CURE FOR SNAKE BITE



CURE FOR SNAKE BITE

 

The lectionary this week lists three passages for which it isn't that all that easy to find a common thread.  Numbers21:4-9, John 3:14-21 and Ephesians 1:1-10

Scholars date the oral tradition of the Numbers passage from about 1400 BC and recorded in around 800 BC. To have been around that long, it must have been memorable to say the least.  The people brought out of Egypt and slavery begin to complain.  Not only did they complain against their leader Moses, they complained against God.  Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to this desert?  We would have better stayed in Egypt.  Have they forgotten that they were owned by people there, had no choice in their lives, treated as possessions, objects?  They gripe there is no food here and no water.  And we hate that miserable food, manna.  Things were reaching the point of revolt.  Something  had to be done.  The story teller relates that God took drastic action against the ingrates.  He sent poisonous snakes among the people who bit them and that many Israelites died. Now the people repented of their sins of speaking again the Lord and begged Moses to pray to the Lord to take the serpents away.  The Lord told Moses to take up one of the poisonous serpents and set it on a pole.  And that everyone who is bitten will look up at it and live. Moses made a serpent of shining bronze, set it on a pole and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.  Bronze, a bright alloy of copper and tin that must have shone bright light as the people looked up.

Snakes.  We see this symbol today of a snake on a pole as the caduceus- a universal symbol of healing.  Snake.  A animal mostly feared.  Used as a metaphor as a snaky deceitful person.  A snake in the grass, treacherous, lying, dangerous. 

But the snake is an amazing creature.  It sheds it old skin and emerges a new creature.  Thus, down through the ages the snake has been a symbol of rebirth. The Ouroboros is an ancient symbol of a serpent eating its own tail. The symbol represent the perpetual cycle of renewal of life, and infinity- the symbol of life, death and return, leading to immortality. The Israelites coming out of Egypt would have recognized the symbol.  Furthermore at the time of the setting down of the text in Numbers many traditions were in the mix.  Iranian and Iraqi civilizations were in the midst of a golden age or art science, new religions.  The Mediterranean civilizations were on the rise and were meeting: Phoenicia, Carthage, Etruscan, Greek.  Yet through all of this 'mixing' the Israelites, the Chosen People, were led to be faithful to their God.  Or die.

John 3:14:21  So, it not surprising that the author of the Gospel John begins this passage with a reminder that Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness.  But preaching that the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life infuriated the Jews.

John is writing in a period of upheaval also.  The Temple is no more.  The Rabbis are meeting to make the canon of the Torah.  It is a seriously important task.  They will be the People of the Book now that the Temple is gone. And here is John, born a Jew himself, preaching that Salvation will not come from Torah.  Salvation has come in a person, who is God.  The Son of Man who is Christ Jesus.  He is telling the society in which he lives that there is a choice to be made between Darkness and Light.  And the light is Christ Jesus who God sent into the world not to condemn the world but to save the world. This outrage the Jews, of course, who were hard at work attempting to preserve their faith by preserving God in The Book. For them, John was a heretic deserving of beating or even stoning to death for his teaching. 

Interesting that the Acts of the Apostles introduces a Pharisee and celebrated scholar of Mosaic Law name Gamaliel.  Peter and the other apostles are being prosecuted and beaten for continuing to preach the Gospel.  Gamaliel presents a powerful argument against killing the apostles reminding the Sanhedrin that killing them might touch off a revolt.  His argument is recorded thus in Acts 5:39:

"if it be of men, it will come to naught, but if it be of God, ye will not be able to overthrow it; lest perhaps ye be found even to fight against God".

Later in Acts we are told that Paul of Tarsus says that he was "educated at the feet of Gamaliel".  So it with wonder we read in Ephesians 2:1-10, the third lectionary text, the very Cure for Snake Bite.

Ephesians 2: 1.As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, ² in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. ³ All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh^[a] and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. ⁴ But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, ⁵ made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. ⁶ And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, ⁷ in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. ⁸ For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— ⁹ not by works, so that no one can boast. ¹⁰ For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

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Who were snake bitten and dead are now alive

Who lived for pleasure, doing whatever, playing whatever deceitful games of interest, are now offered by God the gift of grace.

Grace totally unmerited and unearned, just by the faith and belief in the light of Christ Jesus who was from the beginning, from Eden to the present day and for eternity, the only Cure for Snake Bite. 

Prayer:  God heal the broken and bring them to life and light.