Sermon 3/14/2021 “Snakes!”
Preacher: Jo J. Belser
Location: Church of the Resurrection at VTS in Alexandria, VA
Text: Numbers 21:4-9
Day: 4Lent, Year B, during a pandemic
Here’s a heads-up: We are going to talk with snakes today. Perhaps you sympathize with the Indiana Jones character of the now-40-year-old adventure movies of that name who hated snakes and always encountered them. He said something like, “Snakes! Why are there always snakes?”
Then, too, there is a very fine science fiction writer of “Enders Game” fame named Orson Scott Card. He’s a Mormon, so perhaps that world view colored his perspective when he wrote in a novel called Fever, “‘The woman is the subtlest beast in the garden,’ said Papa Moose, ‘now that snakes can’t talk.’”
We can debate the validity of this perspective another day, perhaps. The perspective has made me wonder, though, “What IF snakes could talk?” What story would snakes tell of how evil entered our world? And would we believe them?”
I wondered these things about snakes this week because today’s scripture lessons are full of snakes. In our first lesson, we hear the Israelites complaining against God and Moses. Did you notice the subtle irony in the complaint that we are meant to notice? “There’s no food, and no water,” the Israelites complained, “and we hate the food.” In other words, “Give us what WE want!” As a result, our lesson says, “… the Lord sent poisonous serpents…” that bit and killed the people.
Let’s stop right here. This doesn’t sound like the God we know. God doesn’t send snakes to punish us for complaining—does he? And God doesn’t punish us for not choosing him—does he? The God I know gives us choices and lets us suffer the consequences of our bad choices. Blaming God for those consequences sounds like another bad choice, a more subtle continuation of the complaint.
At least in Moses’ day, however, the appearance of poisonous snakes caused the people to stop and consider their actions. “Why,” they must have asked themselves, “Why is God allowing this to happen?” Notice how I’ve cleaned up their theology. Not, “Why is God killing us with snakes?” but, “Why is God allowing snakes to kill us?”
The people did see the connection between their actions and the consequences of their actions—perhaps much more clearly than we today see the connection between what we do and what happens to us. In this telling of the “snakes in the wilderness” story, the consensus was unanimous and virtually instantaneous. This is a sign that the story has been polished by telling and retelling what happened. In real life there is much debate in circumstances such as these. We ask:
- Who is responsible for the virus, er, I mean, snakes! Who is responsible?
- Who can we blame?
- Who will stop this snake pandemic? Or whose job is it, anyway, to make it stop? God’s? Our country’s? Our Commonwealth’s? Ours?
- Who can rid us of these snakes so we can go on doing what we want to do? And
- Don’t ask US to change in any way; don’t we have rights! It’s my RIGHT to not be snake-bitten!
Our own pandemic reveals that we aren’t so different from these snake-bitten wilderness wanderers.
The interesting thing to me is that God allows complaining. The Israelites murmured against their wilderness conditions all throughout their trek. THIS complaining was different, though. Here they complained AGAINST God and Moses, at first blaming not themselves but the very God who had freed them from slavery and was sustaining them with food and water in the Wilderness.
Our human reality is that we LIKE complaining. Complaining give us a false sense of superiority, of knowing more than others, and of being in control. However, complaining begets more complaining. Complaining turns to blame and blame turns to bitterness or even violence against others when blame actually begins within.
Our actions (and even our very thoughts) have consequences. The Israelites saw the snakes as the consequence for their complaining AGAINST God and Moses. What happened then was God at work: The people’s eyes and minds and hearts were opened and they saw that God was healing them. When they dwelled on blame, they died. But when they looked—truly looked—at what was killing them, they lived. God didn’t take away the snakes, but he healed them of their bitterness and blame, and they lived.
This is the kernel of gratitude, the very core of gratefulness. We find the good at the heart of the situation and dwell on the good. Finding gratitude in any situation doesn’t take away the pain, if the situation is a painful one. Finding the gratitude puts the pain into perspective, into the middle of the good that can always be found, if we seek the good instead of assigning blame.
The exercise of finding the good, even in grievous situations, is a process rather than an instantaneous occurrence. Our story of finding the good amid a great pain of loss is one best told after the fact, when true understanding, true perspective, is reached.
Here’s an example: The Israelites, filled with remorse for complaining against God and Moses, asked Moses to get God to remove the snakes that were killing them. Instead, God had Moses make a snake image and put it on a pole, then raise the snake image up for the people to look at, and live. The snakes remained; people were still bitten, but those who looked up, looked to God for their salvation, lived.
Do you know, though, some 1,300 years later, the Israelites were worshiping that snake on a pole? They had named the snake Nehustan, meaning bronze or copper servant, and were venerating it and giving it offerings. They had begun to think the snake on the pole was what had saved them and what would sustain them.
Our gospel lesson today also mentions the snakes the Israelites had encountered in the wilderness. In it, Jesus said that HE must be “lifted up,” like the snakes were lifted in Moses’ time. We will still suffer death, but those who look to Christ Jesus for their salvation will live.
Nehustan is a warning to us to not get so enamored with the “cure” God gives us that we mistake the cure for God. For example, have you ever noticed that our medical symbol today is a serpent entwined on a pole? Don’t confuse the cure God give us with the giver of life and health.
All of this makes a nice history lesson. But we don’t have snakes today, do we?
- What about the virus; is that a snake?
- What about the deep-seated racism pandemic the virus revealed?
- What about the fear of displacement and loss of power the racism pandemic revealed?
- What about our return to our property: Promised Land or snake garden?
I think snakes will always be with us. And, if the snakes could speak, they might tell us they are just handy scapegoats (scapesnakes) for our own disappointment when life isn’t perfect, or we don’t get what we want. “Look within” they undoubtedly would say, “but then raise your sins to God and he will heal you of them.”
