I
don’t like the Numbers story, or how it portrays God.  I don’t like
that John references it, and adds it to his conception of Jesus.  I
gave serious thought to avoiding both of these scriptures today, but
I don’t actually believe in avoiding difficult things.  (Fine, also I
didn’t have a better idea.)

Just
in case you didn’t listen to the Numbers reading, or don’t naturally
object to scriptures, let me be clear about what I dislike about it.
It says that the people got impatient with God, and God punished them
for their impatience by sending poisonous snakes to kill them, and
when the people were upset about that Moses intervened and God told
Moses to make bronze serpent and put it on a pole for the people to
look at and be healed, and they were.  So…. I dislike the narrative
that God punishes, and even more so that God punishes impatiences,
and even more that God’s punishes by  killing.  As a bit of an aside,
it also seems distinctly unfair that there was that whole golden calf
incident where making a golden calf was BAD, but in this story making
a bronze snake is the solution.  But that is relatively unimportant
in comparison to the “God killing people for getting impatient”
theme.

Ok.
Thank you for letting me get that off my chest, because now I can
approach the story from a different angle.  The first piece of making
peace with this story is acknowledging that people are meaning
makers, and that means that sometimes we make meaning where it
doesn’t exist.  So, if the people in the wilderness encounter
poisonous snakes, it makes plenty of sense that they’d make meaning
of out of it and claim that it is God’s punishment.  People do that.

Having
said that, I think we can get more out of this story by (hesitantly)
entering into the mindset of the story than fighting with it.  I
don’t actually think God punishes people by sending poisonous snakes
– or having a person lose their job – or creating hurricanes – or
creating a virus to kill millions.  However, I think the “solution”
in this story is interesting part.  Also, since people still
attribute struggles in their life to Divine punishment, so we don’t
have much space to stand on to judge the ancients.

From
within the story, the problem is that poisonous snakes are killing
people, and the people request Divine intervention so they can live.
Replace snakes with a virus, and we are right there with them.  We’ve
prayed for God’s help on this.  (Most of us think the vaccines were
God’s answer, and like many things, God’s answer came through the
hard work of people.)

The
ANSWER for “poisonous snakes are killing us” being “make a
bronze snake and put it on a pole for the people to look at” is
REALLY WEIRD.  As in, if you asked me to brainstorm answers to
poisonous snake bites, I don’t think it would come up in my first
1000 options.  (Ready:  move camp away from the snakes, find
something to absorb the venom, look for an antidote, find ways to
pacify the snakes, figure out how to avoid the snakes, find out how
to repel the snakes.)  See… none of that has gotten anywhere close
to make a bronze snake and put it on a pole.

So,
for just a moment, what if we take this story as more parable than
historical narrative?  What if the SUPER WEIRD SOLUTION is something
designed to make us THINK and PONDER and consider, rather than, say,
replicate?

Then
where is the metaphor?  Debie Thomas in “Journey with Jesus”
says, “In order to be saved, the people have to confront the
serpent— they have to look hard at what harms, poisons, breaks, and
kills them.”¹
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.  

Avoidance
doesn’t solve problems.  Systemic change doesn’t come without a deep
understanding of what is broken and who benefits from the breaking.
In making a replica of our problems, we may just learn how to fix
them.  There is some GOOD STUFF here once the space is made for it to
speak with its own voice.  Thank you metaphor and parable
perspective.

Interestingly
enough, this sort of fits the virus + vaccine issue – you don’t get
to a vaccine without looking at the virus very, very carefully.  You
also don’t get immunity without some access to CREATED replications
of aspects of the virus.  (Metaphors make life.  Humans are meaning
makers.  Did I mention that?)

OK,
having found some actually useful meaning in the Numbers passage, now
we’re tasked with connecting this with John’s take on Jesus’s death.
#buckleup

As
you might have noticed, John 3:14-5 says, “And 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.”
By “lifted up” John is talking about crucifixion, but he is
doing so in a very intentional way.  Clearly, physically speaking,
crucifixion could be understood as being “lifted up” but it was
DESIGNED as a means of public shame and punishment that was so
horrible as to discourage others from engaging in anti-Empire
activities.   This was capital punishment in an extra public and
grotesque form. So, calling crucifixion “lifting up” is
RECLAIMING it, denying its power to shame, and reframing it from a
faith perspective instead of a worldly one.

To
call it “lifting up” is to claim that they saw God in Jesus, and
the most extreme shame and pain and death the Empire had to offer
didn’t change that.  In fact, to call it “lifting up” inverts it,
taking an experience meant to shame and suggesting it brought honor.
Calling it “lifting up” refuses the power of the Empire to make
meaning, and claims that power for the community of faith.

But
the gospel writer doesn’t even stop there!  Instead John reframes the
Numbers story to make meaning out of Jesus.  As the bronze snake
replica healed the people who had been poisoned and would have died,
so the crucified Jesus heals the people and offers them full and
abundant life with God.  Or, as Debie Thomas puts is:

So why did Jesus die?  He
died because he unflinchingly fulfilled the will of God.  He
died because he exposed the ungracious sham at the heart of all human
kingdoms, holding up a mirror that shocked his contemporaries and
still shocks us at the deepest levels of our  imaginations. 
In other words, he unveiled the poison, he showed us the snake, he
revealed what our human kingdoms, left to themselves, will always
become unless God in God’s mercy delivers us.  In the cross,
we are forced to see what our refusal to love, our indifference to
suffering, our craving for violence, our resistance to change, our
hatred of difference, our addiction to judgment, and our fear of the
Other must wreak.  When the Son of Man is lifted up, we see with
chilling and desperate clarity our need for a God who will take our
most horrific instruments of death, and transform them, at great
cost, for the purposes of resurrection.²

The
death that is human violence, fear, and competition is transformed
when Jesus is “lifted up” and shows the power of compassion,
grace, hope, and collaboration.  The powers that harm are subverted,
the power of love is …. lifted up.  In THIS is life.

It
is so in our lives as well, may we pay attention.  Amen

1https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2944-looking-up

2Ibid.

Rev. Sara E. Baron
First United Methodist Church of Schenectady
603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305
Pronouns: she/her/hers
http://fumcschenectady.org/
https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

March 14, 2021