Lent 4B - "Why Does It Always Have to Be Snakes"

 

Numbers 21:4-9

Saint John 3:14-21

I have always felt that there are few things worse than a preacher who returns from vacation and feels the need to tell you all about it on their first Sunday back.  

Fortunately, these days are past, but I remember those times being invited over to friend’s houses for “slide shows” of their recent trip to some far-off land.  After some punch (which I desperately hoped was spiked) and some treats people were all asked to gather in the living room before a screen and a projector as the lights were lowered and the program, consisting of several thousand slides, began.  

I remember once in seminary one of our professors returned from an archeological dig, gathered us in the chapel after dinner for a “command performance” and, in the darkness, began to show us one slide after another of fragments of ancient pots that had been discovered.  Much to my horror, somewhere during the show, I fell so sound asleep that I found myself slumped against my theology professor.  

When both my lights and the lights of the room came back on and we unwound ourselves from each other I apologized profusely. 

“That’s all right,” said the ever-gracious Dr. Rademacher.  “I fell asleep too.”

Hoping that you are still awake I would like to add a giant “however” to what I have just said.  

Sometimes, rarely but sometimes, there is a connection between a pastor’s travels and the texts for the day.  I believe I found that connection in a book I read during my vacation and the Good Book before us this day. 

In his book, In a Sunburned Country, a very funny travel writer named Bill Bryson, expressed the same sentiment that Indiana Jones did in the movie “Raiders of the Lost Ark”: “Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes?”

Bryson writes of a friend’s wife in Australia who, after warning him about highly poisonous spiders, warned him that snakes were more of a problem.  

This intelligence was received with ... raised eyebrows and expressions that said, “Go on.”

 She nodded. “Common brown, western taipan, western puff pastry, yellow-backed lockjaw, eastern groin groper, dodge viper...” I don’t remember what she said exactly but it was a long list.”1

 Looking in his guidebook he was reassured “that ‘only’ fourteen species of Australian snakes are seriously lethal.”  But that the one called the tiapan, “is the one to watch out for. It is the most poisonous snake on earth with a lunge so swift and a venom so powerful that your last mortal utterance is likely to be: “I say, is that a sn—.”2

After reading this his human guide needed to reassure him.

“Most snakes don’t want to hurt you. If you are out in the bush and a snake comes along, just stop dead and let it slide over your shoes.” This, I decided, was the least-likely-to-be-followed advice I have ever been given.”3

I am sure by now you are wondering with Bryson and Indiana Jones, “Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes?” Well, because snakes figure prominently in two of our readings for today.

By now the Children of Israel have been wandering in the wilderness for a very long time complaining all the way.  If you look back at the story you will discover that the Israelites had not been out of slavery in Egypt for more than three days before they started to grouse.  

The complaint then was pretty much word-for-word what it is in our text now.  “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? There is no bread! There is no water! And we detest this miserable food!”4

It has been pointed out that this time the timing of this trite old trope was more than odd because “just prior to this God had responded favorably to the people’s request for protection and allowed them to defeat a group of Canaanites who had attacked them.”5 God had protected them once again, and still they complained.

I have no idea exactly what God was thinking at the moment but it had to have been something like. “I rescued you from slavery in Egypt and every day as you wandered around aimlessly rarely following my directions I gave you food. I have continually, miraculously protected you from your enemies and all you have done since seventy-two hours after you crossed the Red Sea, miraculously I might add, is complain and moan, complain and moan.”

God may have had enough so “it had to be snakes.”  Not just any snakes but snakes like the Australian tiapan, who were not satisfied to slither harmlessly across their shoes but who would just as soon bite them as look at them.

It should be pointed out that this is the last of the long line of murmuring stories  where the people complained against God and God’s provisions.  This really shouldn’t surprise us for what are bad bakery goods when compared to a snake bite and friends falling by the wayside after being bitten.

This is a real attention getter!  Tough meat and bad bread doesn’t seem so bad after all when there is poison running through your system and so the people repent.

”The people came to Moses and said, ‘We sinned when we spoke out against God and you. Pray to God; ask him to take these snakes from us.’” And, we are told, the ever gracious Moses “prayed for the people.”6

God tells Moses to fashion for the people a means of their salvation. He is instructed to make a replica out of bronze of the snakes that were biting them and set it up on a pole so that whenever a person was bitten, he or she could look upon the serpent Moses lifted up, and live.

Jesus makes references to this event in his conversation with Nicodemous in today’s gospel.  In effect, Jesus says to this scholar, who surely knew the story of the snakes in the wilderness, “Consider me to be like that bronze serpent! You want to know what your salvation looks like? Look at me!  I am your salvation!  Your salvation is why I came! I came to his world full of snakes that bite and snap, not to condemn but to save.”

Our temptation, the way these stories relate to us, is that sometimes we are far more fixated on the snakes than on the Saviour. 

There will always be snakes.  There will always be violence as people and nations lash out at each other leaving behind a trail of destruction and suffering that must grieve the heart of God as certainly as it must grieve our hearts.

There will always be snakes in the unhealthy political discourse that would reduce our story to that of “resentment, revenge, and retribution.”  We have to look up and look away from those who would bite us with the venom of divisiveness. 

We have to look up and look away from those who would separate us, one from another by race, creed, clan, or orientation.

We have to look up.

There will always be snakes but there is always Jesus and his way. 

Our new life, our new path, our new way begins not by looking for snakes but looking at a Saviour who has promised to be a part of every moment of your life and mine. 

Now, if there is something curling around you, Jesus says, it is not a snake but my love surrounding you, comforting you, and saving you.

It’s all there for a look.  It is all there is when we catch a vision of the wondrous cross where Jesus is lifted up with arms outstretched in love for not only you and me but all of God’s creation.

So, folks, remember that today has not been about snakes but about Jesus reaching out in in love for all who are, or were, or ever will be.  Christ’s love is there for the world. It’s there for us to see if we only look up. 

There might always be snakes but there is also always a Saviour. It is Jesus! Whom we can look up to and live!

________________

1.  Bill Bryson, In a Sunburned Country (New York, NY: Broadway Books, 2001), 26.

2.    op.cit., p. 58.

3.     op.cit., p. 26.

4. Numbers 21:5. (NIV) [NIV=The New International Version]

5. John Kaltner, “Numbers 21:4-9. Commentary 1: Connecting the Reading with Scripture,” Connections. A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship, Year B, 2 (Louisville, KY: Westminister|John Knox Press, 2020): 76–78.

6. Numbers 21: 6-7. (MESSAGE) [MESSAGE=Eugene H. Peterson,  The Message: The New Testament in Contemporary English (Colorado Springs,, CO: NavPress,1995).]