Chetwynd Shared Ministry
March 11, 2018
Scriptures: Numbers 21:4-9 and John 3:14-21
So… what are your
thoughts about snakes? Personally, I
don’t mind them. My friend has pet
snakes, and I don’t mind touching them or holding them. (Though my attitude towards snakes was
slightly different when I was living in a country with many species of
poisonous snakes, and one made its way in to my bedroom one sunny
afternoon…) But for the most part, I
think that they are interesting creatures.
One of my friends and
regular canoe partner, Laura Marie, has a very different attitude towards snakes. When we are on canoe trips together, and
portaging between lakes or around waterfalls, her shriek that announces that
there is a snake on the trail sounds very much like what I imagine her shriek
to announce that there is a bear on the trail would sound like. We have come to the agreement that it is
better for both of our mental health if I go first along the trail so that any
snakes that might be sunning themselves on the path can slither back in to the
bush before Laura Marie comes along.
Then next Saturday,
everyone around the world who can claim any Irish heritage will be celebrating
St. Patrick’s Day, and that curious story about St. Patrick driving all of the
snakes out of Ireland. This story is
likely more legend than fact because, while there are no snakes in Ireland
today, there is also no skeletal or fossil evidence of there ever having been
snakes in Ireland.
And then we come to
another curious story about snakes – today’s reading from the Old Testament
book of Numbers. Remember that the
people had been slaves in Egypt; remember that Moses went to the Pharaoh and
demanded of him, “Let my people go!”; remember that God worked through Moses to
part the waters of the Red Sea so that the people could cross to safety on the
other side. And now we come to the
desert wilderness where the people wandered for 40 years before they were able
to enter into the land that God had promised to them.
Now the complaint that
we hear in today’s readings, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in
the wilderness?” is heard regularly in the time in the desert wilderness. Sometimes God responded to this complaint by
causing manna and quail to fall from heaven for the people. Sometimes God responded to this complaint by
having Moses strike a rock with his staff, causing water to flow out of the
rock. But this time, the text tells us
that “the Lord sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the
people, so that many Israelites died.”
Now I’m going to come
right out and say that I don’t think that God sent those poisonous serpents;
and I don’t believe that God wanted the people to die. This doesn’t fit with my understanding of who
God is. By looking elsewhere in
scripture, I understand God to be love; I understand that God wants us to love
God and love one another; I understand God to be the source of all that is good
and loving in the universe. And when I
look at Jesus, God-made-flesh, I see a God of compassion, who said that he came
in order that we all might have not just life but fullness of life.
So what then are we to
do with this story and the venomous snakes found in it? My understanding of scripture is that it was
written by humans about their experiences of God. And isn’t it a very human thing to blame God
when things go wrong? When bad or tragic
things happen in our lives, we tend to cry out to God – Why did you do this to
me? Why did you allow this to
happen? But my faith tells me that the
God-who-is-love doesn’t cause pain and suffering – all I can do is affirm that
God-who-is-love is always with us, even when we are experiencing pain and
suffering.
And we can see this in
the story from Numbers. The people are
suffering from the poisonous snakes and they cry out to God, and God hears
their prayers. God not only hears their
prayers, but God also provided a solution to the situation – a snake made out
of bronze on a pole that people could look at and be cured. The original anti-venom!
It’s a curious ending
to a curious story. A snake on a stick
that people could look at and be cured.
Remember last week, our readings included the Ten Commandments, which
included the commandments that the people were to have no other gods except for
the God who had led them out of slavery, and that they were not to make idols
for themselves in the form or shape of anything on earth. So could this snake be considered an
idol? And remember that other time when
the people were wandering in the wilderness and they made a golden calf and
started to worship it. That story didn’t
end well for them!
But here is God telling
them to make this snake and put it on a pole and raise it up above the
people. But what is missing in this
story is that the people weren’t worshipping the snake. Instead, when they looked at the snake, they
were reminded of God, the one who was with them, and the one who could heal
them.
I would suggest that
instead of an idol, this snake made of bronze functioned more like a
sacrament. The basic definition of a
sacrament is a visible sign of God’s invisible grace. A sacrament is something that we can see and
touch and smell and taste, but it is always pointing beyond itself towards God. When we gather around the communion table in
a few minutes, we aren’t going to be worshipping the bread and the wine. Instead, when we taste the bread and the
wine, they are going to point us towards God, and God’s ever-faithful love.
And so I see the snake
on a pole as being a sacrament like this.
The power of the snake is that it pointed the people back to God. They were able to turn away from their
complaining, and be turned back to the God who was leading them through the
wilderness.
But the snake doesn’t
stop here – this same snake pops up again in our reading from John’s gospel
today. The context for this gospel
reading is that Nicodemus, a leader of the group of people who were persecuting
Jesus, came to Jesus by night and started asking him questions. And eventually we come to today’s reading –
part of Jesus’ answers. Jesus reminds
Nicodemus of the story from Numbers – this would have been part of the
scriptures that they were both familiar with as devout Jewish teachers and
leaders of their era. Jesus said, “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.”
Through this season of
Lent, we have been journeying with Jesus towards the cross, and here we have
another foreshadowing of what is to come.
Now it’s an interesting phrase, to say that the Son of Man is to going
to be lifted up. I can see three
different possible interpretations of this – remember last week when I mentioned
all of the “double-talk” in John’s gospel.
First of all, Jesus’ body is going to be lifted up on a cross when he is
crucified. But then Jesus is also going
to be raised up – the same Greek verb – in his resurrection. And then the third possible meaning is that
Jesus is going to be lifted up to heaven after his resurrection, to the
glorification that continues today whenever we worship.
Jesus refers a couple
of times to those “who believe in him”; but what does it mean to believe in
Jesus? I think that means much more than
what we think, or the words that we say.
I think that it goes right down to how we live our lives and where we
place our trust. We are not to live our
lives grumbling and complaining about what we have or don’t have like the
people in the desert were doing.
Instead, we are to put our trust in God, we are to look at the snake on
the pole, we are to “turn our eyes upon Jesus” as the old hymn says, and then
we may have eternal life.
Now the thing about
eternal life is that it isn’t some far-off reward for us when we die. Just as we are to put our trust in God in the
here and now in how we live our lives, so too eternal life begins in the here
and now. It isn’t a matter of quantity
of life, but eternal life is a different quality of life – it is the fullness
of life or abundance of life that Jesus talks about later on in Johns’ gospel.
Both of these
readings, I think, are a call to repentance, a call to change our ways, a call
to turn back to God. The Israelite
people were called to turn away from their grumbling and complaining to turn
towards and look at the bronze snake that would point them towards God. Jesus calls on his listeners to turn away
from doing what is evil to do what is true – to choose light and to choose
life.
And we too are called
to look to Jesus, to trust Jesus, rather than trusting the world around
us. We are to turn away from our fears
of a vengeful god who punishes us, and turn towards the God who is Love, who is
with us when things are good and who is still with us when things are difficult;
the God who surrounds us with love every moment of every day.
Let us pray:
God of Love,
We thank you because
you are always with us.
We thank you because
your love for the world never ends.
We thank you that we
can turn from our fears,
and turn towards you and your love.
Give us the faith to
know
that your love is stronger than our
fears,
and that your love is constantly
surrounding us.
We pray this in the
name of Jesus,
raised up in his crucifixion,
raised up in his resurrection,
and raised up in his glorification;
the one who points us
towards,
and who embodies
your love.
Amen.
© Marek Szczepanek, WikiMedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
(Snake or Sacrament???)
No comments:
Post a Comment