is a beautiful and simple expression of the Christian faith, of a God who loves and a people who respond in belief. Yet only when we read this verse in its context in the Gospel of John can we recognize its truly revolutionary significance.

Serpents in the Wilderness

It’s obvious that John 3:16 isn’t meant to stand alone. It opens with the Greek word houtos, which the NRSV translates as for. In Greek, the term has the sense of in this manner or in this way, meaning that what follows must be understood in light of the preceding verses. In this case, God’s loving gift of the Christ for the salvation of the world must be understood in light of the verses that come before it.

Unfortunately, for those not familiar with the Old Testament, John 3:14–15 makes little sense. There, John tells us that “just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life” (John 3:14–15). Receiving eternal life isn’t a simple matter of believing abstractly in Jesus as the son of God. Rather, eternal life requires belief in Jesus lifted up just as the serpent was lifted up by Moses in the wilderness.

The story John is referring to is found in Numbers 21:4-9, which is this week’s Old Testament lection. In that text, Moses and the Israelites have been wandering in the desert for some time, eating manna and quail provided by God. Yet, the people have become impatient with their circumstances, and they begin to grumble against Moses and against God. God responds by sending poisonous snakes (serafim), who kill many of the people.

Eventually, the Israelites cry out to Moses. They confess their wrongdoing and ask Moses to save them. Moses prays to God, who instructs Moses to construct a bronze serpent and place it on a pole. After that, “whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live” (21:14). Curiously, God doesn’t send the snakes away or make the people immune to their venom. Rather, God’s solution involves requiring the people to gaze upon a symbolic representation of the very real serpents that threaten them.

The Son of Man Lifted Up

John 3:14–15 likens Jesus to this bronze serpent lifted up by Moses, saying, “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.” The image of the Son of Man lifted up like the serpent on a stick clearly references the crucifixion. Jesus on the cross functions for believers like the serpent on the stick did for the Israelites in Numbers.

If we follow the parallel, that means Christ lifted up on the cross—like the bronze serpent lifted up on the stick—is also a symbolic representation of a concrete threat to the lives of the people. We know that in Rome the cross was an instrument of state-sanctioned violence used to execute those who destabilized the imperial order. As such, Christ lifted up on the cross serves as a symbolic representation of the very real violence that ever seethes beneath the surface of the Empire, threatening death for any who refuse to submit to its authority.

If such is the case, then the claim in John 3:16 that “whoever believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life” takes on a much more radical significance. That is, the way to salvation is not an abstract belief in Christ, praying the Sinner’s Prayer, or accepting an altar call. Rather, salvation comes through believing in the Christ who is lifted up on the cross to save us from a life undergirded by state-sanctioned violence. Christ has come to save us from a life complicit with the death-dealing powers of the Empire.

Gazing upon the Crucified Christ

It is instructive that the Israelites in the wilderness are told they must gaze upon the bronze serpent in order to be saved. This suggests that we, too, must gaze upon the crucified Christ in order to be saved. However, gazing upon the crucified Christ is not some voyeuristic exercise in appreciating how much pain Jesus has endured on our behalf. Quite to the contrary, gazing upon the crucified Christ serves to remind us of how much pain we have inflicted on innocents like Jesus in the name of securing our own privilege. To be saved, we must gaze upon what we have done. We are not allowed to turn away, to skip ahead, or to deflect blame on to others. The only way to salvation is to gaze upon the crucified Christ—to see and to acknowledge the violence that has been done in our name.

To gaze upon the crucified Christ is to recognize the violence that has undergirded the prosperity of our own Empire. It is to acknowledge the genocide of native peoples that accompanied the founding of America. It is to face the facts of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the inhuman exploitation of life and labor that built the wealth of our nation. It is to bear witness to the innocent men, women, and children who died on lynching trees across the American South in order to preserve white privilege. To gaze upon the Christ is to see the Christ Child among those gunned down in Newtown and Columbine and Parkland, to speak his name among the innocents murdered by those sworn to serve and protect, to recognize his lifeless body in the rubble of drone strikes that protect our interests abroad.

Gazing upon the crucified Christ means repenting of our complicity in acts of violence perpetrated in our name. It means exposing the powers of death that preserve our way of life. It means turning our backs on the politics of fear and anxiety that execute innocents to preserve the peace.

Believing in Christ means choosing to leave behind the violence of the Empire and to commit ourselves instead to the reconciling power of God’s love, which seeks to save the whole world—all of us—together. That is the promise of this passage.

All we have to do is believe it.