Snakes on a Plain
By Caroline Dean
March 18, 2012
John 3: 14-21
[ Audio
(mp3, 4.9Mb) ]
d 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. ‘For God so loved the world that God gave God's only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. ‘Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. The Son came to help, to put the world right again. Anyone who trusts in him is acquitted; anyone who refuses to trust him has long since been under the death sentence without knowing it. And why? Because of that person's failure to believe in the Son of God, when introduced to him.” [NSRV]
“This
is the crisis that we're in: God's light streamed into the world, but men and
women everywhere ran for the darkness. They went for the darkness because they
were not interested in pleasing God. Everyone who makes a practice of doing
evil, addicted to denial and illusion, hates God's light and won't come near
it, fearing a painful exposure. But anyone working and living in truth and
reality welcomes God's light so their work can be seen for what it is.”
[The Message]
Let
us pray: Loving God, guide us in the
paths of light, love, vulnerability and healing that we might find rest in
you. Amen.
1)
Isaac is a mentor-friend from
Divinity School and a Mennonite pastor in a church Chapel Hill, North
Carolina. He was recently interviewed in
the Christian Century about ministry in
the 21st century - and the first question that the person doing the
interview asked was:
“What has been most surprising thing about being in ministry? Isaac answered, “The deep hurt that people
walk around with. People who appear quite well adjusted have sat with me and
courageously shared stories of pain—wounds that don't seem to go away, no
matter how good and pious and prayerful the people are. Many in the church have
been to hell and back, and they go on in silence, suffering alone.”
2) The Israelites
are freed from slavery only to wander in a dry, monotonous wilderness for 40
years…and this sparks quite an intense conversation between the Israelites and
God. This conversation might sound
familiar… It goes something like this: “Are were there yet?” “I'm hungry!” “This food is
horrible!” “I have to pee!” These complaints are intermingled with tears,
tantrums and fistfights. Ending with the
final plea “I wanna go home!” Home meaning “slavery in
Egypt.” Eventually this back and
forth starts to get on everyone's nerves. The Israelites complain about God, God complains to Moses, Moses
complains to the Israelites who complain back to him – and the cycle continues…
So one night
after a particularly intense episode, God sends snakes in the night and they
bite people and some of the people die. Now let me be clear, I do not believe that God
punishes us with pain, suffering or death. I do not believe that God is the author of suffering for some sort of
purification or test that leads towards obedience (even if purification or
obedience is indeed the end result!). This will not be a message condemning complaints to God about our
suffering. I do think that the snakes on
the plain in Numbers 21, bring up a valid and almost universal question; “what
is God's role in our suffering?” And one
of the more palatable attributes of God that I do find in this story is that
God is intricately bound to this whiney group of people. Total strangers do not complain about each
other as God and Israel do. These are the
fights of those who are together enough to get on each other's nerves. These are the conflicts of lovers, of
siblings, of parents and children, of best friends – those who really know how
to push our buttons and on the flipside – those who really know how to guide us
in healing and reconciliation.
So the people
are terrified, and they turn to Moses and ask him to pray on their behalf; they
are genuinely sorry for their part in this mess. In my opinion, Moses is the hero of the story
– it seems that God and the Israelites are so caught up in this pattern of pushing
each other's buttons that they cannot find a way out. So Moses prays. And God listens. God says, “Make a poisonous snake and set it
on a pole, and everyone who is bitten, will look at it and live.” So Moses did this and the people were healed.
3) Lent is the
season when we gather to remind ourselves of our own stubbornness. We remember how we can be whiney, angry, and
fearful. We struggle in the wilderness;
we struggle in life. This season of the
church helps us to acknowledge that the struggles in life leave us with deep
wounds, wounds that are just as real as snakes that bite in the wilderness at
night.
4) On the women's retreat – the past few years we have ended our
retreat with a time of prayer when we share in small groups a simple prayer
request and then we close in prayer together. And every year someone reflects that “it's amazing when you remember
that everyone is walking around carrying burdens and you would never know
it! It makes you remember that you are
not alone.”
My questions is, why does the suffering
around us continually surprise us, even as ministers, like Isaac says? And I think that the answer is simple, we are
so surprised by the pain and suffering of those around us because we all do
such a good job of hiding our pain from each other! We are taught to keep our baggage to
ourselves. Our intimate wounds are
embarrassing and shameful. And so we
wrap up our scars tightly and hide them in the corners of our lives and put on
a smiling face.
Imagine if we
did this with our physical wounds? If we
just ignored them and hoped that they went away? Some healing does happen more passively as
our body and spirit have miraculous capacity towards healing – however imagine
having major open heart surgery and just walking out of the hospital and going
around in life as if nothing has changed. This is what we do with our emotional wounds, when our relationships
fail, when our dreams slowly die, when experience loss and emotional trauma, we
slap on a happy face.
5) Here is the
twist in the story, the people of Israel find healing from their wounds. And they find this miraculous healing by
looking into the eyes of a poisonous snake lifted up on a pole. First, the Israelites find a friend, they reach out to Moses for help and spiritual
guidance. And Moses helps them lift
their eyes and face their worst nightmare in order to find healing. This snake lifted up represents the source of
their pain – the creepy, crawly creatures that inhabit their nightmares and
sneak into their bed at night. And yet,
the symbol of pain, suffering and death has now become their source of life, as
God promises that they will be healed if they lift their eyes to this bronze
snake.
Lent is also
the season when we find a trusted friend, we uncover our woundedness,
ask for prayer, lift our eyes to the source of our pain, and we stare it down. This process is vulnerable, terrifying and
counterintuitive, but it is also healing. John writes that we hate the light, and we hate the light because it
reveals the thing that we want to remain hidden. But here is the truth, the real danger is not
in the wound itself, or the path of suffering, the danger is in the hiding – it
is in the shame.
6) The author
of the Gospel of John writes, “just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the
wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.” The next twist is that when we face our
demons, when we stare down our nightmares, we see Christ. Jesus on the cross is a portrait of the
world's pain and suffering. Jesus even
complains about his lot, showing that discord and doubt are even a part of the
journey. Jesus says, “My God, My God,
why have you forsaken me?” Just as the
Israelites whine continually and doubt God, Jesus finds himself feeling abandoned
in his pain and suffering.
And yet, Jesus
lifted up also shows us the path towards resurrection, the way to heal our
deepest wounds. The resurrected Christ
stands for salvation beyond our woundedness, and
salvation THROUGH our woundedness. Christ resurrected is our hope to survive the
mess of life, to face our broken selves and move forward towards paths of
healing. When we lift our eyes to the
darkest sources of our wounds, we see Christ, we see
the face of God. When we reveal our
hidden darkness we see our vulnerability and fall into the arms of God.
7) And so Lent
is the slow march to the cross and it is a path that we all must face, paths of loss, pain, and suffering. Eventually we must face our mortality and confront
our own fragility. But we can walk on
this path in two ways. We can walk in the
darkness, stumbling over snakes, hiding our deepest wounds in loneliness. Or we can walk in the light, still stumbling,
but with the help of a beloved community, and with the portrait of Christ
lifting us up, healing us, drawing us into love and
light.
Barbara Brown Taylor tells this
story:
“A
friend cannot sleep – every night he anticipates having this same dream
Some
dark being knocks on his door – in need of something – the friend scrambles
around looking for a weapon – something to defend himself with – but every time
he opens the door to kill the monster it gets bigger – when he finally hits the
being – some of it falls of and sticks to him – and becomes like a raging
infection – killing the demons makes him a part of it – then he wakes up in a
sweat
One night in a dream – it occurs to
this friend – that the only way to end the demon's agony (and his own) is to
bless the demon – so he opens the door with his guts on fire and his hands in
front of his face –
“I bless you” he said – “I bid you
to go” – but saying it once didn't do it – he had to say it over and over and
over again. As many different ways that
he could think of to say it – “Go in peace” The demon turned around and never came
back.
What would it mean for you to bless
your demons? To
acknowledge them, to see them for what they are and simply bid them “to go in
peace.” As many
time as it takes, over and over and over again – sometimes a whole
lifetime!
What would it mean for us to ask for
help from trusted friends and family members to help us find ways to face our
wounds? Who is your Moses who will help
you find healing? What if this church community
could be a safe place, where emotional and physical scars are beautiful because
they are also the stories of how we are capable of miraculous healing and how
God carries us through it all despite our brokenness?
And so go now in peace, knowing that
you are not alone in the struggle. Know
that when we lift our eyes and face our demons we see the face of God. And know that even the scariest snakes on a
plain (plain) cannot separate us from the love and healing grace of God. Amen.
