Look and Live

When Nicodemus went to visit Jesus at night back in the third chapter of John, the teacher said some curious things. We might most quickly remember that he said that most famous verse John 3:16; however, that is not all he said. I’ve always been fascinated by Jesus comparing himself to a serpent lifted up in the wilderness, which comes just two sentences before the bold statement of God’s love of the world. Today we heard the precursor story from Numbers in which a bronze serpent made by Moses helped to heal those who were snake-bitten in the wilderness, as they complained about their current plight. What does this mean though? Why did Jesus compare the crucifixion with a somewhat obscure passage about the Israelites’ disobedience?

Pretty quickly we realize that the Son of Man being lifted up indicates the manner of death that Jesus would undertake upon the cross. And yet, if we expand the conversation that Jesus was having with Nicodemus in John’s Gospel even a little bit we hear that those who believe in the one lifted up have eternal life. Still to me this appears a little blurry. If we believe in Christ, then we gain life everlasting. Yes, we have heard this before many times, and I believe it, but this bit about the snakes in the wilderness still does not compute.

Looking more specifically at the story from Numbers may open up the wisdom of Jesus’ words for us. The snakes in the wilderness were not random. After being saved from a life of slavery in Egypt the people of Israel began to grumble to God. They took their complaints to Moses saying, “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.” Earlier in the Book of Numbers God gave the people the “miserable food” of manna, right before this story Moses had led the people to waters flowing from a rock, but this sustenance appeared boring to the people. Thus, they complained. God’s response startles me. He sent snakes.

God responded to the people’s complaints not with an affirming pat on the back or a hopeful way forward, but instead with poisonous serpents. These snakes bit the Israelites and many even died. The result of these bites though was for the people to recognize that they had sinned. Oddly enough the serpents helped the Israelites to see that speaking against God and against God’s servant had been foolish. This tough love led them to believe once more. We can understand this in our own lives. If we see a negative consequence of something that we have done we may change what we are doing, still it is hard for me to believe in a God who would send snakes, or a flood in the story of Noah, or even a worm in the story of Jonah. To quote Indiana Jones, “Why does it have to be snakes?”

While this bit of the story seems odd and perhaps a little tough for me to comprehend, something more exists if we dig a little deeper. When the people asked Moses to pray for God to relent. God’s response was not to take away the serpents altogether. Instead, God told Moses to make a serpent and when the people looked at the serpent they would live. This is where it gets really interesting. When the people were bit, as a response to their sins of impatience and unbelief, they were to look at a serpent, which was in fact a sign pointing to their sinful state. The serpent that Moses created signified both the results of their sinful state and the salvation that God would offer to cure them of its repercussions. Jesus very easily could be seen in a similar manner.

When we look upon Jesus high on the cross we are forced to see both the consequences of the sin that poisons us and the salvation that heals us from it. The sins of the world literally put Jesus upon the cross. Were the people of Jesus’ day not sinful they would have been able to see his true nature; however, God’s will was ultimate love and sacrifice even in the face of individual and systematic evil. When Jesus told Nicodemus, who would have been familiar with the story we heard from Numbers, that the Son of Man must be lifted up like the serpent in the wilderness our Lord connected a very important set of dots for the religious leader and for us.

Until we confront our sinful nature and have the courage to look at the wrongs we commit, then we will continue to live in a toxic state continuously bitten by the offspring of our sins. And yet, when we boldly believe in God something changes. We must be willing to trust that God will guide us through even those times when we have to confront the darkest parts of our selves. When we look at the serpent, which is the result of our sin AND the sign that points to our salvation, then we finally receive the antidote that gives us life. To believe in God is to trust that even in our sinfulness God’s love will guide us into life. May we be bold enough to see our sinful nature and even bolder still to believe that Jesus is the cure for our poisoned, fallen state!