Snakes on a Plain
Numbers 21:4-9
Click here to view the full sermon for March 14, 2021, entitled "Snakes on a Plain."
My first call to ministry was in service to an historic church in the county seat of Giles County, Tennessee which lies just at the border with Alabama. The town itself had a population of about eight thousand people and one year, the third-grade spelling bee was hosted in the fellowship hall of our church. That might be why I was invited to participate in the spelling bee as the pronouncer of words to be spelled. Some of the kids came dressed special for the event, for others it was just another school day. But once we started spelling there was plenty of drama and suspense; the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, as they used to say on ABC television’s Wide World of Sports. One word that did not come up that day, or likely at any third-grade spelling bee, was Ophidiophobia. “Um…could I hear that in a sentence?” Sure, the person who is afraid of snakes has Ophidiophobia. I think our reading from the book of Numbers is enough to make even the bravest soul a little leery of snakes, and of God for that matter. Snakes have long held a certain sinister quality in biblical stories. After all, at the opening of the book of Genesis, it is the serpent who first asks the questions that get Even wondering; eventually leading to humanity’s fall from grace and their expulsion from God’s Eden. This certainly isn’t Moses’ first turn with a snake and stick. There was that little trick that he did for the Pharaoh back in Egypt, turning his brother Aaron’s staff into a snake to show that the power of God was with them both.
Snakes have a way of unnerving us. A while back there was movie made with the ominous title, “Snakes on a Plane,” starring none other than Samuel L. Jackson. The plot was pretty straight forward. FBI agent Neville Flynn (played by Jackson) is accompanying the key witness in a mob trial on a flight from Hawaii to Los Angeles. Deadly snakes get released during the flight to silence the would-be snitch, and mayhem naturally ensues. And you thought flying during the pandemic was risky? Getting where you want to go these days is hard enough without having to worry about what might bite you. Out in the wilderness, the Israelites weren’t really sure where they were going. They knew where they had been, and it wasn’t looking so bad now that they were stuck in the middle of nowhere. There wasn’t much food or water. Back in Egypt there was plenty of both. There was also slavery and hard labor, but as is often the case the further we travel from what lies behind us, the greater our romantic nostalgia becomes for what is past. I wonder, a year from now, if we won’t remember elements of this pandemic in the same way. People often talk this way about the church they remember, rather than the church that is. How things were so much better when we had more members and the Sunday school classes were full, and people paid attention to what we said in the public square. Of course, back then membership didn’t always translate into discipleship. Sometimes it was just what one did to keep up appearances and mark certain holidays. Too often the voice of the church in the public square only echoed and reinforced existing racial inequalities and subordinated the role and contributions of women. When we aren’t sure about the direction that God is leading us, it is easy to become overly enchanted with days gone by. If all that leads us to is an exercise in wistful memory, that’s one thing. But it’s just as likely that when we look up and feel like we are not where we want to be, our disenchantment can become self-destructive.
The Israelites end up having to take the long way- off the beaten path- around Edom. The king of Edom, who controlled the obviously named King’s Highway that served as a major trading route, had denied Moses and his people passage through his kingdom on that road. It was one more hardship in a long list of hardships that had been adding up since they passed through sea to freedom: their dependence on Manna, the water from the rock, the ongoing rootlessness of this transient life. They began to grow impatient in the face of it all, impatient at the prospect of not knowing where in the heck God was leading them. So they resort to what they did best, they complained. “You’re clearly trying to kill us,” they moaned, “we don’t have any food, or water- well, okay there’s food, but it’s gross and we’re sick of it. We’re tired and we’re bored, and we just want things to go back to the way they were before.” The first time the Israelites complained like this, God gave them the manna. But they complained that they didn’t have any meat, so God sent the quails. Pretty soon they started up again and Moses had to talk God down from doing them harm, settling instead for extending the whiners’ journey through the desert. The next time they complained, God gave them water. On the whole, I’d say that God was exceedingly patient with these people, and you’d hope God would be. If it were me, I think I might have released those snakes on the plain a little sooner. As it is, I’m not entirely comfortable with the prospect that God might send a snake to bite me for complaining about my own life, or circumstance. But, there it is. So what do we do with this?
We could dismiss it as one of those quaint stories from Hebrew scripture believing that it doesn’t really apply to us because we have Jesus. That’s a tactic that has been tried before in the life of the church, by a fellow name Marcion who attracted quite a following until the rest of the church told him that was a pretty absurd thing to say and branded his torture form of logic as heresy. God’s covenant people are our spiritual ancestors and relatives. Their stories are as much our story as the gospels are. In fact, in our Gospel reading from this morning, Jesus mentions this very event. “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, to too must the Son of man be lifted up…” The simple truth of this story is that in their impatience with adverse circumstances, the people lost faith in God and it came back to bite them, quite literally. We could debate the merits of a God who sends such punishment, but I think that misses the larger point; which is that sin- which is always an act of rebellion against the life that God intends for us- sin has its consequences. Perhaps they aren’t as immediate as a snake bite, but our sins do real, and sometimes lasting damage, nonetheless. It’s what was promised all the way back in that story in Genesis from the garden. “Because you have done this,” God tells the serpent, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between her offspring and hers; he will strike your head and you will strike his heel.” The pain that is a result of their sin sends the people to Moses. They beg him to ask God to take away the snakes. But God has other plans. God hears Moses and responds by instructing him to build a replica of the very thing that is afflicting the people. Look to it, they are told and live. Now, I don’t know about you, but if my campsite is infested with rattlesnakes, I suspect I’d be tempted to keep an eye on the ground around me. In order to be healed, however, the people are instructed to change their focus, to look not at what afflicts them, but to turn (or if you like, repent) toward the promise of God to preserve their lives. In that symbol the people are simultaneously confronted with the reality of their sin and offered the healing power of God’s forgiveness. In that symbol, their sin is transformed into God’s grace. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so too must the Son of Man be lifted up…” The Son of Man, it turns out, is Jesus himself, and he will be lifted up not in heroic fashion, but on a cross, on a device designed to torture human life to the point of death. If there ever was a symbol for the depth of human sin and depravity, it is in that simple intersection of two pieces of wood. To look upon it is to acknowledge our own complicity in the violent sin that continues to strike at our heels and threaten human life. But that isn’t the whole of it. Because on that same cross, the sin and pain and despair of the world are met by the deep love of God, who comes not to condemn and punish us, but to save us from the sin that would otherwise destroy our lives. So, the cross, like the snake in the wilderness is transformed from a symbol of our sin into a sign of God’s love, forgiveness, and mercy. Look to it, and live. Amen and amen.