Serpents and Eternal Life
Jesus says to Nicodemus who comes to find out who Jesus is, “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” Adding the all too familiar sports stadium staple, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” [i] In an astonishing analogy, Jesus self-identifies himself with “the serpent.” The people escaping Egypt were bad-mouthing Moses and God, thus separating themselves from the love of the God who had engineered their escape from slavery. To teach them a lesson, God releases some serpents, which, if they nip you on the heel, you die. Learning their lesson, they repent. “We have sinned…please pray for the Lord to take the serpents away.” The Book of Common Prayer defines sin as all desires and actions that separate us from the love of God. [ii] Note: no one accuses them of sin. They know it and renounce it themselves.
The Lord of the Passover and Exodus instructs Moses to make a bronze serpent, put it high on a pole, so that when the people who have been bitten look up to the serpent, they are healed. And restored to a life with God once again. The people look up to the serpent and live. [iii] This all may strike us as bizarre. But there is ample evidence from the Bronze Age (3300-1200 BCE) of bronze serpents as cult objects throughout the world of the Bible. Especially in Egypt, where a single serpent on a pole, the Rod of Asclepius, which in both Greek and Egyptian mythology was a deity identified with healing.
We might note that paradoxically, God saves the people from their affliction by inviting them to gaze on the very image of their affliction. The suggestion seems to be that a problem cannot be solved unless we face it and accepted for what it is. Perhaps God is offering a hard but life-giving lesson to God’s beloved people as they suffer in the wilderness: There is no way around. The only way out is through. Lent is a time set aside to remind us of this most important lesson.
Jesus seems to say, “When I am lifted high upon a Roman cross, I am like the bronze-serpent Moses lifted up in the wilderness, which represents our God’s steadfast love and forgiveness, and desire to relent from punishment. God so loves the world that God gives his only Son, not to condemn the world but to save all who renounce all their desires and actions that separate themselves from the love God.”
The very heart of John 3:16 tells us that God loves and God gives. What God loves is the world, the cosmos, all creation and everyone and everything therein. God does not love only the church. God does not love only Americans. God does not love only white people. God calls us to love our neighbors, whomever they are and from wherever they come.
Jesus and Nicodemus both know that in the beginning, it says we are created, male and female, in the image of God. [iv] God’s image from the very beginning is to love and to give. We, therefore, have been placed here on this fragile Earth our island home to love and to give. To be gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abound in steadfast love, and to relent from punishing – as we hear that God does in the episode with the serpents in Numbers. This is what I understand Jesus means by his astonishing self-identification with the bronze-serpent of Moses. Jesus enters into a world of people that through word and action repeatedly separate themselves from God’s love and God’s forgiveness. It’s a world filled with anger and derision toward others – especially those others who are in any way unlike ourselves, unlike our tribe, unlike our country, unlike me.
Each Sunday in Lent we begin by saying, “Hear what our Lord Jesus Christ says! Love God with your whole self, and love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus does not make this up. He quotes Deuteronomy 6:5, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” And Deuteronomy 10: 19, “You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” And Leviticus 19:34, “The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the native-born among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.” That is, the Great Commandment and the Second that is like unto it, come from Torah, the first five books of the Bible. To be made in the image of God, is to embody God’s love and God’s infinite capacity to give to others, all others, even, as in Numbers, when they are speaking against God and you. Especially when they are speaking against God and you.
Look at the bronze serpent and live. Look at Jesus on the cross and have eternal life. Which is not simply a long life, or even life after death, but rather a character of one’s life here and now that embodies being made in the likeness of a God who loves and who gives – who gives everything that we might live. That we might have life eternal. Life lived with God never ends.
Ilia Delio, a Franciscan nun and scholar, tells us that Clare of Assisi, an early follower of Francis, “was known as ‘the mirror saint’ because she drew her spiritual insights from her deep reflection on the cross of Jesus Christ. She wrote to her friend, Agnes of Prague, princess and daughter of King Wenceslas, that the cross reflects your true image. ‘Gaze on this cross every day,’ she admonishes Agnes, ‘and study your face within it, so that you may be adorned with virtues within and without.’” Delio then asks, “Does your face reflect what is in your heart. When the image of who we are reflects what we are; when our face expresses what fills the heart, then we image Christ, the image of love incarnate – God’s agape love.” [v]
Jesus self-identifies with the bronze serpent as an agent of healing. Jesus self-identifies with all people in this world who suffer. [vi] Jesus self-identifies with all those whose lives seem to be lived day after day on a cross of separation, deception, and all the brokenness of the world. His astonishing self-identification with the bronze serpent and the cross stands as symbols of his love of God and love of Neighbor. He gives his life for the world. The whole world. Not for the church, not just for Christians, but for the whole world, everyone and everything therein. Lent, Good Friday, and Easter, all call us to reflect on the man on the cross as a reminder of just who we are created to be: images, icons, of a God who loves and who gives for the life of the world. As we look upon Jesus on the Cross, we are to see ourselves: agents of love, forgiveness, and healing for a broken world of broken people. There can be nothing more astonishing than this! Imagine what the world could be like were we to live into the astonishment of Jesus. This would truly be eternal life, here and now, and for ever and ever. Amen.
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