MARCH LENTEN MADNESS: SNAKES AND BASKETBALL
A sermon by Rev. Dr. Jack E. Skiles

March 22, 2009

Numbers 21:4-9   &   John 3:14-21

If we were playing that old game show, the Family Feud, and we were asked in the bonus round, “What is the most famous Scripture in the Jewish and Christian Bible?” you know that we would end up with today's lesson from John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that God gave God's only Son that we might have life and have it abundantly.”   Also on that list would have been last week's lesson that Caela most ably brought to our attention, the second most popularly known Scriptures, “The Ten Commandments.”   From my student memorization days, I would have answered the shortest verse in the Bible, “Jesus wept.”

No one in our Family Feud scenario would have quoted today's Hebrew Scripture lesson from the Book of Numbers about the bronze snake that Moses had fashioned and put on a pole so that when the Israelites looked up at it, they would be saved from the poisonous snakes that were causing them great distress in their wilderness wanderings.  And who except the most biblically crazed amongst us could have even told us prior to this morning that the bronze snake being lifted up before the Israelites would find itself compared in John's gospel to Jesus being lifted up on a cross?

I was out with Charlie Gaston on his farm on Wednesday and as we walked toward the back forty I saw my first snake of the season.  Charlie almost stepped on it.  It was a very cute little garter snake.  But how do we make sense out of this story of the Israelites practically worshipping a snake god on a stick and ordered to do so by the man himself, Moses?

Further complicating our post-modern sensibilities is why the wandering slaves from Egypt were having snake problems to begin with.  You remember with me how long the former Jewish slaves wandered in the wilderness?  That's right, 40 years.  As many biblical commentators, well, at least the heterosexual women commentators, point out, only a man who refused to stop and ask directions would have spent that long going from Egypt to Israel.  It really is a rather short walk, even on a hot day.

Suffice it to remind ourselves that in Jewish story telling, 40 is a significant number, a theme that implies a time of serious testing, temptation and trials and hopefully growth; it is not ever intended to be a literal time, but a symbolic time.  The flood story has it raining for 40 days and nights, 40 years pass in the wilderness hunting for a promised land, Goliath strutted himself for forty days before he and David had their final battle, Jesus was tempted for 40 days and nights and finally, Jesus, it is recorded in the Book of Acts, appeared after his death for a period of forty days to his early followers.  That should be enough biblical trivia to get you through several parties.

The problem with the snakes, as the story is told, is that the people had grown tired of the 40-year sojourn in the wilderness.  In fact the whole book of Numbers is about the forty years spent sojourning, hunting for a promised land.  It is reported in the story that they had even grown tired of eating manna, the desert cafeteria food that God was providing them.  The folks got grumpy.  They had just detoured one more time, hunting for the easiest entry spot (read conquest spot) into the fertile valley then controlled by the Canaanites, the precursors to the current Palestinians.  (The Palestinians really were there first.)

So grumpy, so complaining, were the wandering Israelites on the free lunch program that the story says God got fed up with them and sent poisonous snakes to bite them and many people died. 

Those of you who have young children and are seeking ways to control their behavior, this is an interesting story to consider telling them.  And, I dare say, that is why the story is present in the Bible.  The story reflects a very primitive belief system that is still strong today in many.  If we do something wrong, like bitter complaining in the face of having life so good, God may strike us down with sickness, or a car wreck or poisonous snake bites.

In truth, many behaviors have consequences, it is quite simply the natural order of things.  If you camp where there are poisonous snakes, you probably increase your risk of getting bit by them.  If we party while we are hearty, we might well do some stupid and morally egregious things and then when we get sick in our worn down state, we cannot help but wonder if it is not divine punishment for our sins. The truth is we were just careless.  A foundational belief of mine is that God does not punish bad behavior.  Bad behavior most often has natural consequences that seem and perhaps are punitive naturally, not because God punishes.

But, I will confess my sin, that as a parent I have often warned my children that God sees what you do when we parents are not around.  Teaching our children to be aware that we do nothing outside of the awareness of God has positive developmental aspects to it at certain moments in our development.  I dare suggest that corporate greed mongers would do well to be equally aware.  However, God has often been used in such a way to scare us to such a degree that many adults find it nearly impossible to believe that God can and does love us intimately and forgive us with such a generosity of grace that nothing need stand in the way of a full and complete relationship with the Divine Spirit.

Regarding the snake on a stick story, I believe we have a most interesting example demonstrating how the early Jewish faith was not as pure as the story is often told. (Just like our real life!)   In reality those early Jews combined belief systems and we have preserved, in the Book of Numbers, yet another story, like the story of the golden calf, where we discover that the process of development of the Jewish people as a faith group shared space with many, what we would call today, pagan rituals that they openly participated in and at times these got woven into the written record in some confusing ways. The snake on a stick theology is not of Jewish origin, but most certainly was a Canaanite worship practice.

No other Scripture has more public exposure than John 3:16, “For God so loved the world.” It is a phenomenal expression of what I believe to be true at the heart of creation, God's deeply passionate, wantonly generous love, caring for all of God's creation.  But, of course, the problem is that this one phrase,  “For God so loved the world,” which fits on placards and on Bible memory sheets so very easily, has a longer sentence and context structure that it is a part of.  I suspect that the Lectionary committee that puts together the Biblical texts for use in churches around the globe gave us two hard Scriptures to have to preach from on purpose.  What can we say about a love and a caring from God that is so deeply, passionately intimate and so totally, coldly rejecting of everyone and everything else that does not say they love Jesus?  Because the end of the Scripture context reads, “that he who believes not in Jesus is condemned.”

The reason we have this text to ponder this morning is because the lectionary committee wants us to struggle openly and faithfully not only with what makes us feel good, but with that which is problematic and far too often injurious to other faith systems that believe as deeply and passionately as we do.

Here is a foundational belief of mine.  God so loves the world, all of creation.  God passionately and meaningfully cares specifically for each moment in time and with each aspect of created order.  My friends, that is a lot of caring, a lot of loving, and a lot of attention to details.  God is intimately involved in desiring for each one of us and each one of everyone, including all aspects of creation, that we might be lured forward, persuaded by God to accomplish everything that God envisions could be.   God is constantly involved and reworking the ultimate good that yet can be accomplished, despite how we so often miss the mark of what God desires.  God is a constant and active player to a degree this is beyond mind (and computer) boggling. 

We have, all of creation has, free choice.  God loves us and hopes for us in our inescapable condition of having to choose, of having to discern the too often seemingly silent voice of God and add that to our equations of choice.  In the midst of the biological machinery that makes us what we are, that has hundreds of thousands, if not millions of pre-programmed biological determinatives operating in us…; we have also been gifted to make choices and determine direction for our lives in many unique, wonderful, disciplined, howbeit, at times painful ways.  I have my days, I don't know about you, where I prefer to be on purely biological drive time rather than have to discipline myself to conscious contemplation of what more God desires and add that to my decision making.

God loves us so much, gifts us with so much creative license that not only can we raise up to fly as if on eagles wings, but we can plummet to the depths of bringing everything on this planet, including the planet, itself, to near total destruction.  I say this in a totally joking manner, perhaps, given how much freedom we have to mess up, perhaps a good plague of poisonous snakes might cause us to pay more attention to God's dreams, God's wants, God's desires, rather than having to constantly deal with the living nightmares we so often create  with our personal and corporate lives.  Alas, wouldn't it seem easier in our more lazy moments if God were in total control, if we were nothing more than biological robots, mere pawns in some game between God and some long tailed devil?

When I was in school as a younger person, there was a group of other kids that started a club.  They were for the most part the more socially active, good looking people.  I don't even remember anymore what they called their club.  It doesn't make any difference what the name was, what mattered at the time was that they had a club and they had the stuff that many of the rest of us thought we would die to have in our lives.  None of them had pimples, they had money, they had boyfriends and girl friends, they had the good lunch table and they had style, they had every form of success that I was sure I too could have if I were just part of their group.  Here was their success:  you had to become just like them or you were not admitted to their club. 

God so loved the world, the Gospel of John's writer said, that unless you become just like us, believing just like us, you are lost and going to hell, condemned by God to eternal damnation and no salvation from snake bites.  What are we do with this sort of rigid membership requirement?  Is it truly reflective of God or is it nothing more than a sophomoric club?

This club-joining requirement to save oneself from eternal damnation is of the same moral level as was demonstrated back in the book of Numbers.  There the people complained and God tired of their disobedience and had them attacked by poisonous snakes.  Here, give total allegiance to Jesus as John's community understood Jesus, or you go straight to hell in a handbasket, no questions asked.

Doctors Clark Williamson and Ronald Allen, professors of theology and the Christian Scriptures at Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis, have written in their lectionary commentary for this week that we must seek to understand why John's community, out of which the Gospel According to John was written, why they most probably wrote such an exclusive text in which their private club gets to go to heaven and the rest of the world is vanquished to eternal damnation.

When John's community is writing this Gospel they are feeling actively oppressed and alone.  John's Christians have just been quite literally booted out of the Jewish synagogue movement for being too non-Jewish.  These early followers of Jesus felt at risk, in addition, from the Roman Empire.  Jesus' followers were not very keen on calling Caesar God and Caesar wasn't keen on groups that did not pay proper respect.  In addition, John's gospel reflects great conflict among the followers of Jesus.  John's gospel refers to John as the beloved disciple over and over again and then tells stories about how unbelieving and rejecting of Jesus was the other so-called great disciple, Peter.  Also, John's gospel shows that the disciples of John the Baptist were still active and critical of John's community of early Christians around Ephesus .

Clark and Allen point out that a community such as John's feels itself alone, alienated and persecuted.  Hence we find statements to the effect that only those within this community, who understand Jesus as does the Beloved Disciple, are saved.

I suspect that group identity, like nationalism and religious affiliation, will continue to have humble value in our world.  But, we are called by a greater voice than sectarian, ethnic, nationalistic religious separatism,  we are call by the voice of God to insure that our faith, our family and even our nationalism has universal goals of sharing with all, always at the forefront of our identity statements.   The Apostle Paul says of Jesus, for example, that “one man's act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all” (Romans 5:18) and Paul does not hint at condemnation for those who don't believe in Jesus.    And, later in John's gospel Jesus is quoted as saying, “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold” (John 10:16).

Here is my closing faith affirmation, which I invite you to try on for size.  God does, indeed, love all those who believe in Jesus.  That is because God is the God who loves all.  And we, who are loved by the one who loves all, should, in turn, love all, in loving the one who loves all.  Saying “YES” to God's love is important; it is not, however a condition that must be met if God is to love us.

In this March Lenten Madness, watch out for poisonous sakes and let's love our neighbors, all our neighbors as God loves, no matter who they are or what they do.  Love is greater still.  That is the Lenten madness that we are called to love like did Jesus: no matter what, we are called to be loving.

Amen