Numbers 21:4-9 - link to the NRSV text
There are certain texts that are just head scratchers. These are what I term "problem texts" to myself, because something about them tends to pull against my understanding (or lack thereof) of God. Yet I often find that studying or preaching one of these texts can become some of the most powerful moments of enlightenement.
And as I mulled on the reading from Numbers 21 this week, as I struggled with the idea of God setting serpents upon God's people, as I wrestled with what can be edifying about this story of God's wrath and miraculous healing for a portion of the people through a near-idolatrous item (cf. 2 King 18:4)...I was reminded of today's Gospel reading where Christ on the cross was linked by John's Gospel to the story of the bronze serpent: "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" (John 3:14).
John's Gospel gave me a new lens through which to hear the story of the bronze serpent. I'm not saying that the bronze serpent was actually Jesus on the cross, or that this story somehow anticipates the crucifixion in any precognitive way. But there is a thematic tie between the serpent and the cross, one that is especially appropriate for us to hear as we near Holy Week.
In both stories, of the serpent and the cross, a cause of death was transformed by God into a symbol of life.
The image of the poisonous serpent, the thing that had been so deadly, became for those Israelites in the wilderness an image that promised healing and life. In the Christian imagination, the cross was eventually transformed from an instrument of oppression, torture and execution to a vital symbol that reminds us of God's promise of resurrection and restoration.
Now, this doesn't work out some of my other concerns about this story and others like it: God bringing about death as punishment, the semi-magical source of healing, the question of whether or not God asks Moses to violate the commadment to not make an image.
But now I see a glimmer of why this story might have been kept alive in the imagination of the Israelites such that it was included in the Torah. The one thing, the one enemy we all share is death itself. And God takes death and stands it on its head; God announces that out of death comes new, vibrant, resurrection life. Thanks be to God! Amen.
Shalom,
Geoff
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