Who has suffered through the chorus of the song that doesn’t end? Tell your story, and make my mother proud.
I was never one of those kids. I managed to absorb the sound logic behind “We’ll get there when we get there” at a very early age. I’ve found that a lot of people seem to increasingly talk about patience as though it’s an inherent gift, and I really don’t think that’s true at all. Patience is a skill that must be built, tested, and nurtured. Like any skill, it gets better with practice, and since I am a child of a single working mom, I had plenty of chances to learn patience.
Likewise, trust. I had faith that when we did arrive at our destination my mother would tell me and give me time to get ready. I learned to wait for that voice.
Now there are times where waiting is something that takes very little effort. But there are times when waiting is almost impossible. Christmas morning. The baby’s arrival. The paycheque. The medical tests. The integration of loss, the sudden absence that drags all days into one day.
So while the complaint of the Israelites in today’s passage is pretty ridiculous – “We have no water and no food – and this food is gross!” – I can understand that years wandering through the wilderness would wear on a body, even a body kept alive through the power of magic rock water and angelic bread and heavenly quail. I can imagine that patience would be threadbare and faith would be running dry.
So the complaints rise up, and it seems like God has a little tantrum and throws snakes into the mix. One source I consulted for this sermon tries to let God off the hook: “The text doesn’t actually say that God sent the snakes because people were complaining!” Well, it’s not an unreasonable assumption. I can feel sorry for people who are stuck wandering the desert for generations, but I can really feel sorry for someone who has given and given and given and ends up taken for granted. Just before this passage in Numbers God helped the people win a huge military victory. Poisonous serpents might seem like overkill, but heck, they were already in the desert in abundance. And not to be a nitpicker, but serpents don’t generally bite people for no reason. Did God perhaps put serpents into people’s shoes? Maybe cut these wiggly little guys some slack.
So perhap it’s a bit silly to make excuses for God by suggesting that the snakes are not linked to the complaining of the people. But one thing to note is that at no point in the text is the word “punishment” explicitly named. The people tell Moses that they have sinned, but neither Moses nor God ever comes out and says the serpents are a punishment. So while it’s fair to say the serpents are linked to the people’s behaviour, perhaps what God was trying to communicate was more ambiguous and less human than, “You think you’ve got it bad now? Baby, you ain’t seen nothing yet.”
Well, I read a fascinating midrash by an ancient Rabbi on this text that I thought rang true.
It had to be serpents…because it was a serpent in the Garden.
In Genesis, the first one to be punished is the serpent. What’s most important for today is the line “Upon your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life.” Presumably the serpent did not slither before that day. A body was broken: the serpent was forever changed. A relationship was broken: between humankind and this species. In addition to this, the Hebrew word translated “poisonous” in English is actually more accurately translated “fiery” – and what was it that guarded the gate between Eden and the rest of the world once we were expelled? A fiery sword.
Echoes of Eden permeate this passage.
So as the people stumble around in the desert, remembering fondly their days of slavery and degradation, maybe God is reminding them, “Hey. Haven’t you learned anything? There was a real expulsion once.” And finally someone gets it, and they beg for help. And Moses creates this bizarre icon, called Nehushtan in the Book of Kings. It is bronze because the Hebrew word for bronze is like the Hebrew word for serpent – so it’s not just a serpent, it’s a serpent-y serpent. One English translation highlights this emphasis with the phrase “copper viper.” Perhaps, rather than focussing on a remnant of ancient folk medicine, we might understand this as an undoing of the serpent’s punishment – lifting up what had been condemned to crawl, and making a healer of what was once a source of enmity and fear, striking our heels while we struck its head. A broken body has been lifted up and made everlasting in bronze, and a broken relationship has been re-imagined, from enmity to healing.
You’ll notice that God does not take the serpents away. That’s never been God’s style. God’s honest like that, never choosing to erase the rough parts of a relationship. I think this is part of the everlasting truth of God’s drawing closer to us, having to learn to be awkward and broken, as we are, loving us for that earthy quality that after all comes straight from the divine hand and the divine breath.
But what does this have to do with “God so loved the world?”
Everything.
In the season of Lent, the sand of the wilderness gets into our nooks and crannies and slows us down. We feel the burning heat of the desert and focus on the sting of our separation from God. Our lives are full of wilderness space, and so is our world. We might forget to look at Nehushtan, the copper viper. Maybe Moses could make water burst forth from a rock, but how are we supposed to get water to nourish our patience and our faith in the desert? Where’s our magic staff? How can we possibly change things for the better when there is so much left barren and broken in our lives? How can we possibly come home to God when there is so much ignorance and fear and terror and apathy in the world that a thousand seasons of Lent could not be filled with penance enough to bring back Eden?
Once again, God makes foolishness out of our wisdom. God flips everything upside-down. God puts a crack in everything for the light to get in.
God becomes Nehushtan.
The Cross, symbol of humiliation, pain, mob “justice,” and the tyranny of Empire will become a symbol of triumph.
Like the serpent who deceived us being replaced by one who heals us, the tree that administered our expulsion is replaced by one that administers a new fruit, a fruit that gives us life, abundantly.
Creative, isn’t it? I hope you’d expect no less from your Creator.
So how should we respond?
We keep walking. The desert looks endless, and in a way it is, but there’s no fear in that. An earthly desert is actually packed full of secret life – how much more is the desert of a human life…or a heavenly desert?
God promises: There’s water in the rock. There’s healing in the serpent. There’s fruit on the tree. There’s a crack in everything – and the light is shining in.
God so loves the world: In the deepest wisdom of the created order, God chooses the foolishness of the world to make known the wisdom of the divine; chooses brokenness to bind up wholeness; chooses the profane to house the sacred. The truth of the world is transformation – the emptying out in order to be filled.
Jesus tells us it must be so, or there is no transformation.
It must be so, or we won’t get it.
And God wants us to get it. Reach out, and take it.
It’s yours.
It’s ours.