Richard Davenport
March 10, 2024 – Fourth Sunday in Lent
Numbers 21:4-9
Reading through the books of Moses, it’s a little disconcerting how many times the people of Israel are getting themselves into trouble for their bad behavior. They’re barely out of Egypt for more than a couple of weeks when they arrive at Mt. Sinai to receive the Law and while Moses is gone for a while, they’re already building a golden calf and calling it god. They keep getting into trouble over food, over and over again. The problem isn’t that they think they’re running out of food or even that they say something to God about it. It’s all in how they say it. Rather than just going to God and explaining the situation to him and asking him to take care of it, they immediately assume God hates them and that he’s determined to starve them to death.
Needless to say, it doesn’t go well. It never does. If you want to be mad at God, that’s one thing. It still might not be the smartest thing to do, but if leave the conversation open for God to respond then at least there’s the possibility for conversation. Here, we don’t get any of that. We’re calling God a liar and a hypocrite. He claimed to save us but it’s really an elaborate ploy to bring us out in the wilderness and dump us. It’s kind of a sadistic notion. I mean, a lot of people died over the course of the whole ordeal. Pharaoh and his armies died. The firstborn males throughout the land all died. You had frogs and flies, gnats, fiery hail, water turned to blood. Certainly there was a lot of misery everywhere. Now God has brought them out into the wilderness to wither away and die too. Hundreds of thousands of people, all told, would be dead because of all of this. This doesn’t speak well to God’s mental stability.
The other, equally important, issue is, why? Really, why would God even bother? Unless he really is some kind of weirdo sadist, the whole idea that God would save them only to let them just die here doesn’t make any sense at all. They’ve seen that God is quite capable of making food appear out of thin air. He’s capable of commanding countless swarms of animals, even ones that can be used for food. These are not difficult for him. Has God’s battery suddenly run low? Is he all out of juice now? No, the idea is absurd, and, even if something like that were true, as bad starvation is you’d have even bigger, more eternal problems to worry about.
The people complain, thinking that God has abandoned them and left them to die. So, in response, God gives them just a small taste of what life would be like if he withdrew his protection just a little bit. The result is staggering. It doesn’t take long at all for everything to devolve into chaos and death. Because of sin, people have lost the ability to order and organize the world around them. Once upon a time, animals listened to humans, for humans had the responsibility to bring order and beauty to the world. They still have the responsibility, but sin has robbed them of the power. Now they stand helpless before the onslaught of lethal snakes. Indiana Jones’ greatest fear made real.
Indiana’s famous question is also relevant here. Snakes, why’d it have to be snakes? God disciplines his people in various ways, especially when they start insulting him. They conveniently forget about everything he has done for them and how he watches over them every day. As tough as life might be right at the moment, life without God will always be worse. So he helps them to see that reality firsthand. Sometimes he sends a disease. Sometimes he sends them exactly what they ask for in abundance, in the hopes that they realize maybe they should have just trusted God to begin with. Throughout the book of Judges, the people are turning away from God repeatedly and following false gods. In those instances, God uses foreign nations to show them what life is like when he isn’t protecting them. They figure it out for 10 or 20 years and then it’s back to idolatry, persecution and oppression by foreign nations, they repent and God sends a judge to rescue them. Over and over, always in the same sort of pattern.
Here though, we have snakes. Snakes show up only very rarely as some kind of calamity. They weren’t a part of the 10 plagues on Egypt. Usually if God sends some kind of calamity, it’ll be foreign nations. Otherwise, the common second choices are either locusts or some kind of disease. So snakes here is a little unusual. What’s even more unusual is how the whole scene plays out. The people get bitten and eventually they recognize they brought this situation on themselves and they repent of their sins. Moses is commanded to set up a pole with a serpent made of bronze affixed to it. People look at the serpent after they’ve been bitten and are no longer in danger of dying.
You don’t really see this kind of thing anywhere else. Most of the time when God disciplines the people, they repent and the problem either goes away or they offer a sacrifice, or, in the instances of oppression by foreigners, God sends someone to deliver them. This snake on a pole thing is unique to this instance. So why?
I’ve talked about C. S. Lewis’s book, The Great Divorce, here and there. If you’ve missed it, it’s a short book that’s along the same lines as his Chronicles of Narnia, in that he’s telling a little story that explains Biblical ideas. It’s the same basic idea behind Jesus’ parables. In this case, the story is told from the perspective of a resident of Hell. In this story, the residents of Hell are allowed to a take a guided tour of Heaven. They don’t get to stay there, but they can see what all of the fuss is about. At one point, the visitor gets to watch people waiting to get into heaven. One person in line has a lizard. This lizard is clinging to him for dear life. The angel at the gate tells the man he has to get rid of his lizard before he can come in. This becomes quite a crisis. “Why do I have to get rid of my lizard? What has he ever done? Why can’t I keep him?” The rules are rules. You can’t take the lizard in with you. Do you keep your little lizard and take the consequences or do you give up your pet lizard, leave him behind forever as you enter the pearly gates? The man agonizes over this for a while. He bargains and pleads, but to no avail. You can’t enter the gates with the lizard.
The man finally, with extreme reluctance, gives up his lizard. The angel draws his sword and kills it right on the spot. Why? Because the lizard in this story represents everyone’s various pet sins. It’s the gossip or the philandering, the self-aggrandizing or the smug dismissiveness. It’s that sin or bundle of sins that you know you aren’t supposed to like, but you kind of do and you have a hard time letting go of it.
“Why a lizard?” you might ask. “Why not a cute little kitten or a friendly dog? Why does Lewis represent sin with a lizard?” Because sin isn’t cute and cuddly. We have to work at making it acceptable. We have to look at this ugly, disgusting thing we do, we have to hold it in our hands and tell ourselves over and over that it really is cute and cuddly, that all of its slime and dirt is beautiful. Nevermind how much it hurts other people. Nevermind how much it attacks and hurts us too. We are determined to hold on to it no matter what. Once we’ve fixed that firmly in our heads, we have a really hard time letting it go. After spending all of that time telling ourselves the sin is ok, the hurt is ok, the pain and heartache are ok, that they’re worth it.
The Israelites didn’t have lizards. They had snakes. There are a number of similarities between lizards and snakes, but the snake has an even greater significance. The first sin in the world was brought about by the voice of a snake. Satan spoke in the guise of a snake and his lies convinced Adam and Eve to betray God. That betrayal brought their death and the death of everyone would live from then on.
Sin brings death. Sin always brings death. Now the Israelites see that firsthand. They sin as they question God’s motives, they deny his love. They reap the consequences as they are assaulted by the physical embodiments of sin, and that sin brings death, just like it always does.
The people see the error of their ways. They see what happens when they reject God and his care, protection, and love and they repented. They asked for forgiveness. God’s response was unusual. None of the other afflictions God sends against his rebellious people are dealt with in the same way. You don’t see piles of bronze locusts placed where people can see them. You don’t see statues of foreigners erected where people can turn and know the foreigners will be driven out. Nothing like that, except here. A bronze snake, the embodiment of sin, is lifted up on a pole and God promises that everyone who looks to it will saved from the consequences of their sin.
In John’s Gospel, early in Jesus’ ministry he recalls this very scene. He says Moses and the bronze serpent were setting a precedent. This is how salvation will work. Through God’s promise, those who turn to the Son of Man looking for salvation will find it. Where will the Son of Man be? Lifted up in the same manner as the bronze serpent in the wilderness. Jesus won’t be a snake, but the point God was making wasn’t really about snakes to begin with. It was always about sin. Snakes represent sin and have since Genesis 3. The Son of Man will be no different. St. Paul reminds us, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” Everything that sin does, everything that sin leads to, all captured in the image of the Son of Man high and lifted up on the cross.
Jesus declares this from the beginning of his ministry because this what his ministry is all about. The Father’s beloved children have rebelled against him. They have questioned his love. They ignored his rules. They have rejected his authority. They have sought their own way. The Father disciplines his children, but he does not want to condemn them. That is only the last resort, reserved only for those who staunchly refuse to listen and who demand their own way.
We, his children, see the consequences of sin all around us. Our own rebellion brings death and we are powerless before it. Our own sin strikes us dead. But God has not abandoned his wayward children. We turn to the cross and the embodiment of sin that hangs upon it. His Son comes and takes all of the sins we have committed, all are heaped and splattered and smeared on him, all of the anger, all of the unkind words, all of the envious thoughts, all of the selfish passions and desires, all of it put on him as he hangs on the tree.
The promise is for you and for the world. He is there to take your sins away, to bring an end to the consequences of sin. He is there to restore you before your heavenly Father and ensure you do not exile yourself from his house and his family.
Lent is a reflection on what brought our Savior to hang on this tree. The answer, ever and always, is us. In order not to destroy his people, he had to take their sin away, and so he does. In Lent we look to the beaten and bloody body of the Son of Man and we give thanks that he has heard our cries for mercy, that he loves us in spite of our rebellion, and that he was willing to pay the cost, to take on our sins so that those very sins might be put to death. The snake attacks him and he dies for it. He takes the sin and all of its consequences and puts an end to it all, so that we can turn to him and know that our sin has been taken away so that we might live.