Snakebite

Poolesville Presbyterian Church

03.18.12;  Rev. David Williams

Scripture Lessons:  Numbers 21:4-9;  John 3:14-21

Back when I was a little kid, I had a pretty intense aversion to anything that might in any way cause pain.  This would seem to be a fairly normal thing, if you think about it, but then again, I was a boy.   In my experience boys are typically far more oblivious to this than they should be.  

Riding your Razr scooter full-tilt down a hill and right into a curb to see if you can pull off a ninja tumble?  Sure, what could possibly go wrong?  Sticking your finger into a hole on the side of a machine to see how fast those gears are actually moving?  Give it a go!  It’s in the interests of science!   And why would the Good Lord have made that stick all nice and pointy if He didn’t intend in His Gracious Providence for us to chase our brother around with it at the bus stop? 

As the parent of boys, you just have to learn to take those things in stride, and it helps to live within five minutes of a good E.R.  

But as a child, I was small spindly bookish critter, allergic to what the doctor determined was, and this was his informed medical opinion after extensive testing, “pretty much everything.”   More significantly, as a young pup I was utterly terrified of pain.  For example, I played soccer, in that I stood on field for as little time as league rules allowed and hoped against hope that the ball would stay as far away as possible.  Because even though I shuffled tentatively around midfield wearing giant armored maxipads stuffed under my 1970s tube socks, I was convinced that one stray kick might crunch through my twiglike shins.  And that would hurt.

Even worse, though, was my fear of injections.  As the progeny of a foreign service family, this didn’t work out so well.  If you’re planning on spending time in the Southern Hemisphere, a battery of shots was pretty much necessary to avoid some impressively unpleasant illnesses.    I lived in mortal terror of shots, not because they actually hurt so much, but because of the anticipation of the pain.   Few things are less pleasant than the anticipation of pain.    

I can remember, although it’s an old and not often retold story in the Williams household, one particular trip to get a series of shots back when I couldn’t have been more than seven or eight.  We arrived, and I was nervous, and we waited, and I got more nervous, and then the nurse came in with a tray with some objects on it and said, “Alright, young man, are you ready for us to drop you into a giant bucket full of rattlesnakes?”

I don’t think that’s what she actually said.  I think she actually said something like, “Alright, young man, are you going to be brave for me?”  But I think what I heard must have involved a large pit full of snakes, because my next memories of that event involve total, abject flight from the room, as if I were a small cat who’d suddenly encountered a snarling rabid brindle mastiff.  Following a period of squealing, which I think was coming from me, I vaguely recall being under a table and people trying to coax me out with candy.

I am not prone to that kind of response now, except when someone asks me to serve on a Presbytery committee.   None of us like suffering, after all.

And yet suffering is inevitable in life.  It is just not possible to go through the whole of a life and not experience it.  The connected stories in today’s reading from the Book of Numbers and chapter three of John’s Gospel reflect that reality, and the response we’re meant to have to the deep challenges of our lives.

We don’t often read the book of Numbers, in large part because the name itself has a tendency to drive us away.  The book gets that name from the creators of the ancient Latin version of the Bible, known as the Vulgate, which calls it Numeri.   The Vulgate got it from the even older Greek version of the Hebrew bible, which was called the Septuagint.  That version calls it Arithmoi.  

The reason for that name becomes obvious when you start reading it.  It starts with a census, as the author begins carefully counting off the numbers of all of the members of all of the tribes of Israel.  This goes on for about five absolutely riveting chapters.  This is followed by obscure purity law code, followed by a few chapters where people weigh different objects.  Again, riveting stuff.  If you’ve ever tried to read the Bible cover to cover, this is one of those books that stops you in your tracks.

But in chapter 10, the book takes a different turn.  The Hebrew version of this book is called Ba Midbar, which means “In the Wilderness,” because that’s precisely where the Jewish people are.  That’s a much more interesting title, and a better description of the far-better second half of the book.  They are wandering through the 40 years in the desert, experiencing hardship, encountering famine and opposition and challenge, and once the lists are out of it’s system, the stories of that time of trial become the focus of the book.   They include talking donkeys, earthquakes, miracles, battles, and fire from the sky.

It also includes today’s story, in which the people of Israel are once again anxious, impatient, and complaining.  “We don’t have any food,” they complain in verse five.  “And the food is terrible!”   And so, for the sin of sounding remarkably like a moody teenager inspecting the contents of the family refrigerator, the Lord sends a plague of poisonous serpents.  These are the seraphim, and the word “poisonous” is actually the Hebrew word for “fiery.”   

After some unpleasantness, the people decide they’ve had enough, and Moses is instructed to create a bronze serpent, which is placed on a pole.  To be healed of a snake bite, all the people need to do is look at the serpent, and they’d be fine.

Without getting into the mechanics of that, what is worth noting is that the thing they looked to for healing is the emblem of suffering itself.  That was the point being made in John’s Gospel, as it recalled the story of Jesus and his conversation with the curious but confused Pharisee Nicodemus.  

This is a remarkably rich conversation, as the Pharisee asks question after question of Jesus, and Jesus responds.  Nicodemus is particularly confused by the idea of being born from above...which is what John 3 verse seven literally reads.  In explaining what this means, Jesus references the Book of Numbers.   “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up...”

Here, Jesus is using the words “lifted up” to mean both “exalted” and “raised up on the cross.”   It’s a strange conjunction, the fusion of these two images, seemingly so at odds with one another.   The image of power on high gets conceptually woven together with the broken body on a particularly cruel and unusual instrument of execution.

That latter image messes with us, and we might prefer not to think about it.

But understanding suffering and understanding how we are to respond to suffering are absolutely essential to overcoming it.   It’s a bit like a vaccine that way.  Just as our bodies need to know a disease before they can effectively respond to it, our hearts and minds and souls need to understand how to respond to the broken things in our lives.  And while we might rather not know and experience suffering, we will.  It is an inescapable part of mortality.

The question is how we approach and understand that suffering.  If we approach suffering with grasping, selfish hearts, it will be made worse.  If we approach it from a position of anxiety or fear, we magnify its power over us.  Our terror feeds it, and amplifies it, and that fear can completely devour us.

If our attitude is one of faith, things change.  We change.  If we recognize that the Creator stands in complete solidarity with us, when we suffer but also in our joys, our experience of life is tranformed.  We no longer live in terror.  That doesn’t mean being as oblivious as a seven year old boy up on the roof with a makeshift parachute.  It doesn’t mean seeking out pain as a way of proving our faith.  

But it does mean no longer being afraid.  And that matters.

Let it be so, for you and for me, AMEN.