Snakes and Idols- Wendy McCormick
Snakes and Idols”
Rev Wendy McCormick First Presbyterian Church – Granville - March 10, 2024
“Snakes! Why did it have to be snakes?” That is one of my daughter Lydia’s favorite movie lines. If you don’t recognize it, perhaps you have forgotten that Indiana Jones joins the 36% of US adults who suffer from ophidiophobia – aka fear of snakes. I would have thought the number was higher.
Fear of snakes and snakes as mythical symbols go back millennia to many ancient cultures, not just our Judeo-Christian one. Our series of covenant readings appointed for Lent take quite a detour on this fourth Sunday with this creepy, scary story from Numbers. It’s read because it is referenced in the much more familiar reading from John.
The snake story happens during the 40 years of God’s people wandering in the wilderness that follows the exodus. At the exodus, the people left slavery behind in Egypt and journeyed toward the land God had promised. For forty years. It’s hard to imagine how difficult the wilderness must have been. The people complained. They complained a lot. Perhaps they were better off in Egypt where life certainly wasn’t great but at least it was known. The devil you know and all that . . .
It’s easy to criticize their complaining as ungrateful whining, but I imagine I would have complained too. It was pretty awful. And as a therapist told me at the start of the COVID shutdown, there is little that is harder on the human nervous system than uncertainty. They had wilderness and uncertainty for 40 years.
Our bizarre little story brings God’s breaking point. This is the moment when God says, “Enough!” Teachers and parents can perhaps appreciate that we all have a breaking point for whining and complaining. After dozens of attempts to fix the problem, to respond compassionately, there’s a straw that breaks the camel’s back. And this is the moment when that happens to God. The story says that God sends poisonous snakes who start to bite the people; and the people who are bitten die.
Repentance comes swiftly. And just as swiftly, God responds. The response is this quasi-magical solution in which Moses is directed to put a bronze snake on a pole. And henceforth anyone who is bitten by a snake can look at the snake on the pole and be healed. It has similarities to the Greek symbols of healing linked to our own US symbol for medicine, the caduceus, twin snakes on a pole. The Greeks revered snakes, using them in healing rituals. Snake venom was considered remedial, and their skin-shedding symbolized rebirth and renewal.
It’s not surprising there were poisonous snakes in the wilderness. It’s hard to imagine that rough and desolate place not having poisonous snakes, even today. Clearly, the attack by the poisonous snakes was understood to be the result of God’s anger. AND the result of turning to God was God’s healing response. That’s the biblical message, isn’t it? When we reach out to God, God responds favorably. Ultimately, that’s likely why this bizarre story was preserved.
Indeed, a preaching podcast I enjoy said basically that: the point of this little story is that every time the people cry out, God responds favorably. Just say that and move on, the podcasters advised.
But I couldn’t quite leave it alone . . . snakes . . . why did it have to be snakes? Actually, my question was about idolatry. We read the 10 commandments last week and I talked about idolatry. Remember the story of the golden calf and how the people got in big trouble with God because it was an idol, a graven image.
So how is this snake on the pole thing not an idol?
We do know from the book of Kings that several hundred years after this exodus period, people were worshipping that serpent on the pole and making offerings to it. In a series of reforms in 715 BCE, King Hezekiah had the bronze serpent on the pole destroyed because it was an idol. Perhaps something that had once held positive value for healing and hope became an idol. That is how idolatry happens, isn’t it? An otherwise good value or practice gets out of balance. Maybe the pole had been a reminder of God’s mercy and favor and healing, but over time it turned into the source of that power. Maybe.
Turn with me to the New Testament lesson. It’s difficult to preach for a whole different reason. We’ve heard it so many times we think we know what it means. And that famous verse it contains has become a kind of cultural symbol, a kind of shorthand. In fact, I would say that in some quarters of contemporary Christianity, the verse itself has become an idol. Think stadium signs crowding to get on national TV, think bumper stickers and sandwich boards at county fairs – often they don’t even have the words, just the reference: John 3:16.
And when people quote the words themselves, we rarely hear verse 16 with verse 17 which completes the thought, and even more rarely do we hear the whole passage like we read today. We just have that one verse severed from its context and too often emphasizing the words “whoever believes”. I may get myself in trouble here, and I’m sorry if I’m picking on your favorite verse, but I do worry about the ways this verse gets pulled from its context and overused, even to the point of misuse – even to the point of becoming an idol -- maybe like that old snake on the pole.
The great English New Testament scholar N.T. Wright has written and spoken extensively about this, but put succinctly he has said, “Western Christians tend to think of ‘going to heaven’ or ‘going to hell’ as the framework for the Gospel, but the Bible story is not about us going somewhere, but the Creator God coming to live with us.”
This is the theme we have been exploring in our Lenten readings about the covenant, and this is the truest meaning of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus – the Creator God coming to live with us, God so deeply desiring relationship through creation and covenant and so many adventures and misadventures we have been touching on this season, that God became flesh and dwelt among us, that God so loved the world, so loved the world, that he gave his only Son.
The idolatry problem comes when the emphasis is on “you have to believe in order to have eternal life” and then becomes “those who don’t believe are condemned.” You may not have heard it this way and I hope you haven’t, but too many people have heard this amazing good news about the Creator God coming to live with us, as news that is totally conditional and completely contingent on their correct belief, and therefore not such great news after all. Too many people have been told this text means that anyone who is not Christian is condemned and anyone who is Christian but doesn’t have the right belief --- however the person making the rules defines right belief – is condemned as well.
I think the writer of John’s gospel would weep. I’m sure God does.
And maybe it’s because I have idolatry on the brain, but I really think this greatly and incorrectly simplified understanding of what God in Jesus is all about has itself become an idol. Confess correct belief in Jesus, preferably using the approved formulaic language, and you will go to heaven when you die. Fail to do that, and you can plan on the eternal fires of hell. And fail to convert your family and friends and live with the painful knowledge of their eternal destiny.
God so loved the world. God who made covenant with the rainbow, God who made covenant with a chosen people, God who promised consequence for disobedience to the third and fourth generation but blessings for obedience to the thousandth generation, God who we will read next week promised a new covenant written on our hearts, connecting us so innately to God that knowledge of God and God’s ways would be within us.
This is the God we’re talking about. This is the God who authors our Christmas stories as we celebrate the God who becomes flesh and lives among us, incarnation. And today just as that serpent was lifted up in the wilderness so that people could look and remember that when we cry out, God responds favorably, so too the Son of Man must be lifted up so that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. Here’s the thing Professor Wright and so many others wish we could get straight --- eternal life isn’t something that happens after we die. It’s living in relationship with this Creator God in the here and now. Jesus said, “I came that they might have life and have it abundantly.”
When we reduce this amazing reality of God-with-us to something that happens after death in a galaxy far, far away, we don’t just deny ourselves though we surely do that. We deny ourselves the strength and the comfort of God’s loving presence every step of our earthly journey. And we also miss that this same loving incarnate God is here for everybody else too and so may miss the opportunity to live lives that show people how much God loves them.
This narrow and misguided interpretation of why God came into the world as one of us makes the story all about judgment and condemnation and misses the amazing good news of this creator god who has been in love with humankind from page one.
OK. So am I just Pollyanna and I can’t handle judgment and condemnation? Is that my problem? I just want faith to be all sunshine and lollypops and I refuse to accept that God is God and God is serious? You can surely find people who will tell you that.
But here’s the thing. John says the light has come into the world, and people love darkness rather than light. The light has come into the world in Jesus, in this God who loves humanity so, so much. But people love the darkness. No kidding. People love the darkness. And there is so, so much darkness. Last week the heartbreaking and seemingly impossible Israeli-Palestinian conflict that has reached new levels since October 7 came into my own family and some of my very closest relationships. So much darkness. Ukraine. The border. The foster care system. So much darkness. The judgment isn’t having wrong belief. The judgment is that people love the darkness rather than the light. John says darkness brings its own condemnation. Not from God. Those who, do not believe are condemned already. Not because of wrong belief but because they love darkness; they’re ok with evil, suffering and injustice. Perhaps actively and consciously loving evil and darkness. Or perhaps passively finding the light too much to bear and the darkness too difficult to withstand.
And like Advent and Christmas this whole Lent-Easter thing is about the light that the darkness cannot overcome. The Son of Man, the one who came into the world as one of us because God so loved the world, because God so wants relationship with us, that one will be lifted up like the snake on the pole --- lifted up by the powers of darkness in the crucifixion and then lifted up by the power of the light in the resurrection because God will have the last word. The light overcomes the darkness.
And those who can’t take that, won’t take that, won’t have that are condemned already because they love the darkness more than the light. Not condemned to some place in the great beyond but condemned in the here and now to the separation from God’s love and light they have chosen for themselves.
Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved. God so loved the world.
And still does.
We can choose to live in the light of the one lifted up through God’s great love. Each day we can choose that and let that light burn into our hearts and seep out of our pores. Darkness doesn’t like it. Darkness will rise up. Good Friday is coming. But this God who has been seeking us from the very beginning does not give up and will not be defeated. For God so loved the world. Amen.
