Promise Us: look, then, and live! (a sermon on Numbers 21:4-9)

In our Lenten series on God’s promises, this week’s reading from the Hebrew Bible takes a weird turn. It’s definitely not a covenant as we’ve come to expect; not a long-lasting declaration intended to shape the lives of the Israelites and their descendants. In this story, God’s promise is more immediate. In response to the acute suffering of the Israelites resulting from venomous snake bites, God provides an antidote. God promises a path of healing for those who are suffering, instructing Moses to “make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.” 

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The setting for this story is the wilderness. God’s people have been freed from bondage in Egypt, but the journey to the Promised Land is taking much longer than they had expected or hoped. Consumed by their discontent, the people spend lots of time complaining - first against Moses, and then also against God. Despite God’s provision of manna and quail to eat, and fresh water to drink, the people can only focus on what they don’t have. Grumpy, anxious, and impatient, they look back with rose-colored glasses at their time of enslavement. Rehashing previous complaints, the people grumbled: “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.” 

Hearing all this complaining, we might not blame God for wanting to punish them. It’s interesting, though, that the text doesn’t actually say that God sent the venomous snakes as a punishment, though that’s how the people interpret it. Regardless of the cause, this new horror seems to snap them out of their miserable whining, or at least reminds them that things could be much worse. They acknowledge their sin to Moses and ask him to “pray to the Lord to take away the serpents from us.”

So Moses prays for the people, and God responds. Only, it’s not likely the response the people wanted or expected. Rather than take away the snakes, God offers a remedy for healing. Moses is to make a serpent of bronze and put it on a pole, in view of all the people. “Whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.” In the midst of their suffering, when their attention is focused on pain and distress and blame, God gives the Israelites something else to focus on - hope. For the Israelites, the bronze serpent on a pole is a sign of God’s promise for healing, and restoration, and life.

I think we can often relate to the experience of the Israelites. We, too, often look to the past with longing and nostalgia, remembering it as much more carefree that it was in reality. We, too, often focus on what we don’t have, rather than what we do have. We, too, pray for God to take away the source of our suffering, only to find that God often chooses a different response. 

It’s a hard place to be. It’s hard to make sense of the things that happen to us and the people we love that result in suffering, and heartache, and pain. It certainly seems like God ought to be able to fix it with a snap of the divine fingers, but we know that that’s not how the world works. What, then, is the promise?

The promise is that God can - and does - transform death into life and despair into hope. The promise is that God is with us, even in our suffering. In Jesus lifted up on the cross, we see the truth of the world’s sinful bloodlust and also the truth of the deep and abiding love of God. Like the bronze serpent didn’t keep away the snakes from the Israelites, Jesus’ death on the cross does not remove our experience of pain or suffering. Instead, it directs our gaze to God’s presence with us, and to the promise of healing, and restoration, and life. 

It seems too soon to ask how God’s presence and promises have transformed the horrible parts of this year of death and isolation and heartbreak. When we’re well on the other side of it, though, I imagine we’ll be able to look back and catch glimpses of God’s work of transformation and resurrection. While it is often our inclination to focus on suffering, and distress, and blame, God gives us another way - hope and healing, restoration and life. Look, then, and live!


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