Sermon Archive

"The Fiery Serpent", Numbers 21:4-9; John 3:14-15

Date: March 22, 2009, Fourth Sunday in Lent
Author: The Rev. Dr. James D. Kegel

GRACE TO YOU AND PEACE FROM GOD OUR FATHER AND THE LORD AND SAVIOR JESUS CHRIST, AMEN.           

            I don't quite know why we started talking about snakes the other day in Bible class. I remarked that where I came from northern Minnesota it was too cold to have poisonous snakes. We were always afraid to go to western North Dakota —the part of the state west of the Missouri River, because that was where the rattlesnakes were. And indeed once in the Badlands, in Theodore Roosevelt National Park, I saw a little rattlesnake sunning itself. When we moved to Eugene, we drove past Rattlesnake Road and I thought, oh no, we have moved to the land of the snakes. Well, in seven summers of hiking, I have never seen a rattlesnake but other people have. Steve saw a big rattlesnake on Spencer's Butte and carefully walked back away from it. Marianne's boys went out snake hunting and came back with a rattlesnake, killed it and ate it. Inge said her husband grew up in Florida and as a boy, for pastime would hunt rattlesnake, and Ed said in Texas they ate them. Then I was reassured that in western Oregon the rattlesnakes are shy and just want to get away from people and someone said they didn't even think they were native to our area but had traveled in on trucks. So, I am not going to be scared to hike but I am also going to try to avoid poisonous snakes!

            Mythologists and psychologists have advanced different theories about the meaning of snakes in dreams and in our emotions. One writer suggests that in the history of religion, serpents “symbolize the coincidence and possible union of opposites. They are often associated with female deities. In Jungian psychology, snakes represent the feminine as nurturing and destructive, particularly sensitive to ambivalence. In much of literature, the snake is a phallic symbol, a symbol of fertility.

            On the other hand, I am not alone in fearing snakes. If I were, Survivor wouldn't keep showing a snake to heighten tension before every tribal council vote! I once read an article that suggested the human fear of snakes goes back to the days of primitive humanity. Humans were routinely bitten by snakes while they slept during the night and people never knew if they would wake up or not. Fear of snakes has become an ingrained, congenital fear. Even now Bear Grylls, the Man versus Wild , and Les Stroud, Survivorman , light a fire when they are in the wild to keep animals and snakes away from their sleeping spots. In Genesis , the serpent is cursed. It tempted the man and woman; it told them they would be like God and for this God took away the serpent's legs. “Because you have done this,” God said, “cursed are you above all cattle and above all animals. Upon your belly you shall go and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed. He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”

            The serpent is cursed. Snakes will be stepped on and crushed; snakes will bite human heels—that is why people wear snake boots. But the curse also carries with it the promise of a savior. The Son of Man will defeat Satan but will die on the cross in the process. For Christians the promise in Genesis is the first Messianic prophecy. With the fall into sin of our first forbears, Adam and Eve, God promises us Jesus who will take away our sin.

            Our Holy Land tour group has been watching the PBS series, “Walking the Bible” with Bruce Feiler. He follows the Israelites as they leave Egypt , go to Mount Sinai and because of unfaith, must wander in the wilderness for forty years. Our group will follow some of this journey through the desert wilderness. It is an area that was made famous by   T.E. Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia, the British officer who assisted the Arabs in their war of independence against the Turks in World War I. Lawrence describes the desert: “The plague of snakes …in the valley became a terror…creeping with horned vipers and puff-adders, cobras and black snakes. By night, movement was dangerous and at last it became necessary to walk with ticks, beating the bushes on each side…we could not draw water after sundown for there were snakes swimming in the pools…a strange thing was the snakes' habit, at night, of lying beside us, probably for warmth under or on the blanket…we killed perhaps twenty snakes daily. At last they got on our nerves that the boldest of us feared to touch ground.” I am so glad that our Central Lutheran group will not be camping at night or taking sticks to fight off the poisonous snakes of the desert. But we can understand that even today people face what the ancient Israelites did—snakebite and death in the desert. It is our text for this morning, from Numbers and from John , this story about snake as punishment and then as sign of healing.   Remember that the Israelites had been saved from slavery in Egypt , from pharaoh's chariots crossing the Red Sea , from thirst by water from the rock and from hunger by manna from heaven. They had been saved and saved and saved. But still they spoke against Moses and against God, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness. For there is no food and no water and we loathe this worthless food”—apparently they grew tired of manna and quail. “So the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people and they bit the people so that many people of Israel died.” The people were punished for their sin. But the story goes on and it is much more than a snake story. It is a story of faithlessness and forgiveness for the people then came to Moses and said, “We have sinned for we have spoken against the Lord and against you; pray to the Lord that the Lord take away the serpents from us.” We are just like those Hebrews. We complain and carry on. We grumble against our leaders and sometimes against God. We often turn away from God or push God away from us. Sometimes it takes a fiery serpent of illness or financial difficulty or marital problems to get our attention. We are not our own saviors. We are not in charge of our lives. We are people who sin and sin and sin and we have a God who saves and saves and saves. We like the Israelites can return in repentance and ask for forgiveness.

            Moses prayed and God provided a way of healing for the people. God told Moses to make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole so that those who were bitten could see it, be healed and live. Moses did this. He made a bronze serpent and it became a symbol of salvation.

            We still use a serpent on a pole as a symbol for the healing profession. It may come from this story of Moses or more likely from ancient Greece , where Asclepius, the god of healing had a snake for a symbol. The ancient Greeks would go to a temple of Asclepius and spend the night there. During the night the serpent would come and whisper in the ear of the sick person just what should be done to be cured. The idea of a snake as a healer fit the Greek idea of ambivalence—healing was looked at as the restoration of harmony, the reconciling of opposites. So Moses made a bronze serpent and put it on a pole. The image lasted until the time of King Hezekiah, where in Second Kings, it is recorded that the king destroyed the bronze serpent called the Nehushtan. It had become an idol that the people worshipped along with the fertility symbols of the Canaanites. The same God who had commanded Moses to make no graven image yet called him to fashion the bronze serpent so that those would look on it with faith and be healed.

            In the ancient world the cross was a symbol of horror and shame, the vehicle for the death of criminals. It was an image as terrifying as a spitting cobra. I'm sure some of you have gone to the reptile house at the zoo to be safely frightened by the poisonous snake; in the same way many went to Calvary to be entertained by the horrifying spectacle of men dying on the cross. There they would have seen Jesus crucified, ridiculed, tortured, crowned with thorns and side pierced, garments wagered upon, lifted up without clothes but with a sign mocking this one as the King of the Jews. Yet John records of this scene: NO ONE HAS ASCENDED INTO HEAVEN BUT THE ONE WHO DESCENDED INTO HEAVEN, THE SON OF MAN. AND AS MOSES LIFTED UP THE SERPENT IN THE WILDERNESS, SO MUST THE SON OF MAN BE LIFTED UP SO THAT WHOEVER BELIEVES IN HIM MAY HAVE ETERNAL LIFE. Jesus is lifted up to draw all people to himself that all those dying of sin might have their sins forgiven, all suffering disease of body, mind or spirit might be healed. God has made that which is horrible into a sign of salvation. The symbol of death has become a mark of healing and life.

            Last Monday I went into a church in Paris, St. John the Evangelist, and looked at a beautiful rose window. In the center was a snake on a pole. In the front of the church as here at Central, there was the carved image of a man dying on a cross. Snakes and crosses are horrible; death by snakebite, death by crucifixion—terrible ways to die. Yet God has made the fiery serpent on a pole and a cross of shame, signs of life and salvation. Look on the fiery serpent and be healed; look on the cross of Christ, believe and live. Amen.

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