FIRST READING Numbers 21:4–9
4 From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom; but the people became impatient on the way. 5 The people spoke against God and against Moses, “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.” 6 Then the LORD sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died. 7 The people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned by speaking against the LORD and against you; pray to the LORD to take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. 8 And the LORD said to Moses, “Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.” 9 So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.
PSALM Psalm 107:1–9
1 Give thanks to the LORD, for the LORD is good, for God’s mercy endures forever. 2 Let the redeemed of the LORD proclaim that God redeemed them from the hand of the foe, 3 gathering them in from the lands; from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south. 4 Some wandered in desert wastes; they found no path to a city where they might dwell. 5 They were hungry and thirsty; their spirits languished within them. 6 Then in their trouble they cried to the LORD, and you delivered them from their distress. 7 You led them on a straight path to go to a city where they might dwell. 8 Let them give thanks to you, LORD, for your steadfast love and your wonderful works for all people. 9 For you satisfy the thirsty soul and fill the hungry with good things.
SECOND READING Ephesians 2:1–10
1 You were dead through the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient. 3 All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else. 4 But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us 5 even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved — 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God — 9 not the result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.
GOSPEL John 3:14–21
14 And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. 16 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. 17 Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18 Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. 19 And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. 20 For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. 21 But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.”
THE STORY WORTH LIVING
Since 1981, millions of people have enjoyed the movie series “Indiana Jones”. Harrison Ford did a wonderful job of keeping us in suspense as he portrayed a fearless archeologist who bravely battled the wild, the supernatural and evil. Ford is a good actor and seems to be a decent guy. But mostly he and his “Indiana Jones” screen persona seem to hit the “hero” jackpot. As many of you saw in the news, Harrison Ford was in a spectacular airplane crash last week. Ford’s crash landing, and his amazing survival, made for media gold. Ford made an emergency landing of his vintage airplane on a golf course, managing not to hurt anyone else or damage any homes or property. And thankfully he survived. Hero stuff all over again. I wonder if he’ll now start giving Chuck Norris a run for his money in toughness jokes?
Everyone who knows anything about “Indiana Jones” knows that he hates snakes. He’s a strong, tough guy until he meets a slithery thing. Then he dissolves into a quivering mass of spinelessness. Now, there are people who do like snakes, who keep them as pets, and let them slide about their homes. But these people are definitely in the minority. Most of us, are right there with “Indiana Jones,” me included, want nothing to do with snakes. Take the black snake for example. The list of benefits this creature provides is long. Yet, even though I know it’s not poisonous and is a benefit to have around, I’d still rather not be around the things. In my mind the only good snake is a dead snake.
Snakes, as a whole, are sneaky, scaly, fast and scary. Snakes are creatures we really don’t want to engage or embrace. “Anaconda” was a great title for a movie about the Amazon, but “Snakes on a Plane” was there ever a better B-movie title? It was brilliant: combining our fear of snakes with our loathing of economy class air travel — what a genius movie idea. Snakes are creatures so different from us that they evoke revulsion and fear, even when we don’t know if the snake we’re looking at is dangerous, or a harmless natural insect repellant.
The vast majority of people simply don’t have a natural warm, fuzzy relationship with limbless reptiles. We’ve been conditioned to this animosity, to this fear, since the words of Genesis. In the “second” Genesis story, the tale of Adam and Eve and their fall from the paradise of Eden, the first “bad guy” isn’t a guy but a serpent. The serpent would be turned into a snake, but at this point it’s a serpent.
Most of us haven’t done an in-depth study into this passage so we simply see the snake and serpent as one in the same. However, the Hebrew word in Genesis denoting “serpent” (nahash) signifies a dragon (see Isaiah 27:1) or sea monster (Job 26:13). However, the latter seems highly improbable since the event takes place in the middle of the garden. So I guess we could translate the word serpent as “dragon.”
This serpent is described as “more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made” (Genesis 3:1). This description, however, doesn’t give the serpent any special, extraordinary powers or fire-breathing skills. Instead it clearly states that the serpent is, like everything else on earth, a creature that “the Lord God had made.” The only “power” that the serpent wields is in being “crafty,” nothing else.
The serpent, in the third chapter of Genesis, mainly addresses Eve. The word “you” in Hebrew is plural and can be translated as “Y’all.” The way this story is read most often is that Adam is off doing something else or at least not in the immediate vicinity. However, by verse 6 it’s obvious that Adam had joined her. The point is that it’s Eve who responds to the serpent, not Adam. Adam is silent the whole time, leaving Eve to engage the creature. Adam lets Eve do the talking, and eventually the eating. He doesn’t ask for God’s help, nor does he counsel his wife. He just steps back and lets Eve handle the situation. Even though Adam was commanded to “guard” the garden, and to protect it and care for it, when confronted by the serpent, he didn’t protect anything, including his wife. His lack of response froze him, and he wouldn’t lay down anything, his intercession or his life, to save his wife or the garden.
Adam fails to prevent the serpent from convincing the woman to eat the fruit from the forbidden tree. It was she alone who took from the tree and ate. Here Eve eats the forbidden fruit solitarily and then gave some to her husband, who eats, in the midst of Eden’s lush garden. And when that transgression is discovered by God, the created world changes forever: it’s choice and consequences. Humans made their choice. And with every choice there is a consequence.
One thing I need to remind you of is that the word consequence is neutral. We have a tendency to think of the word consequence as negative. However, everything we do comes with a result. Pay your electric bill and the juice keeps flowing in the wires. However, choose not to pay your bill and you’re left in the dark. Eat right and exercise regularly and experts will tell you you’ll enjoy a healthier life. Over indulge and sit around all day and you can expect health problems. For every decision we make, every action we take there is a result and that result can either be good or bad. The same can be said for the decision Adam and Eve made.
For Adam and Eve and the serpent, the consequences were life changing to say the least. Adam and Eve were banished from their paradise, Eve and womankind would now experience pain in child birth, Adam and mankind would now eat bread by the sweat of his brow while contending with weeds and the serpent is changed into a snake and charged with a particular curse: “I will put enmity between you and woman, and between your offspring and hers: he will strike your head and you will strike his heel” (Genesis 3:15).
Throughout the long history of animosity between humans and snakes, our first instinct has always been to hit the snake on the head and crush its skull. “He will strike your head.” Crushing the skull of a snake is mainly (but wrongly) seen to be the only way to assure one’s own survival and safety. It seems to be our natural reaction even though we know that all snakes are not “bad” creatures.
In reality, snakes are just creatures, doing what they’re supposed to do, and doing it well. To be honest, it’s people that are the problem. Human gullibility, weakness, and stupidity, lures us to listen to voices that whisper against the truth of God’s commands. It’s our own personal failings and frailties that makes that skull-crushing blow seem like such a necessity. That’s the reality of human wickedness and weakness. This week’s gospel text isn’t about a moment of human failure. It’s about the revelation of God’s redemptive rescue of humanity for all eternity, a rescue and redemption that enables eternity to be enveloped in the everyday. Jesus’ amazing words as recorded in John’s gospel give both rationale and reason to the strange words that Jesus was offering to His audience.
First Jesus speaks about a very odd moment in Hebrew history, the moment when a bronze rendition of a serpent offered healing to the Israelites as they were waiting in the wilderness. Yes, they had been bad. Yes, they were getting bit by lots of nasty snakes who lived in the region. Yes, they needed help. The Israelites had bad-mouthed God and disobeyed Him. Not a good thing. So they start getting bit by an influx of nasty snakes. The divine word to Moses was to concoct a “vaccine.” When you stop and consider it, vaccines are nothing more than “dead” versions of whatever virulent toxin is threatening a local population. For Moses the bronze sculpture of the serpents that were hurting his people became the “vaccine,” the “cure” so that everyone who looked upon the sculpture was healed. The Hebrew people were “inoculated” by the vaccine God directed Moses to erect.
But the real story in this week’s gospel text isn’t about “snakes on a plane.” It’s not about snakes anywhere at any time. The real story in this week’ gospel is about God’s overwhelming love for our snake-infested, viper’s den world. This week’s gospel text is about kicking those snakes to the curb, and embracing a whole new world of possibility. It’s a passage we memorized from youth, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life” (John 3:16).
It’s the text everyone knows, even when we don’t know what it means. What it means is, there are no more snakes. God has sent us so much love that there’s nothing scary left for people who love. Jesus lived the life of a “game changer.” He changed all the rules and all the regulations. In His crucifixion Jesus was lifted up on a “tree,” killed horribly in a public manner. And at the place of the “skull,” or “Golgotha,” the serpent’s skull was forever crushed, and the power of sin over us was destroyed.
The “Big Story” of the Bible isn’t the Lord’s snapping of some serpent’s head. The big story isn’t the knocking down of some evil empire. The “Big Story” is that God changed all the rules. God made divine strength into weakness. God made the incarnation of the Son of God a moment for sacrifice, not survival. Today’s reading from St. John’s gospel (3:14-21) is a time when we’re encouraged to tell the BIG STORY, not the small stories. The greatest story ever told was about a divine sacrifice for love. The serpent didn’t win. The love of God for humanity wins.
If there’s any time that the greatest story ever told was put into writing it was in John 3:16 — “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believe in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” There are a good many stories in the Bible, lots of small stories, family stories, tribal stories, stories of weakness and strength, stories of triumph and tragedy. They’re all stories that are important and ones that matter. But they’re all stories that feed into the One Big Story, the only story that truly matters.
There’s only one main story from Genesis to Revelation, that’s the big story of the Bible. The big story of the Bible is that God is God and we are not, and that God created us for relationship and will stop at nothing to show us how much He loves us. The big story is that all we endure, all that happens in our lives, good and bad, is under God’s watchful care and love for us. We can’t escape living in and through a story. All of us are living a story. The only question is what story and whose story are you living? Madison Avenue? Wall Street? Hollywood? Bethlehem? We all have our unique stories.
It’s the small and smashing moments that change our personal lives and move them in different directions. But those aren’t the moments that mold us forever. Instead there’s another, greater moment in the history of this world that will change us forever if we let it. Our personal lives are our personal narratives. But beyond our personal life story is a larger “meta-narrative” . . . a big story of God’s gift of love and salvation for all life, forever and ever. This is the “big story” of the Bible.
It’s not a story about snakes or sex or temptation and turmoil of thought. It’s more than a story of screw-ups or sadness. It’s a huge love story, a meta-narrative, that ends in amazing grace and joy to the world. The death of Jesus Christ on the cross was “like” the symbolic snake raised on the stick that saved the Israelites in the desert. The death of Christ at a place called “Golgotha,” “The Place of The Skull,” raised the specter of “death’s head” throughout human history. Jesus, Christ crucified was and is the big story, the meta-narrative, the God’s final word. And it was a word of forgiveness and grace and love.
We all live our own personal stories, our “small” stories of large hurt and loss. But as followers of Jesus we each live our story within the “meta-narrative,” the greater story, of God’s redefining loss and redeeming love for one each of us. In the modern, cell phone age vernacular, Jesus is God’s selfie, and the Christian “selfie” is selfing Christ, letting Christ so live in us that “it is not I who live but Christ lives within me” (Galatians 2:20). Jesus invites us to let Him be the author of our own story, so that His story and our story can become one. And that one story, the greatest story ever (but too often never) told, is this: “For God so loved the world, that He gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
We can’t ignore the small stories for without them we could never fully understand the big story. In the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, God changed the rules forever and on that hill called Calvary, Jesus crushed the serpent’s head in a final crushing blow. Sin no longer has the power nor is death the final word for in Christ both have been defeated. It was out of God’s love that He created, and it was out of His love as shown in Jesus Christ that He recreated.
Amen