Scripture: Numbers 21:4-9
“Snakes! Why did it have to be snakes?”
Okay, yes, I just quoted Indiana Jones at the beginning of a sermon. He doesn’t like snakes much. I do. I’ve always had a fascination with reptiles of all kinds. I was the kid who was into dinosaurs before that was a thing.
One of my favorite daddy-daughter moments centers on a reptile, a snake in fact. A couple summers ago, Em and I went hiking out at Spring Valley park. As we turned a bend in the trail, there in the middle of the trail was this huge 6-foot long black rat snake sunning itself. It wasn’t very happy to see us. It hissed at us and rattled its tail against the leaves, trying to pretend it was a species it wasn’t. Emily was delighted; she’d just done a report on that very animal in school and now she was getting to see it very up close.
Yes, this is that very snake. I snapped a photo of him before he slithered off.
I love snakes. I love reptiles. But there are a lot of people that don’t. A lot people that are creeped out by them. And, in truth, I get where that comes from. Reptiles are a more primitive order of life form. Their minds are not as developed as we mammals. A dog, a horse, even a rat, and certainly a human, has a mind that’s developed to feel emotion and to use that emotion to evaluate a situation. Are we afraid? Angry? Do we feel affection? Love? How do we respond because of that feeling?
Reptiles, snakes, have no such emotions. The things they encounter fall into one of three categories. They are either food, a threat, or nothing at all. A reptile will eat you if it thinks it can. A reptile may flee from you or perhaps even attack you. Or, perhaps the best option of all, a reptile will ignore you because you simply do not matter to it at all.
And because snakes, like reptiles, respond to us humans with either hostility or apathetic neglect, we don’t have many warm feelings about them. We fear them because they can be dangerous. Many have very potent venoms or muscular strength far in excess of our own.
And that’s a lesson the people of Israel learned rather dramatically in our first lesson today. In one sense, there is a bit of black comedy in this story. No matter how bad your situation is, there is always a way it can get worse. The people are grumbling and it’s hard to blame them in some ways. They’re out in the wilderness, where it’s hot and dry and probably pretty boring. But then the snakes show up and things go south right quick.
Now the author of Numbers claims the serpents arrive as God’s response to the complaining. I’m not sure I put a lot of stock in that, given what we see God do later in the story. One thing is clear. God is fully aware of the complaints. He’s been hearing them for decades. Manna tastes terrible. The wilderness is hot. We were better off in Egypt. And so on and so forth. It never stops. The people are frustrated. It’s taking them 40 years to travel a distance, by the crow flies, of 100 miles. Even the roundabout way they go only triples that distance. I can do 300 miles in a day in my car but even back then that’s maybe a journey of two weeks tops.
So, again, there is a certain logic to their complaints. This is hard living and it may have seemed at the time that there was no purpose to it. But there was a purpose. There was a reason. Because here in the wilderness is where the Chosen people are learning what it means to be the Chosen people.
And the most important lesson of all in that process is learning to trust God’s mercy. And it starts from the very beginning. Oh, no, Pharoah’s army is nearly upon us. Well, here’s the sea parting to let you escape. We’re starving to death. Well, here’s manna and quail to eat. The snakes! The snake are killing us. Look upon the serpent of bronze and live.
Time and time again, the people run into some trouble and God comes through for them. In spite of their complaints. The people spend most of their time in the wilderness mad at God. And sometimes he gets mad back. But that anger never stops God from showing his mercy, never stops God from teaching the people that they can depend on him. Never stops him from saving them from the dangers of their environment or from their own poor decisions.
When Nicodemus and Jesus are meeting by night in our Gospel lesson, Jesus runs into some frustrations of his own in trying to teach his student. When his initial words don’t work, Jesus turns to something that Nicodemus would understand. He is, after all, a “teacher of Israel.” He knows these Old Testament stories of the people in the wilderness. He’s an inheritor of all the people learned in their wilderness school. So when Jesus tells him that his purpose in coming is to be like the serpent of bronze in the wilderness, Nicodemus finally gets it.
Because it’s all about trusting God’s mercy.
That’s why Jesus came. To be that mercy. To show that mercy at work in the world. Nicodemus talks about the signs that Jesus has done. That’s what brought him to meet with Jesus in the first place. Well, what are those signs? The blind seeing, the lame walking, the sick restored, the demonic cast out. All powerful acts of mercy. Jesus tells Nicodemus and, in turn, us that this is just the beginning. Soon the Son of Man will be lifted up as the serpent of bronze once was, so that all the world can learn what the Chosen ones once did.
That we can depend on God to save us. That even in our complaints and disobedience and even in the midst of God’s anger at that, his mercy trumps all. God will forgive. God will save for the sake of Jesus, his son. That’s what this is all about.
God’s going to take care of us. It’s really that simple. That’s why the promises were given to Abraham. It’s what his descendants learned in the wilderness first hand. And it’s why Jesus came. Death, life, doesn’t matter. God will be there for us. Always. Amen.
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