There are a lot of snakes in the readings today. A lot of snakes. I, truth be told, am not so much a fan of snakes. I don’t like the way they move, I think it’s creepy. I do also confess a bit of a bias here for animals with between two and four legs, so sorry snakes, spiders, and those weird silvery, feathery things with lots of legs that fall from the ceiling sometimes, ug. I get that snakes, spiders, those gross millipeedy things, are all God’s beautiful creatures, all part of the creation which God called good. But they can be God’s good creation outside, so far as I’m concerned.
Snakes also play a pretty important symbolic role in scripture. And as we dive into our readings for this morning, it’s important to keep those parts of the story in mind. Jesus did not compare himself to the serpent Moses lifted up in the wilderness just to give us all the heeby-geebies, there’s more going on here.
Snakes represent deception, remember it was a serpent who tricked Adam and Eve in the garden. They represent power, Aaron threw down his rod in front of Pharaoh and it became a snake. They represent the unknown. Proverbs thirty, eighteen and nineteen, “[Things] I do not understand…the [movement] of a snake on a rock.” When snakes show up in scriptures, they evoke for us all this sense of fear, of mystery, of things we cannot understand, cannot make sense of, cannot control.
This reading from Numbers is one of the so-called “murmuring stories.” It’s one of the many times in the Exodus when the Israelites are wandering along, complaining about how much better life was when they were all in slavery in Egypt. And then suddenly, in the midst of the camp, are all these poisonous snakes. There are all sorts of interesting, and difficult, questions about why God would send poisonous snakes amongst God’s people, but I don’t think the origin of the snakes is really the point here. I don’t think any of us need any help identifying the snakes in our lives. Remember what snakes stand for in the Bible. They stand for fear, for lack of control, for lack of power, for all the things we cannot know, all the things cannot understand. We don’t need the writer of Numbers to spell out what these metaphorical snakes are, we all know, we understand, we are familiar with the pain they cause, the uneasy way they creep through our souls, filling us with fear, with dread, with uncertainty. We know the way their powerful toxins take control of us.
So when the snakes come calling, God does a funny thing. God had Moses build a giant snake, set it on a pole, and raise it up over the Israelites. So that any Israelite who was bitten by a snake could look up at the snake on a pole, and live. Because when I am surrounded by snakes, the most comforting thing I can think of is to be instructed to look at a giant “thing I am the most terrified of.” Awesome. Helpful.
But it was helpful. More than helpful, it was healing, it was wholeness, it was life-giving. When the Israelites looked at the snake on the pole they found comfort, when the Israelites looked at the snake on the pole they found relief, when the Israelites looked at the snake on the pole, even though they were still in the midst of snakes, even though the camp was still crawling in, infested with, snakes, when the Israelites looked at the snake on the pole, they lived.
The Israelites lived, though the snakes remained, because the snake on the pole was never the point in the first place. The point was God. It was reminding the Israelites that no matter how bad things got, how afraid they were, how much they lacked, how long they journeyed, the snake on a pole reminded them that they were God’s people. That God was with them, that God was for them. And that from the most unlikely, uncertain, death-filled places, God would bring life. The snake on a pole promised the Israelites that things that look like death are not death with God, they are God creating life again, in a new way, because life is how God works, life is who God is. So powerful, so innovative, so redemptive is our God that God brings life through a snake from amidst a sea of snakes. It makes as little sense as the movement of a snake, but somehow, like the movement of a snake, it is true. We can know it, we can trust it in our gut even when we cannot understand it, when we cannot feel it. That’s what God bringing healing through a snake on a pole promises.
So then in our Gospel reading for today, Jesus was talking to Nicodemus. Nicodemus was a Pharisee, and he had come to Jesus for answers to questions he could not understand. But he came by night, under the cover of darkness, because he was afraid to be seen with Jesus. Nicodemus came to Jesus at night, because he was afraid of his own snakes, afraid of the snakes of judgment, the snakes of persecution, the snakes that would surely follow a Pharisee involving himself with Jesus.
And in the midst of Nicodemus’s fear, Jesus reminds Nicodemus of the story of the bronze serpent in the wilderness. “And 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.” Then Jesus takes it a step further, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.” Belief in the Bible is about trust. Moses didn’t challenge the Israelites to know anything about God, Moses wanted them to trust and to follow, and really to just keep moving forward even in the wilderness. So belief then is not about understanding with our minds, or feeling with our hearts, belief is about knowing in our guts, about knowing even when we cannot understand. What Moses did for the Israelites when he set the snake on the pole was to give them something to follow, something to remind them to trust, something to point them to the One who is trustworthy, instead of trying to trust themselves. And just like Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so too will Jesus go to the cross. So that in the midst of death, in the midst of fear, in the midst of lack of control and things we cannot understand, we will see Jesus, facing down death, fear, lack of control, leading from a place of death to life. The cross is as inexplicable as snakes in the wilderness, and it is more powerful, more life-giving than we can understand with our minds, or feel with our hearts. Instead we trust, we feel in our guts that God is here, that God meets us here, even here, and that God brings life, God always brings life, for that is who God is. “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
And like the Israelites looked to the bronze serpent on a pole in the wilderness, that is why we come here. We come here because we know, in our guts, that we find Jesus here. That Jesus meets us here, in the waters of baptism and in the bread and wine of communion. We come here because we know that no matter what we understand or what we feel, Jesus is here. Jesus meets us here. Like the serpent on the pole turned the Israelites attention to God, so that they could know that God was with them in the wilderness, so too these sacraments of bread and wine, water and word turn our attention to God so that in the midst of whatever wilderness we face, whatever snakes cross our paths, we can look to the font, look to the table and know, beyond all knowing, that God is here, that God is with us, and that God always brings life. So come, and look, and live. Amen.
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