Lent 4B
Numbers 21:4-9
March 22, 2009
A story is told about a young man who entered a very strict monastic order. It was so strict that members were permitted to speak only two words per year to the abbot. At the end of your one the young man appeared before the abbot and spoke his two words, “Bad food.” At the end of the second year the young man appeared before the abbot and spoke two more words, “hard bed.” At the end of year three he came to the abbot and spoke his last two words, “I quit.” The abbot responded, “Well it’s about time. Complain, complain, complain—that’s all you’ve done since you came here.”
A story is told about a young nation. The story begins and an elderly man and his elderly wife. They have no child. God gives them a child. A few generations later, there are twelve sons. Eleven of those sons sell one of their younger brothers into slavery. Over time those eleven come to be living in a time of famine. The one sold into slavery has gone to Egypt where he finds himself in a position of power, a position which allows him to plan for the time of famine and able to save the population from starvation. The eleven brothers are in need of food, food is provided and this young nation sets up housekeeping in Egypt.
Eventually the brothers die, the King of Egypt is replaced with an evil man and this young nation becomes a people in bondage to slavery. They toil and work and cry out to God to be set free. And God provides for their liberation. And the journey begins.
They wander in the hot, dry desert and complain. “There is no water. We are thirsty.” God hears their cry and provides water from a rock.
They wander and complain, “We are starving to death. The food was better in Egypt. We miss the cucumbers and the leeks.” God hears their cry and provides quail and manna, a sweet substance that will sustain them each and every day they are in the wilderness.
And then we come to the 21st chapter of Numbers where we find our friends the Israelites wandering and complaining some more. “You brought us out here to die. We have no water. We have no food. We’re tired of this food.” (now which is it?) And God hears their complaints and sends snakes to bite them.
Is it just me or is one of these things not like the other?
All along this journey the people have complained and the responses from God have made some sense. They’re complaining about hunger—they get food. They’re complaining about thirst—they get water. They’re complaining that it’s taking too long—God makes the journey a little bit longer. Then they complain about the food and God sends snakes. I don’t know why God would do that, sending snakes that bite and kill.
And boy, do I hate snakes. When I was a girl, we had a garden and many a time I’d be picking beans and lift up the plant only to find a garter snake looking at me. I’d leave my bucket right there and run in the house. My mother would try to send me back out for the beans. But, “nope, get them yourself,” I actually had the nerve to tell her. And talking back like that never ended well.
When Matt and I lived in Oregon, we put a boat on top of the car once to go fishing. On the way the boat fell off the car and bounced far into a field of sagebrush. Matt thought it was a good idea if we both carried the boat back to the car. Nope, I told him, “go get it yourself.” The area probably had it’s share of rattlesnakes lying around.
I really hate snakes. So it perplexes me as to why God would send snakes to a complaining people.
Barbara Brown Taylor has a plausible answer to that question. She points out that these serpents who killed so many of the Hebrews are Seraphs, fiery serpents. They are much like the winged cobras that surround the throne of God, protecting God. These fiery, frightening Seraphim; these slithering serpents, have been sent by God to frighten, hurt and ultimately save the people of Israel.
She proposes that the snakes are to bite the people into their senses. Being brought close to death, they remember how much they appreciate the gift of life. They are shocked into recognition that they owe much to God and to Moses, who are doing everything they can do to preserve the people. They are poisoned into their senses. They apologize to Moses, admitting that they are sorry sinners.
Then Moses intercedes to God. But God won’t call off the snakes. God will not remove this evil from them. Instead God tells Moses to put a bronze serpent on a pole, and make the people look at it. So that in the future, when they are bitten, when evil overtakes them, they will look at the saving snake upon the pole and be preserved.
Moses makes a replica of the very evil that people fear. Moses takes the source of anxiety, pulls it up from beneath their feet, puts it up on a pole, makes them look at it, and they are able there to see that the terrible plague has become the Seraph of awesome life. Somehow in the inexplicable mystery of this moment, evil and threat are transformed. The snakes that are the means of death become the way to life.
Now the Gospel of John says that Jesus dares to use this brass serpent on a pole as a figure of himself. John refers to Jesus not only as the good shepherd but also as the good snake. He surprised us, came in among us, slithering into our illusions of stability and safety. We reached for the ax to beat him to death. He opened his mouth, and spoke words that stung us; venomous, prophetic words.
And we beat him, whipped him, and lifted him up high on a pole. In lifting him up from earth towards heaven, his poisonous, prophetic words of venom became the anti-venom, the means of salvation. And even those who had killed him, standing at the foot of the pole, were able to look up and say, “Truly this is the Son of God.”
My friends, we are on dangerous ground when we think God’s role is to answer our complaints by handing us what we want. We are on dangerous ground when we think, “We have found evil, and now with shovel in hand, we are going to beat it to death. We are going to lop off it’s head and end the plague of biting, stinging snakes.” We are on dangerous ground when we make God over into a more pleasing image. We are on dangerous ground when we make our savior into the one who always brings us good things, who gives us our heart’s desire, who makes life easier for us.
Sometimes, most times, our savior comes to us in threatening appearance, with biting words, making life considerably more difficult for us, and surprises us with the truth about ourselves. And sometimes with him, it feels both like something is dying in order that something might be reborn. Sometimes in our encounters with him it hurts and sometimes it hurts deeply before it can be healed. For 40 days in Lent we talk of sin, before there can be salvation.
God knows what we need before we ask or complain or demand or cry out. Today, high and lifted up over us, Jesus is God’s fiery reminder that angels can sometimes look like enemies, and messengers of God can bring us messages we don’t particularly like and a true savior may sting us before he saves us. Look upon him and be saved. Amen
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