A sermon preached by the Rev. Elizabeth Raine in Sunday worship at the Dungog Uniting Church on 10 March 2024.
The passage from Numbers which the lectionary places before us this Sunday (Num 21:4–9) is a strange reading. It is included in the lectionary primarily because it is alluded to in the passage from the Gospel of John, where the lifting up of Christ on the cross is compared to Moses lifting up the serpent in the wilderness (John 3:14–21).
For modern Western ears, this passage contains many unfamiliar or even superstitious concepts, concepts that do not fit with our Christian ideas of a God of love, compassion and forgiveness. Poisonous snakes biting the complaining people, bronze snakes on poles curing the bites – all of this seems to have stepped straight out of a myth.
I have always felt sorry for the Israelites in the story. The Hebrew text itself emphasises the psychological and physical predicament of the people. The Hebrew word translated as ‘impatient’ means a people who are utterly tired, completely discouraged and at the end of their tether – ‘impatient’ doesn’t begin to accurately describe their condition, and neatly lifts the blame for what follows from God onto the people.
And when the people begin to murmur against Moses and God, the retribution is swift. Instead of comforting the people, they are sent a plague of fiery serpents. Just imagine if you complained about the food at a restaurant and the chef’s response was to drop a red belly black on your table.
The punishment seems to be disproportionately harsh. Yet many of the commentators I looked at when preparing for this sermon took the line that Israel deserved to be punished. There seemed to be a calm acceptance that God’s action was good and necessary. I disagree, and the story needs some drastic reinterpreting to begin to make any sense, especially for us in a modern world.
The book of Numbers contains census, itineraries, statutes, rituals and priestly concerns, wilderness stories, and what is known as the ‘murmuring’ tradition.
Other peculiar things found in Numbers include a talking donkey, the earth opening to swallow up people, fiery creatures, an extremely vengeful God and quarrelling prophets. Perhaps as an antidote to some of the other things, Numbers also contains the beautiful and well-known Priestly Blessing (The Lord bless you and keep you, Num 7:24-26). The promise of land is ever present in the book of Numbers, and the journey, albeit a long and circuitous one, depicts a gradual process of getting to the edge of that land.
A lot of the material in Numbers is connected directly with the book of Exodus, especially in chapters 16 to 18, and the same journey of Israel in the wilderness is related somewhat differently. When the people’s complaint about the lack of food is heard in Exod 16–17, God provides them with meat, food and water. The God of Numbers is not quite so forgiving or generous.
In Exodus, God’s reaction was stern, but God heard and helped. But in Numbers, God responds to complaint by killing the Israelites off with a plague of fiery snakes.
I can understand the weariness of the Israelites but I can’t understand the divinely sanctioned plague of snakes. What has changed? Is it God? Is it the people? Is it the author, who perhaps has a nastier and more theologically vindictive imagination than the author of Exodus?
The rabbis in the Targumim believed that the snakes came to teach humility and patience to a people apparently lacking both. The problem with this idea is twofold. First, it is hard to understand what lessons a bitten, and therefore dead person, can actually learn. And the surviving members of his or her family may not be terribly inclined to worship a God who sends such a punishment.
Secondly snakes, particularly venomous ones, command our full attention. When someone mentions that a snake is nearby, I don’t stop to ask what lesson I can learn from its presence. Instead, I am much more inclined to climb a nearby tree or to run over the top of the nearest person to get away from it.
And what are these snakes? Numbers 21 does not use the common word for snake (nahash) but instead says the creatures are seraphs, a creature better known to us as the winged creatures around the throne of God in Isaiah’s vision:
In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory”. (Isa. 6:1-3, NRSV)
These winged fiery creatures were known for their supernatural powers, both destructive and constructive. The seraphs were the beings who carried the plagues and punishments decreed by the God. They were also agents of healing and purification, as in the story from Isaiah. These seraphs were seenas fiery, serpent-like creatures, hence their association with venomous snakes.
When the people pray for forgiveness, God does not stop the plague of divinely-sanctioned poisonous seraphs but instead commands Moses to craft a bronze seraph and raise it on a pole. When someone is bitten by a snaky seraph, they are to lift their eyes to the elevated bronze snake so as not to die from the bite.
Theologically, this is a problematic solution. At best, it appears as cheap grace: one glance at a serpent on a stick and all is restored. At worst, it reminds us of superstitious magic or of a healing idol of winged serpent, the type that was left behind in Egypt.
So what are we to do with this story of divine retribution, deadly angels and healing idols on sticks?
We have seen with covid lockdowns that the wilderness, especially if we find ourselves in it for too long, can become life-draining, not life-giving. We can become worn out and disillusioned, and unsure where our journey is leading us. Our energy sapped, our faith tested, like the Israelites we became prey to self-doubt.
We may find that deep spiritual and personal reflection spent in times ofwilderness has the downside of our own symbolic fiery seraphs returning to haunt us. Doubt, our past experiences and fears may get in the way as we attempt to move forward. Like the Israelites, we can tend to look downward to find mud and despair, and we miss seeing the stars of hope.
How do we prevent being stuck in the wilderness?
In John 3, we find a first-century Christian author recycling the myth of Moses’ bronze seraph as a prophecy of the crucified one; the dying victim on a cross who is also the source of new life for those who look to him in faith.
John’s gospel says the dreadful imagery of a crucified man achieves the same purpose. By looking toward the crucified Christ, the believer looks beyond it to the God who redeems. The symbol of the bronze serpent and the cross are signs of divine involvement in the people’s journey toward understanding, repentance and reconciliation.
In this case it will not just be ‘life’ given to the one who looks up to the Son of Man, but ‘eternal life’. John has taken the imagery of the bronze serpent and given it new meaning and power for the followers of Jesus.
Most of us will have been overpowered by painful bites in our lives. But the two lectionary stories today offer us comfort for those times. When we look up, we look to the face of the God who walks with us, who offers comfort to us, who helps restore us to equilibrium and who ultimately saves us.
To look up to Jesus as he is lifted up, is to see God’s healing presence in the world. Paradoxically, hidden in the crucifixion is the redemption and reconciliation of the Son of Man with God’s desire to heal the world.
May we continue to look up, to see the stars and find hope and redemptionfrom the one who was crucified. And may we experience the love and healing that God intends us to find when we do. Amen.
An Informed Faith 