Deep into Lent are we, and it’s clear that something is coming, as we gather around the images and stories and lessons for today. Something is being forecast with our readings for today…particularly this strange OT reading about the Israelites in the wilderness...
There is a cross coming into view, albeit perhaps fuzzy right now: Through our lessons, particularly our Old Testament readings these past weeks — the covenant and the rainbow of Noah, the promise to Sarah and Abraham, the 10 commandments, now we’re still in the wilderness of our Lenten journey, it might be foggy, might be rainy, but — a cross is starting to come into view. We’re not there yet. Today, it’s this strange, gruesome image of a serpent on a pole…
This OT lesson is worth recounting because it is a snapshot of the entire Old Testament pattern… in Bible Study: “God blesses, people mess up, God gets angry, people repent…” See that here? They’re in the wilderness – free at last (God blesses) but complaining and tired, they want to go back.
Moses reminds them of the food and how far God has brought them “we hate the food”, we would rather be back there! (people mess up) God gets angry, sends serpents to bite them.
The people cry out for help. Moses petitions God for the people. God give them the snake on a pole. And those who look to it are healed. (God blesses)
It is a curious story. And it’s in our lectionary because of our Gospel reading. Because Jesus in the Gospel of John makes a reference to it: “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Humanity be lifted up.” Same effect: Those who look to him are healed.
There is a cross coming into view.
But let’s stay with the OT story in the wilderness. Snake’s on a pole. God getting angry. I think this story is amazing. It’s entertaining on one level, in its strangeness. But I laugh at it mostly because I can totally relate to complaining in the wilderness. “We hate the food.” (NRSV: “We detest this miserable food.”) They of course are referring to manna, the holiest of holy bible food...next to the body and blood of Christ, of course.
Do you ever feel like the Israelites in the wilderness, wanting to go back to the way things used to be? Sure it wasn’t perfect back then, but at least it was better than this?
If we had a nickel — for every time we heard somebody say (or thought it ourselves): if only we could go back to the way it used to be. In other words, “We hate the new food. Why, when I was growing up...”
I laugh when I read this text mostly, I’m afraid, out of discomfort, because it so aptly hits the nail on the head. “God, why did you bring us to this point?! We hate it.”
“God why did you bring us to this point in our lives? WE hate it. We detest this misery.”
And then all of a sudden…SNAKES! In a recent poll of “Things We’re Afraid Of,” 36% of Americans list snakes as #1.
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Any chance those snakes are a gift? Like a sharp tone in your mother or father’s voice – a sharpness you never heard before, and frankly it hurts. There’s a bite to it.
Any chance those snakes are a gift? When we’re longing for the past, we’re not fully in the present because of that? But as soon as you’ve got a snake slithering toward you, man, you’re right in the moment! Your head is pulled right out of the clouds of the past, and all your senses are in tact – adrenaline, reflexes all as sharp as your body is possibly able. You are alive—that’s what adrenaline junkies are all about. “Never felt more alive, man!” is what they say.
Any chance those snakes were a gift? God snaps us out of our natural default position to complain (which we often do from the easy chair), to long for something more (especially when we’re relatively safe and wondering “well, how can we get safer”), our natural default position to get nostalgic about the past, to burrow in to what we know…
God snaps us out of that with a bite, a sting, a harsh tone. And then with adrenaline pumping, sticking us right smack in the present moment…
…Mercy. Grace. Healing comes. Salvation (salvus).
Sometimes we need that jolt to remind us that God is the one who brought us here, God is the one who has never left us. And God is the one who will bring us to the promised land. Sometimes we need that jolt, because we forget. Ever seem like we say the same thing in church, week after week? Because we forget (people mess up) that God has brought us here, that God is the one who has never left us, that God will bring us to the promised land at last.
But there’s a cross coming into view. For Christians, gotta go past the cross to get to the empty tomb.
Anyone who’s gone through surgery knows that pain comes before the healing. (By the way, the serpent on the pole, of course, is the medical symbol.) Those who look to the serpent will be healed. It’s not an idol. If the people think that the snake itself (or the cross itself, for that matter) is the cause of the cure, then it becomes an idol. But if they look to it as a reminder of the mercy and providence and presence of God, then it becomes a holy symbol. If they look through the bronze serpent, just as we look through the cross of Christ, then it is healing. In even and especially the most gruesome and strange symbols—a snake on a pole, a bloody cross—God’s love is poured out, and not just for us, but for all, as John 3 tells us: “God so loved the cosmos.”
The cross is coming into view! It gets harder before it gets easier. In that truth there is grace, there is relief, there is healing. There is salvation.
And even here in the wilderness, friends in Christ, Jesus is our rock. AMEN.
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