Then the LORD sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died. [Numbers 21:6].
In the OT reading appointed for this upcoming Sunday—Numbers 21:4-9 [the Fourth Sunday in Lent, RCL, Year B]—we encounter a story that many see as “weird with a capital W.” It’s one of those stories that can make one scratch his or her head. Does it truly depict the God we worship?
You likely recall the story. It’s from the 40-year period during which the Israelites, having been released from Egyptian bondage, follow what appears to be a wandering Yahweh through the wilderness. And, as the Israelites are wont, they’re complaining. At least in part, their complaints are not outlandish or unreasonable. Having felt the exhilaration of the parting of the Red Sea waters, they find themselves not in a land of milk and honey, but rather in a land filled with harsh sun and sand.
Wondering if Yahweh’s promise might be a mirage, the people bitterly point out that while they lived in bondage during their days in Egypt, they also enjoyed Egyptian security and resources. Following their Exodus, they have gained so-called “freedom,” but it has come at a steep price: they meander in what seems to be an aimless fashion, in a land without food or water. In this week’s text, the people even utter a Yogi Berra-ism: “We have no food or water, and it tastes awful” [Numbers 21:5].
And Yahweh’s reaction to their pleas—well, He does the unthinkable, the unpredictable. Instead of giving them something tasty, Yahweh sends them poisonous snakes [Numbers 21:6]. Ten plagues He sent upon the Egyptians. It’s as if Yahweh says, “You want Egypt, how about a plague?”
Some ancient cultures saw snakes as fertility symbols. For Israel, however, snakes point back to that fateful day in Eden, when innocence and communion with Yahweh were irreparably damaged. And in this subsequent, yet still ancient story of Israel, snakes being snakes, they begin to bite. Many of the people begin to die.
I’m in a study group of pastors, preachers, and other interested church goers who weekly share thoughts and concerns about the upcoming Lectionary texts. One devout member of the group is senior pastor at a large Protestant church in Virginia. He isn’t here to defend himself, so I’ll not provide his personal details. But his take on the text is interesting, particularly since his denomination is one of the several who don’t ordain women and who also generally insist upon a literal reading of Scripture. Here’s my colleague’s take on the text from Numbers 21:
I’m guessing that what actually happened out there was that some folks were gathering firewood, and they uncovered a nest of snakes. Some were bitten and died. Several who escaped came to Moses, begging for intervention. Moses likely employed some Egyptian magic that he had learned in Pharaoh’s palace [see Exodus 4:3, 7:10-12]. He made a bronze serpent and intertwined it on a pole. Later, when someone got bit by a snake, looked upon the pole with the snake, and lived, that survivor is the person that they began to talk about.
My colleague concludes that this is how many of these stories work: over time, they get bigger and bigger. He allows further,
And so, a story about snakes in the wilderness becomes a morality tale of what happens when folks complain about what God has lovingly provided. Yet even then, if you confess your sins and repent, God forgives and saves.
The colleague also stresses that this text, like all other texts in Scripture, is written by persons inspired by God, but persons, nonetheless, who were limited by their human understanding. This Scripture passages—and there are many more—can easily offend our so-called modern sensibilities. We doubt that Yahweh would send snakes. Moreover, we who know so much about modern medicine—we who always so proudly cry out that “We follow science,” well, a bronze snake on a pole seems all too much like some form of ancient sorcery. Snake bites require anti-venom, not magic. And so, as my colleague argues, there must be some other explanation.
I don’t want to be too hard on my unnamed colleague (although I’m not taking his explanation of the Numbers 21 text out of context). Like him, perhaps like some of you, I generally prefer, and even long for, a warm and fuzzy sort of God. My heart is warmed by the sort of divinely Good Shepherd who is willing to forsake the 99 and come after the one because there have been times in my life during which I wondered if I was, indeed, the one who had strayed. Like the colleague—like perhaps even you—I long for a God that I can safely lean on, not One who sends snakes.
Leaning, leaning
Safe and secure from all alarms
Leaning, leaning
Leaning on the everlasting arms ….
Do you recoil when you read the story of Achan, in which not only was the disobedient one stoned, but also his sons and daughters, and even his cattle, donkeys and sheep [see Joshua 7:24 et seq.]? Do you cringe just a bit (or perhaps more than just a bit) when you hear Jesus say that a man was born blind “so that the works of God might be displayed in him” [John 9:3]? Was it rational for Yahweh to contemplate destroying Nineveh [Jonah 3], to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah [Genesis 19], or to send a flood that almost destroys the created world [Genesis 6]? Or how about, “Slaves, obey your earthly masters” [Ephesians 6:5]?
I have some friends who are altogether uncomfortable with the language contained in Genesis 1:27. “It’s all so binary,” they say. They seem to be saying that surely the Almighty meant to include some sort of asterisk, some sort of footnote or open loop that would allow for exceptions. And yet, none of the sacred manuscripts contain the sort of qualifying words so longed for by my good and caring friends. The text is indeed quite binary.
Stories like this one found in Numbers 21, and like the others I’ve also mentioned, can leave us quite discomforted. Instead of encountering a God whom we can limit and control and who plays by our dignified rules, we come face to face instead with a God who cannot be domesticated, who is wild, dangerous, unpredictable, altogether powerful. It’s as if the Spirit of God blows where it wills [John 3:8], not where we think that it is appropriate to blow.
Thank Goodness, we get not the sort of God that we want, but rather the sort of God that we need. A God in a box—even if the box is the Arc of the Covenant—is not the sort of God who pulls His people out of slavery, leads them through a long wilderness journey, and deposits them (or at least some of them) into the Promised Land. A domesticated God is too docile to demand and require our repentance. A God in a box—or on a leash—isn’t the sort of God who, by the power of the Holy Spirit, will become incarnate of Mary, a virgin—yet another story that science is powerless to explain. We may be comfortable with a docile God, but God is anything but docile.
We need a God who is “on the loose” [that oft-quoted description coined by the late John Juel, noted New Testament Scholar in his wonderful commentary, The Gospel of Mark: Interpreting Biblical Text (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1999)]. We need a God who breaks chains, particularly the sorts of chains that sin provides. We need a God who teaches us that deliverance comes not in our being removed from the wilderness. Deliverance comes to us in the very presence of sin and evil, our enemy.
The pole will appear in another wilderness story. This wilderness is represented by a barren hill outside the city of Jerusalem. This time, as this week’s Gospel lesson reveals, “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” [John 3:14-15].
God is on the loose. All of us who know that we are dying in the wilderness can gaze at the pole that bears the body of Jesus. In doing so—and in believing—we can be healed.
Very thought provoking.