Lent 4 B

Snakes! “Why did it have to be snakes?” says Indiana Jones in the movie. And maybe you’re asking, too, do we really need to talk about snakes in worship? Is it part of the essential Gospel message, or can’t we just hear the Good News today without mentioning the s-word?

If you don’t like snakes, I don’t need to tell you that they show up somewhat often throughout the scriptures — and our ancestors must not have liked snakes much either, because snakes usually represent something bad. In today’s reading from the Hebrew scriptures, snakes don’t just represent something bad, they are bad. Poisonous snakes are killing people of God as they make their way through the wilderness.

The biblical tradition suggests that the snake bites are punishment for the complaining of the Israelites. You see, even though God has led the people out of slavery in Egypt, and has led the people through battles against their enemies, and even though God has provided special food for them called Manna, and watched over their every move through the wilderness…still they can’t help but complain.

[In a complaining voice:] “There is no food! There is nothing to drink. Well, except for this food and drink, but we don’t like it! I mean, all we have is this magic food that God faithfully rains down from heaven every single day…except for the Sabbath, but God gives us a double share on the day before, oh yeah, and we get all-you-can-eat quail. But besides that, there’s no food!”

I’m beginning to think the snake bites were less about God’s punishment and more that the snakes themselves were so tired of hearing the Israelites belly-aching that they put them out of their misery.

As ridiculous as this sounds… people were really dying of these snake bites. They were real — this was a life and death issue.

But, as God does over and over again throughout scripture, God hears the cries of people who are suffering and intervenes on their behalf with a solution. But the solution… well, some of you are not going to like it. God instructs Moses to construct another snake. And this one would be raised up and attached to a pole. That’s right, God’s proposed solution to the snake problem was …more snakes.

But Moses did as he was told and crafted a bronze serpent that stood upon a pole and anyone that was bit would look upon the bronze snake. And God stayed true to the promise and healed those who looked upon the bronze serpent. But why?

I have some theories.

I imagine, for one, that when a snake-bitten person would approach the bronze serpent on a pole, that Moses, and whoever he had helping him, had polished that snake so well that you could see your own reflection in it. That’s gotta be a pretty healthy dose of reality to see your own face on the very thing that bit you.

In a wilderness of danger, both external and internal, honesty, it turns out, really is the best policy — and the best medicine. Or in the words of a former Supreme Court justice, “sunlight is the best disinfectant.” In other words, healing comes from exposing ourselves to the truth. Or: in the words of today’s Gospel:

“people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.” (John 3.19–21 NRSV)

It is a painful and challenging experience to have our deeds exposed to the light. It’s especially hard for those of us who have tried for a really long time to build up a certain reputation. The more we define ourselves as being really pure and good… the more we have to hide.

I was thinking about this this week as the news was covering the video of a group of fraternity members at the University of Oklahoma participating in an extremely hateful, violent, and racist chant. I’m quite sure they hoped it would never see the light of day.

In the aftermath, the University quickly moved to expel some students, remove the fraternity, and distance itself from the affair. Now, I’m not a university administrator, nor a lawyer, and I can’t pretend to know everything about an event that I read about in the news…but…it sure seems to me that the motivation here is cast off the offenders and get back out of the spotlight as soon as possible. But the light is where truth is. And the truth is, I’m guessing, that those two students who were expelled are not the only two students struggling with loving their brothers and sisters who are different from them. I’m guessing they aren’t the only two members of their community that have committed hurtful actions.

I think we all face the temptation to slink back into the relative darkness where we can pretend that we are all good and nice and fair all the time. Where we can shut our eyes and ears and say ‘la la la, snakes? What snakes? We don’t have any snakes around here!’ But in the darkness, healing cannot take place.

Just as Moses lifted up the bronze snake to heal the people, so is Jesus lifted up to heal us.

And if we look, I think we see ourselves reflected in Jesus. In the cruelty of the cross that Jesus hangs on, we see our own faults, failures, complaints. We see reflected our own disbelief. As we move into the light we see that it isn’t just a few bad apples, it isn’t some other people, it’s all of us. We see ourselves as part of people who — let’s face it — allow suffering to continue around us. We contribute to suffering around us. We sure don’t like to think about it — the darkness is a lot more comfortable — but even in the clothes we buy, or the food we buy, or so many of the ways that we interact with the world around us — we have contributed to someone else’s suffering. And we’ve benefited from it.

And we see this reflection of ourselves on the cross. And by Good Friday we’ll have to acknowledge that it wasn’t the Jews who put Jesus to death. It wasn’t the Romans. It wasn’t Pontious Pilate. It was humanity. People like you and me, broken, fearful.

But like those who stared at the bronze snake and were healed, something happens when we see our reflection in Jesus. We see ourselves reflected on the Lamb of God. We see ourselves reflected on the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for the very people that would put him on the cross. And as he is lifted up, we see ourselves lifted up. We are reflected in the one that rises from the cross, rises from the dead.

We see ourselves reflected in the One who did not come to condemn us. Even as our deeds are exposed to the light, God so loved the world, that he sent us Jesus. Even as we struggle to poorly hide our problems in the darkness, God is rich in mercy.

By grace you have been saved, for God so loved the world.