SERMON Snakes and Serpents

Lent 4 (B): Numbers 21:4-9; Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22; Ephesians 2:1-10; John 3:14-21

This morning we hear about wilderness and serpents. Deserts and snakes. At the end of a week that marked the sixth anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq.

It is probably safe to say that each of us individually knows more about deserts today than we collectively did at the beginning of last week six years ago. Before any casualties, before the insurgency and the daily and deadly suicide bombings, remember the reports of the embedded journalists in Iraq? About how terrifying deserts can be? How vicious the sandstorms. How real the dangers. How cold the nights. How numbing the fatigue. How gnawing the hunger. How parching the thirst.

Snakes are another matter. Unlike deserts, we really don't know a lot about snakes. We do, however, know that we don't like them. There's a almost an instinctual revulsion. I am reminded of the week that the rock star Splash co-hosted the Jimmy Kimmel show. And in his arms every evening was a large pet venomous snake. A large deadly pet venomous snake. Only Splash petted the snake. The revulsion was real.

Splash's snake reminds me of the one time I saw a large deadly snake in the flesh. That happened thirty years ago when I was a fairly new associate in my law firm. I was spending large chucks of time in Barnwell, South Carolina working with other lawyers on a large case reviewing documents. After hours, there was not a lot to do in Barnwell. Augusta, Georgia was a twenty minute drive away. As we soon learned, the chief attraction in Augusta (beside the golf course) was the Snake Lady. For a year, the Snake Lady had only been a rumor. While we all joked about going to see her, none of us had.

All that changed one trip when the general counsel for one of our clients came into town and insisted that we go with him to see the Snake Lady. For maybe a nanosecond, I was uncertain about going -- torn between curiosity and thrill seeking, on the one hand, and feminist convictions that the Snake Lady was being exploited, on the other. The curiosity and thrill-seeking won out, and I rationalized going along as good client maintenance.

We arrived to see the Snake Lady about 9:00 p.m. For three hours, we saw many would-be Snake Ladies without snakes. Finally, about midnight, the Snake Lady appeared. What was impressive about the Snake Lady was the snake. A boa constrictor, a deadly serpent. Longer than the Snake Lady was tall. While it was certainly deadly, it also had been drugged. Even so, it was very impressive. Definitely worth the compromise of my feminist principles. (I decided, by the way that it was the snake, not the Snake Lady, who was being exploited.)

And it's those serpents -- with venom, like Splash's, and not drugged, unlike the Snake Lady's -- it's those serpents multiplied that we hear about this morning. The children of Israel had been complaining about being in the desert. About a lack of water, and about the monotonous rations of manna ("miserable food," they called it). Like our soldiers' initial advance to Baghdad six years ago, their trip to the promised land had been filled with starts and stops and detours. For one, they had just been forced to go around Edom rather than through it.

We might sympathize. God does not. Instead, God sends poisonous serpents in droves -- hundreds and hundred of Splash and Snake Lady serpents -- to punish the people for complaining. And after many have died, the people repent and ask Moses to intervene for them. "[P]ray to the LORD," they beg, "to take the serpents away from us."

But that doesn't happen, does it? No, in a strange and curious twist, rather than calling off the poisonous snakes -- the logical thing to do -- God tells Moses to make a poisonous serpent and put it on a pole and then adds, "[E]veryone who is bitten shall look at it and live." And Moses follows orders by making a bronze serpent and putting it on a pole and, sure enough, "whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live."

Not only is God's response illogical, but it is at total variance with everything this God has said and done up to this point. Remember, this is the same God who tells Moses, "You shall not make for yourself any idol . . .in [any] form." This is also the God who was going to consume Israel for having worshiped a golden calf. The bronze snake that God orders Moses to make is nothing if not an idol. It is a graven image. It is no different than a golden calf.

It does make one wonder, doesn't it? Why a bronze serpent?

Well one answer is that whole story was invented as a kind of rationalization -- just as I rationalized my going to see Snake Lady as client maintenance. Snakes and serpents symbolize evil. Think of the Garden of Eden. But that's not all. They also are associated with sex and fertility. That's why there was a Snake Lady in addition to the snake in Augusta. The bronze serpent was originally Canaanite -- a fertility god that survived even after the God of Israel took over. A bronze serpent named Nehushtan mounted on a pole and thought to have been made by Moses was revered in the Jerusalem Temple until 700 B.C.

And there we have it. Pure rationalization for destroying a pagan fertility symbol embraced and revered by the masses. And there it might end. But it doesn't.

It doesn't end because the story itself demonstrates that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob -- our God! -- is about more than short-term snake bite remedies. This is a personal God -- not a fertility God -- a personal God who forgives and heals his people. And because healing, not fertility, became the new reason and understanding for the bronze serpent cult object, the meaning of the cult object itself was transformed. A bronze serpent mounted on a pole became the caduceus -- our symbol for medicine and medical professionals.

But there's more. That transformation is not the end of the story because the same cult object that became the caduceus is further expanded and transformed by Jesus in John's gospel. What we hear this morning is all part of Jesus' nighttime visit from Nicodemus.

As you will recall, Nicodemus is a Pharisee, "a leader of the Jews." While recognizing that Jesus is a teacher who does signs, Nicodemus fails to grasp what being born by water and the Spirit is all about and what Jesus is all about. And in trying to explain what he is all about Jesus tell Nicodemus: "'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."

In other words, Jesus recognizes the healing purpose of the bronze serpent in the desert and is saying, like that serpent, he will be lifted up for a healing purpose. That lifting up will be first in his crucifixion, then in his resurrection, and then in his ascending to the Father. And in that crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension are the revelation of God -- remember, in John, Jesus says, "The Father and I are one" -- so that "whoever believes in him may have eternal life."

Revelation, and belief in that revelation, bring eternal life. And when Jesus in the Gospel of John speaks of "eternal life" he not speaking of an after life, although that is part of it. Nor is he speaking of future judgment, although that is also implied.

No, Jesus in John is speaking of life here and now. Of a qualitatively different life that belief in him, in God's revelation, engenders. Of judgment here and now because of that revelation and belief. Jesus, in John explains:

[T]his is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.

Now Nicodemus may not have understood what Jesus was saying, but we do, don't we? We have a pretty good idea of what it is to walk in the light. What it means to be born of water and the Spirit. Through Word and Sacrament. With one another. The God who forgives and heals the Israelites in the wilderness, in the words of the author of Ephesians, "[makes] us alive together with Christ." In grace. Through faith. Pure gift from God.

Because of that gift, we are free, both individually and as a community of faith, to be what God has made us. Again in the word of the Ephesians author, we are "created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life" -- deeds that have been "done in God." Deeds that reflect the light that we know and the light that we are.

But even as we speak of that light, we recognize the darkness. The darkness of a desert, a desert now expanded to include Afghanistan's mountains, half way around the world. The darkness of world-wide economic collapse. Darknesses and deserts as deadly as the serpent-infested wilderness of the Israelites. Darknesses and deserts that cry out for the wholeness of God's healing. For God's shalom. But darknesses and desert that seem impervious to the light we know. And darknesses and deserts that are not confined to the middle east or the world economy.

The desert darkness of Iraq began during Lent six years ago. Six years later, it and the even older war in Afghanistan continue through another Lent -- a time for assessment for us, both individually and as a community of faith. As we share the loss, pain, and despair of our brothers and sisters -- military, civilian, Iraqi and not -- all our brothers and sisters -- and as we share responsibility for that loss, pain, and despair, this Lent is especially one for assessment. Assessment of what we are doing and how we are serving and empowering others. Assessment of what it means to "walk in the light."

And part of that assessment involves the realization that it was the likeness of the deadly serpent that brought healing to the Israelites. And it is the reality of death on the cross that brings light and life. We are called to face the reality of our serpents and demons to know healing and life and what it means to walk in the light.

There are no easy answers. The desert and its darkness and demons are realities. This morning, by God's grace, we pray with Saint Francis, "Make us instruments of your peace." Amen.

 March 22, 2009

Ruth VanDemark, pastor

Wicker Park Lutheran Church

Chicago