Snakes Alive! And the Things That Scare Us - Sermon on Numbers 21:4-9 and John 3:14-21

Numbers 21:4-9; John 3:14-21    Lent 4 2021, Year B

            It’s been almost eleven years now, but I still remember the day we were preparing the gardens and back yard of our home for our oldest son’s wedding. In the middle of mulching the flowerbeds from the supply of fresh mulch Jim had loaded into his pickup truck from the local gardening center the night before, we uncovered a big surprise: a large, black rat snake right in the center of the load of mulch.

The snake had made her nest in the middle of the mulch while it sat in the garden center’s lot awaiting purchase. She was apparently laying her eggs when somehow, they managed to move the mulch from the lot to my husband’s truck without disturbing her.

She had remained buried in the mulch sitting in Jim’s truck, presumably laying more eggs, overnight.  Somehow even my husband’s shovel failed to disturb her as he emptied half the truck-bed of its load without revealing her presence. Then one more thrust of the shovel, and he took away the last bit of mulch concealing her - and the dozen or so eggs surrounding her.

            While I love God’s creatures great and small, I am not so crazy about snakes. I don’t remember seeing many while growing up in a small city in Connecticut; what we did have in fields around town were of the harmless garden variety.

But, when I moved to Oklahoma I became aware that not only were there (what I considered) a lot of snakes out there, several types native to the region were poisonous. Since I didn’t know one kind of snake from another (except rattlers, of course – they kind of give their identity away) I simply feared and loathed any snake I came across.

While I was pretty sure that our mulch-pile snake wasn’t poisonous, I wanted nothing to do with her. Our younger son picked her up and moved her to a safe place away from the house, while I ran the other way, and then, truth be told, continued to keep an eye out for her whenever I ventured into the backyard – for the rest of the summer!

            My reaction isn’t all that unusual. Although there may be some of you out there who are rather fond of the slithering creatures, the fear and loathing of serpents is both instinctual for many of us, and, you could say, scriptural. All we have to do, is look to the story of the Garden of Eden and the serpent’s role in the “fall of humankind” to see where some of our attitudes about snakes come from.

Yet from antiquity, and still today, snakes are both valued and loathed, depending on your outlook and experience.   Aside from their scary qualities, snake oils, skins and the venoms are all used for healing and rejuvenation. The symbol of a snake entwined around a staff is used as a symbol for physicians and of the medical profession itself. So, our experience and attitudes about snakes are both good – and bad.

Still, when we read this story of snakes in the wilderness, of poisonous bites and death, and then read the loving Lord comparing himself and his cross to the slithering serpent and its staff, we have to wonder what this all means.

In the pairing of Old and New Testament stories today, we see the serpent as a symbol of both death and life – and Jesus himself referring to his coming cross as the same. These might be perplexing stories for us. But they are also indicative of the gift that God gives us in the wilderness – and at Calvary.

The Israelites endure forty years wandering in the wilderness, and even as God claims them for special inheritance by him, it is their grumbling that stands out by way of response.

They have certainly faced their share of challenges and struggles, but God has promised to care for them, and has always answered their need. Rather than responding with gratitude, however, what we read in the stories are accounts that they certainly did not suffer in silence, grateful, as it were, to finally be free. Rather, they fretted. Such fretting does is not exactly indicative of faith in God’s providential care.

Yet over and over again God patiently responded to their complaints and their whining. They were hungry – so God sent them manna from the sky. They were thirsty – and God brought forth water –water from a rock no less! God’s provisions were miraculous – illustrating his power and capability to do as he promised – to save and care for them, which he did, again and again.

Still, they complained they were tired of the manna; God sent quail. They were tired of walking; they were tired of setting up camp only to strike it the next morning and move on.

“What have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?” they ask. “For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food.”

            The story of Israel is really the story of our lives, too. For all these years they traveled on a journey between redemption out of slavery in Egypt and entrance to the Promised Land – the Old Testament “place of rest.”

We have been traveling between our redemption by the cross of Christ and our entrance into the eternal Kingdom of God, our “place of rest”. Like the people of Israel, we have sinned, and sometimes lost faith. We whine and complain. We pursue other gods – the riches, and power, and satisfaction the world promises but can never truly deliver.

We hunger and thirst constantly seeking the worldly things that might satisfy us, when the truth is that nothing will truly satisfy us the way the love of Jesus can. Sometimes, we simply lose interest in God’s way and God’s will for our lives.

The past year shows us how the world responds to challenge and hardship. Some remain faithful, caring for themselves and their neighbor to the best of their ability, following best the most reliable information they can out of concern for the most vulnerable, workers and others at risk, and the world. Others, not so much.

From you I have heard gratitude for what you have – for your safety, shelter, food, and now, as hard as it has been for some to schedule their vaccinations – the hope that the shots represent.

But we all know that is not the case with large segments of society, and sometimes, we too get pulled into the mumbling, the grumbling, and the complaining. We waver toward doubt, at times. Does God really care about all this,? we wonder.

Meanwhile there are still so many in the world who need our attention and generosity, yet the evil one works to distract us from attending to the needs of many. The temptation is to focus inward. God consistently calls us to look outward, and, in thanksgiving for all that we are given, to respond generously with kind words, thoughtful gestures, material assistance and more, to those who are struggling.

The image of the bronze serpent had the power to heal only because God gave it, and only if the Israelites believed that God would heal them if they looked at it. They had to trust in God’s word that if they obeyed the command, they would be healed.

            Jesus lifts up this very passage from the Scriptures, and he draws this parallel: “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,” he says, “so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” Whoever believes in him will live.

“For God so loved the world,” he says, “that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” (John 3:16)

Those who believe in him would be given life, says Jesus; those who believe will not die from their sin. What God accomplishes on the cross will save those who believe.

The thing is, on our own, we cannot even believe; we cannot trust; we cannot place our lives in God’s providential care. By ourselves, we are blind to the truth of God’s wonderful, fantastic, indescribable, love and mercy. Because of the lure of sin, on our own we see and judge only through the lens of human weakness, as the Israelites showed us so well.

The good news for us is that in God’s abundant love and mercy, God has the remedy for our blindness and our disbelief. Blessed by the lens of faith given to us through God’s Holy Spirit in our Baptism, we begin to see, if only dimly, if only for a little while, the grace and mercy that God has freely given and called us to.

            The bronze serpent fashioned by Moses by God’s command, is known to have resided in the Jerusalem Temple for 500 years, where it bore witness to the grace that God bestowed on the Israelites in the wilderness; the Cross of Christ is our symbol, our reminder of God’s saving grace and mercy through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Because of the cross, we can believe and trust, that despite the dangers, the hardship and forbidding landscape of life, God cares for our every need and guides us safely, securely to the promised kingdom.

            Just as I instinctually ran from the snake that day in my garden, we instinctually turn away from the horror of the cross. Yet God calls us, grants us the mercy and grace of faith, that believing in God’s grace and trusting in God’s mercy – all gifts given to us and fed by the Holy Spirit – we can come to see that the crucifixion story is not so much about how much God loved the world, but the way God loved and still loves the world.

            Trust the faith that God provides; know the faithfulness of the God who does not abandon us to find our own way. Experience with gratitude the way of God that is mercy, bought by God’s love, which comes to us because God so loved the world. May we be filled by the God who desires to be in relationship with us, and being so filled, may we open ourselves to relationship not only with God, but with one another.

God uses the most unlikely means for accomplishing God’s purpose – a bronzed serpent on a pole, a cross and risen body. God uses the most unlikely means to show others that in faith and trust all that we need is provided by the living and true God.  Amen.