Lent 4 - March 22, 2009

Kingswood UMC - Buffalo Grove IL

Texts: Numbers 21: 4-9; John 3: 14-21; Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22

Are you an ophidiophobiac like I am? At the risk of offending those among us who are snake lovers, I’ve got to admit publicly that snakes creep me out. Remember the scene in the Indiana Jones movie Raiders of the Lost Ark with the slithering snakes? I covered my eyes until it was over!!! And then a couple of years ago there was a gangster movie starring Samuel Jackson called Snakes on a Plane. I wouldn’t even watch the previews on television. So when I came upon today’s story in this series on Covenant Journey, my initial reaction was to distance from the story by making a joke about the "snake on a stick" story.

What in the world could this strange story have to do with covenant? The images of taking the rainbow home from the Genesis story of Noah, and of the wild geese honking over head representing God’s call to Abraham to walk before God, are far more appealing ... and familiar. And last week we were reminded of our own children reciting the 10 commandments for their teachers ... and invited to revisit these 10 Words again as adults to see what they mean for us now. But most of you have probably never even heard this story of the snakes in the desert and the golden snake that saves the people!! So lets hear it again ... this time in the vernacular of Nathan Nettleton at the South Yara Community Baptist Church in Melbourne, Australia.

Well! Now that we’ve heard the story again ... there is still this sticky question of what it could possibly mean for those of us claimed by God for a life on the covenant journey. Once we get past the image of a bunch of slithering snakes, there is the quite serious question of God’s choice to punish the people for their whining by killing them off with poisonous snakes. Some people claim it seems like a bit of an over-reaction on God’s part. Others understand that God has finally become impatient with the whining and impatience of the people in the wilderness.

You see, this isn’t the first time they’ve complained since God led Moses to bring them out of slavery in Egypt. The King James Version calls it murmuring. They murmured that they didn’t like the bitter water of Marah ... so the Lord showed Moses how to sweeten it. They whined about the lack of food, so the Lord gave them Manna. They complained that they were thirsty and Moses struck the rock at the Lord’s command and water gushed forth. And then after the revelation of the 10 Words at Sinai ... and the creation of the golden calf ... they were back at it, asking for meat to eat. A wind from the Lord brought quails ... though the quails also brought a plague. Then they reached the promised land ... and rebelled again, refusing to go on. Though you can understand that they were tired of the trip ... it had been nearly 40 years by now and they had begun to romanticize the stable life of slavery back in Egypt in light of the travails of the journey ... the patience of Yahweh God was also wearing very thin.

And so we hear that God has loosed some dangerous snakes, or sent poisonous snakes, or fiery serpents, or venomous snakes .... depending on how you translate the word serafim. Students of the wildlife in the desert of the Negeb think it isn’t likely that there were fire-breathing snakes or dragons there .... but the bite of whatever creature this was may have very well created a firey or feverish wound. And many of the people died.

So whether

We’re told they came to their senses, came to Moses and confessed their sin, and asked Moses to intervene for them one more time with God. And so Moses prayed.

And the Lord responded with instructions for Moses to shape an image out of bronze or copper of the creature that was threatening them and to mount it on a pole or stick for all to see. And when people were bitten, if they would turn their attention up to the golden snake instead of focusing on their fear and pain, they would be saved from dying of their wounds. The very thing that had been the source of their pain and fear ... of death even ... becomes a source of salvation and healing when the people repent and ask for God’s forgiveness and help. And how often it is true, isn’t it, that the things that at first may seem like a trial to you, even a curse upon you, when you turn them over to God ... confess you failure to trust God with everything ... even the thing that is causing you suffering ... that very same thing becomes a source of blessing. You might have wished it different ... that there weren’t poisonous snakes, or divorce, or illness, or an addiction, or the loss of a job ... you might have wished it different in the first place .... but since there are these things, God can transform them to become a source of blessing if you can only look up away from your fear and pain, to the shimmering, golden treasure that they can become in the hands of God.

Jesus knew this. In the first place ... Jesus knew this scripture. Over many years I’ve struggled with this popular saying of Jesus. John 3:16 is so famous, considered by some to be the gospel in miniature, that you see it on billboards along the highway or on your television screens behind home plate at ball parks. But I’ve never claimed it as a favorite and I think that is because, among other things, I’ve been freaked out by the snake in the story.

We didn’t hear the whole story this morning but it begins with a visit. Jesus is visited, in the cover of darkness ... by one of the religious leaders. Nicodemus was a Pharisee but unlike some of the others, he wanted to learn from Jesus. He had a sense that Jesus was a teacher who had come from God. So they get into this conversation where Jesus starts talking about entering the kingdom of God by being born from above. Nicodemus misunderstands his point ... and takes his words literally. Thus ensues one of those famous conversations in John’s gospel where Jesus and his conversation partner are speaking at two different levels. Jesus is amazed at the lack of understanding of this quite learned man and more generally at the failure of the teachers of Israel who are not able to see the "heavenly things" of which he is speaking and which God is offering to them through him. They seem to prefer to operate in the dark, even as Nicodemus has come in the dark. So Jesus offers them another way to see and understand him. He takes an image with which Nicodemus would have been quite familiar ... the snake on a stick ... or Nehushtan, as it came to be known and used in the temple for many years after Moses ... and he makes a parallel with what God is doing in him: 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....for God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

Jesus doesn’t explain at this point how that "lifting up" is going to happen. But he

makes the point most strongly that God’s presence in him and in the world is not about condemnation but about life, about salvation, about being rescued from the narrow way of sin and suffering, of murmuring or whining against what God is doing, and being born into, perhaps lifted up into, something like a new life, something he calls eternal life. Besides the lifting up of the snake in the Moses reference, there are at least three other levels of "lifting up" which are related to Jesus:

But the lifting up of Jesus is not so much about what is going to happen to Jesus but what this means for us. Through Jesus ... as we turn away from our fear and pain and gaze at Jesus on the cross and then at the empty cross when he has been lifted up into resurrection life .. we are also able to be lifted up.

It is another one of those ironies of God’s truth. The snake was an agent of death for the Israelites and in cultures around the world it has symbolized death. But when the people turned to God and confessed their failure to trust, the symbol turned from being one of death to one of life and healing. In a similar way we need to remember that for those in Jesus’ times, the cross symbolized death and cruelty and suffering. It was only after Christ that the cross turned golden as it became a symbol of life, a thing of beauty with the power to save.

And so the Covenant Journey continues ... again and again ... God reaches toward us, God’s people and the whole of creation, seeking to bring us back into relationship and fullness of life, to lift us up with Christ — holding us with love and mercy.

Paul puts it this way in a reading from the lectionary that we didn’t include this morning: God’s love for us was undiminished even when our twisted behavior had completely destroyed our lives, and so God gave us another shot at life, a new life, united to Christ. This was motivated by God’s overwhelming love for us and it was clearly an act of sheer generosity that say us rescued in the life of God. Indeed, God did not merely snatch us fromthe grave, but raised us up with Jesus the Messiah and united us to him so fully that, in him, we are now seated with God in the heavenly places. (laughingbird.net Ephesians 2)

Sing refrain from Eagle’s Wings #143