Scripture: Numbers 21: 4-9
Sermon: Lifted Up
Topics: snakes, paradox, seraphim
Preached: November 16, 2008
Rev. Mike Abma
Numbers 21: 4-9
4 From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom; but the people became impatient on the way. 5The people spoke against God and against Moses, ‘Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food.’ 6Then the Lord sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died. 7The people came to Moses and said, ‘We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you; pray to the Lord to take away the serpents from us.’ So Moses prayed for the people. 8And the Lord said to Moses, ‘Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.’ 9So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.
JOHN 3: 1-16
Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews.2He came to Jesus by night and said to him, ‘Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.’ 3Jesus answered him, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.’ 4Nicodemus said to him, ‘How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?’ 5Jesus answered, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. 6What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7Do not be astonished that I said to you, “You must be born from above.” 8The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.’ 9Nicodemus said to him, ‘How can these things be?’10Jesus answered him, ‘Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?
11 ‘Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. 12If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? 13No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. 14And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
16 ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
This is the Word of the Lord
Thanks be to God
INTRODUCTION
One of my earliest memories is from the summer I was five years old.
My oldest brother was 12. My oldest sister was 10.
We had about a 2 acre patch of cucumbers, picking one half one day, the next half the next day. We picked them in these large 5 gallon plastic pails.
My oldest brother had found a rather long garter snake in the field.
He caught it, and with a very sly smile, slipped it into the pail of my oldest sister.
The picking went on for a while as if nothing happened.
Clearly she had not noticed the snake.
But we all held our breath.
Suddenly there was a blood-curdling scream, and my sister went running from the field.
Snakes have a way of grabbing our attention.
NUMBERS and RESOLVING QUESTIONS
Numbers is a long book – the second longest in the Old Testament.
The passage we read is buried deep in the middle of the book.
It isn’t even a very long passage.
But somehow, it grabs our attention.
Why?
Is it because of this plague of poisonous snakes?
Is it because of the odd cure for this plague – looking at a bronze snake on a pole?
What is it about this passage that is so intriguing?
What we know is that it has been an intriguing and perplexing passage for centuries.
Already, before the time of Jesus, the Jewish community was not sure what to do with this passage. They were not sure how to understand this passage.
They were uneasy that a cure seemed to come from looking at this bronze snake.
So the Apocryphal book the Wisdom of Solomon explains this incident this way:
the bronze snake was simply a symbol of deliverance to remind them of the
law’s command…only the Lord has the power to heal… only the Lord has
the power of life and death. (Wisdom of Solomon 16: 1-14) .
In other words, the snakes were teaching tools. Why snakes? Well, according to Genesis, a snake was cursed to crawl on its belly and eat dust. According to Jewish tradition, snakes had done so without any complaints. Therefore the uncomplaining snakes were sent to the complaining, murmuring, grumbling Israelites to teach them a lesson:
a lesson in humility and patience;
a lesson in humbly accepting the will and command of God.
More recently there have been others ways of trying to make sense of this passage. The text says that they were poisonous snakes – literally it says fiery serpents. Some people have wondered whether this refers to snakes at all. Maybe this refers to something that causes a fiery, burning pain. Maybe the fiery serpent was actually a worm-like parasite known as Guinea Worm. You get Guinea Worm by drinking water with Guinea Worm larvae in it. These larvae grow in your stomach and intestines. Then they migrate through the intestinal wall and try find a way out of your body, usually finding their way into your legs or feet. These Guinea worms look like a thin string of spaghetti and can get as long as a meter. When they pop through a person’s skin, they cause fiery, burning blisters. The only way to get them totally out of your body is, when they pop out, to begin to wrap them around a small stick, no bigger than a pencil. Then, over the next number of hours, and sometimes days, you slowly wind that worm around that stick – if you leave most of the worm in the body, you will probably develop an infection and die of the infection.
Scholars who like this explanation again see the bronze snake on the pole as a big teaching tool – this time not to teach humility and patience, but to teach the people how to wind a worm around a stick. They see the snake on the pole as a huge visual aid, showing the people how to wind their worm around their stick and so pull the whole thing out.
NUMBERS and A CLOSER LOOK
It is a fascinating theory.
But I think it tries too hard to make sense of something that is meant to have a level of mystery.
I think it tries to make tidy and neat something that we are meant to ponder and to treasure in our hearts.
The reason I say this is because the more a person looks at this passage, the more perplexing and paradoxical it is. Perhaps that should not surprise us. When Jesus was talking with Nicodemus in John 3, it was the paradox of this new life that Nicodemus could not figure out.
But Jesus says,
“The wind blows where it chooses.
So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.
You’re a teacher of Israel.
You should know these things.”
What is Jesus referring to here?
He is a least partially referring to the function of wind in Israel’s story:
Wind blows and clears a path for Israel to walk through the Red Sea.
Wind blows, the sea returns, and the Egyptians are drowned.
The power of life. The power of death.
Later, in Numbers 11,
wind will fall upon the 70 elders and fill them with the Spirit.
And wind will blow in quail which people begin to gorge upon,
then they will get sick, and many will die — by the thousands.
The power of life. The power of death.
That is the paradox of God’s way — nothing is quite what it appears.
Take for instance, Moses’s staff:
On the one hand it is used to perform wonders so that Israel can go free;
On the other hand, when thrown to the ground, it could turn into a serpent.
That kind of paradox can be seen in almost every part of this story.
SERAPHIM
Take these fiery serpents.
What do you think of when you think of fiery serpents?
Don’t you think of something evil, diabolical, creepy – a scourge, a plague?
The Hebrew word for fiery serpents is actually seraphim.
And when is the next time in Scripture that word is used?
In Isaiah 6:2. Isaiah has a vision of heaven.
Around the throne of heaven are 6-winged seraphim
Singing, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty.”
We have to scratch our heads a little.
Here in the book of Numbers
they – seraphim — are nasty fiery snakes
but there, in Isaiah, they are heavenly winged creatures?
What are they exactly?
We start to get that uncomfortable feeling of holding two seemingly contradictory images at the same time. We call this cognitive dissonance.
Looking at these fiery serpents and trying to figure them out isn’t the only time we feel cognitive dissonance in this passage.
The very next thing is a bit of a head scratcher as well.
IMAGES
God says to Moses: “Make for yourself an image of a snake and put it on a pole.”
“Make for yourself an image of a snake…”
This is almost the exact same wording as the second commandment:
“Do not make for yourself an image of anything in heaven above, on the earth beneath, or in the waters below.”
What is God doing? Is he asking Moses to break the Second Commandment?
More cognitive dissonance.
POLE
Then finally there is the word for “pole” which in Hebrew is “nes.”
The Hebrew word “nes” can mean pole, but also flag, or banner, or standard.
It is a pretty rare word in the Old Testament.
Up to now it has been used only once in the Old Testament, and that is in Exodus 17:15. The people had just complained about being thirsty. They had just received water from a rock. And God had just given them a military victory over the Amalekites. And Moses said, “The Lord is my banner.”
The Lord is my banner. The Lord is my standard. The Lord is my nes.
Now here, in this passage, a snake is on the pole.
A snake is the standard.
A snake is the banner.
There, the Lord is my banner.
Here, a snake is my banner.
Again, more cognitive dissonance.
And so, of all the passages for Jesus to refer to in the Old Testament,
it is an absolute shocker that he refers to this one.
Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness
so must the Son of Man be lifted up.
THE UPSIDE DOWN WORLD OF THE KINGDOM
Can I fully explain the mystery of this passage?
Can I fully explain the cognitive dissonance it raises?
Can I fully explain how
a serpent on a pole,
which hearkens all the way back to the Garden of Eden,
and evil slithering into the world on its belly,
fits in the same picture with the perfect Son of God hanging on the cross?
Can I fully explain how
a pole, a standard, a “nes” – a symbol of victory,
fits in the same picture with a cross, an instrument of torture, and defeat?
There is a mystery here.
There is a depth here.
Things that should not be are for our sake.
Things that should not go together are put together for our salvation.
God made Jesus, who knew no sin, who was perfect,
to be sin for our sake
so that in him we might be righteous before God (2 Cor. 5:21)
God made Jesus, who was opposite of a serpent,
to be a serpent
so that in him we might be healed.
God made Jesus, who sat on a throne at his right hand,
to hang in death and defeat on an instrument of torture
so that we might have life.
These are the paradoxes we cannot quite fathom,
and the depths of mystery we cannot quite fully take in.
Looking at that bronze snake so long ago
while real snakes were hissing and threatening all around
was not easy.
And looking at Jesus, writhing in pain and agony on that pole,
while all around
we are surrounded by the misery of life and the agony of death
that is not easy either.
But somehow in the upside-down world of the kingdom
where nothing is quite as it appears:
where poverty is wealth and wealthy is poverty,
where folly is wisdom and wisdom is folly,
where hardship is edifying and ease is mortifying,
where weakness is power and power is weakness,
Somehow, in looking at Jesus dying and defeated on the cross
and believing in him,
somehow in his death we have eternal life,
somehow in his defeat we have victory forever and ever.
Amen
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