Prescription on a pole
Commentary
We have so many aisles of medications in our country today that home remedies may be a vanishing art. So many over-the-counter products boast that they can cure what ails us, not to mention the almost infinite number of prescription medicines that our doctors may commend to us for our good.
An older generation, however, remembers the homemade treatments and concoctions that were handed down from Grandma. It was hard to trace the science behind such traditional home remedies, but they had the credibility of years, experience, common sense, and love.
Sometimes our treatments -- whether Grandma's or the pharmacist's -- are quite distasteful. And, as children, we may have pursed our lips and turned up our noses, in need of persuasion that this curdled spoonful was really ultimately good. Likewise, as adults: the procedures and treatments we sometimes face bring both great pain and expense, and we may wonder if it's worth it all.
God looked out once upon a people who were dying. They needed some cures, and fast. And so he wrote out a prescription for Moses to fill: a bronze snake hung up on a pole for all to see. It was not an expensive remedy -- at least not in its original incarnation -- nor was it a painful procedure for the needy patients. And it was only at an intellectual level that this prescription was hard to swallow.
The Old Testament Lesson this week tells us the story of this prescription on a pole. The Gospel Lesson invites us to rethink it, and the passage from Paul reminds us just how God's salvation works.
Numbers 21:4-9
The book of Numbers is seldom mentioned when folks talk about their favorite passages from scripture. Yet, while this obscure story, brief and tucked away in the rarely-read Old Testament, may seem initially unimportant to the people in our pews, the imagery of the episode is endlessly powerful for us as Christians.
First, there is the strange choice of remedy. In the twenty-first century, we think scientifically about our remedies -- there is a traceable cause-and-effect relationship between our treatments and our cures. No such relationship can be detected here, however. There is no explaining how a look at a manufactured snake can heal a snakebite. In that sense, we might be inclined to give this remedy the label of "miracle." We might also label it an act of faith: to trust and obey God's inexplicable prescription.
Moreover, God's chosen remedy is a strange one not just in theory but also in detail. If we grant that the bitten Israelites can be healed by looking at some erected thing, what thing might we choose? What symbol would we guess or select? Not this one. We are surprised to find that the remedy recalls the malady.
Furthermore, we may also think God's remedy strange because it does not seem to strike at the root of the problem. The final line in our Old Testament Lesson reports that "whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live." Isn't it odd that the Lord would provide a cure rather than simply removing the cause? Why should Israel settle for what a person could do "whenever a serpent bit someone"? Why didn't God remove the serpents altogether?
On this last point, of course, we find ourselves in the deep end of the pool. For now we are entertaining questions like "Why does God permit evil to exist?" and "Why didn't God just defeat the devil right away?" and even "Why did God allow the forbidden fruit and the serpent in Eden in the first place?"
Within the immediate context of this story, we observe that the poisonous serpents come into the camp as a result of the people's faithlessness and complaining. Interestingly, we see that God provides a remedy for the consequence of the people's sin, but he does not remove the consequence.
Also, we suggested above that God's remedy does not seem to strike at the root of the problem, but that statement presumes that the root of the problem is the poisonous snakes. Perhaps it is not. Perhaps Israel's real problem is faithlessness, and the serpents are only a symptom -- or at least an effect -- of that root cause. If so, then a remedy that requires a faithful response does, in fact, strike very much at the heart of the problem.
That faithful response brings us to the second compelling element of this story: the required participation of the afflicted. The human role is never static, never entirely passive, in God's saving acts. We are not necessarily instrumental to the deliverance, but still we must opt to participate in it. There is no sense in which the Israelites healed themselves, and yet they did have to make a choice to partake of the healing. They were not just suffering in their tents when, suddenly, they were healed. No, they were required to do something -- to look at the serpent on the pole. In spite of the complete absence of empirical cause-and-effect, the people were called upon to respond to God's prescription, and that response was an act of faith.
That, finally, brings us to the third element: namely, the very limited nature of their participation. The Israelites were indeed required to do something to be healed, but not much. There was no act of heroism required, no expense to be paid, no meritorious deed to qualify for it. Therefore, just as there was no detectable medical or scientific cause-and-effect relationship between the remedy and their healing, likewise there was no real merit or effort figured into the calculation of God's healing. The people were not saved by their diligence, their money, or their righteousness. Instead, there was a simple act of faith, and then they were healed.
Ephesians 2:1-10
Good writing requires a good start. What will catch the reader's attention? What will make him or her bother to keep reading?
Paul catches our attention with the forceful way in which he starts this chapter of Ephesians. "You were dead," he declares, "through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived." To a novice, his language might seem hyperbolic, or at least metaphorical. Of course the Ephesians weren't actually dead; Paul is just trying to illustrate a point.
Taken with Jesus' use of verb tenses in our Gospel Lesson, however, we are confronted with a reality that is neither hyperbole nor metaphor. Jesus said, "Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already" (John 3:18). The condemnation, it seems, is not in the future; it has already occurred. Similarly, Jesus says, "Anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and does not come under judgment, but has passed from death to life" (John 5:24). We see that eternal life is not merely a promise waiting beyond the grave; it is a present reality. It's not that the person who believes will eventually pass from death to life; he already has.
Our human tendency is to draw the line of demarcation in the wrong place. We think of our physical death as the great pivotal moment, but the condemnation, the judgment, and the start of eternal life have all occurred long before that. There is some earlier point on our time line when we pass from death to life. That is the paradigm suggested by Jesus and the reality to which Paul refers when he tells the Ephesians that they "were dead through the trespasses and sins in which (they) once lived."
"Following the course of this world," at first blush, sounds innocuous enough. From a young age, we show our instinct to follow the crowd. It is an essential part of fitting in wherever we happen to be. And, similarly, Paul's later reference to being "like everyone else" seems like a harmless observation. After all, being "like everyone else" is, at times, precisely our aspiration.
But "this world" is never innocuous in the New Testament. And being "like everyone else" is a harsh condemnation when the paradigm says that "everyone else" is a child of wrath, a slave of sin, and dead in their trespasses. Indeed, even in matters of ordinary human goodness, Jesus questions the merit of being like everyone else (see Matthew 5:43-48).
In considering our Old Testament Lesson, we observed the nature of our human participation in God's saving acts. On the one hand, we are not passive objects of his deliverance. On the other hand, we are not necessarily instrumental in our deliverance, either. Instead, in the case of the Israelites in the wilderness, they were required to participate, but their participation was more an act of faith than a cause-and-effect contribution to their healing.
In the light of Paul's explanation of the gospel here, we see that the Israelites' healing is an apt metaphor for our salvation. "By grace you have been saved through faith," Paul writes, "and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God -- not the result of works, so that no one may boast." The Israelites would have been hard-pressed to argue that their "works" had healed them -- that is, that they had done anything to heal themselves. Likewise, we don't really do anything to save ourselves. But the Israelites around the pole -- like Christians around the cross -- access God's gracious remedy only through faith.
John 3:14-21
We may be accustomed to turning to Romans, Colossians, or Hebrews in order to explicate for our people the person and work of Christ. But here, in the familiar environs of John 3, we have Jesus' own explanation of who he is and what he came to do.
No single verse of scripture may be as familiar in our churches as John 3:16. Even in a day of such biblical illiteracy, a sizeable majority of the people in my congregation would be able to recite John 3:16. At the same time, however, I would be surprised if anyone in my congregation could recite John 3:14-15. One would think that such a bright spotlight on verse 16 would have cast at least a little light onto verses 14 and 15, but I suspect that Jesus' allusion to the serpent on the pole is largely unfamiliar to the people in our pews.
Nevertheless, that one reference by Jesus takes that obscure episode from the wilderness and elevates it to an event with enormous significance and meaning. It ceases to be just a strange little incident in the desert, and it becomes a grand foreshadowing of the grandest event of all. Now, as Jesus connects the dots for us in John 3, that peculiar pole becomes the cross. And, more remarkable still, Jesus becomes the bronze serpent.
The familiar passage moves beyond the reference to the serpent on a pole.
Verses 16 and 17 state marvelously the motive and purpose of God. It is surely an essential part of the proclamation of the gospel to report not only what God did but also to reveal what God wants. He does not want to condemn, but to save (see also Ezekiel 18:30-32). He is motivated by love, and that love prompts him to initiate. It is not merely that he responds mercifully when we come to him, but rather that he begins by coming to us (see also Romans 5:8). His love and salvation are not limited to an exclusive group, a covenant people, a worthy few, but for "everyone who believes" so that "the world might be saved."
The end of this Gospel Lesson makes abundant reference to "light," which is a large and significant theme in John's Gospel. At the outset, John identifies "light" with the pre-existent Word. And just as God spoke light into the darkness and chaos "in the beginning," so now again his light "shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it" (1:5). John the Baptist, we read, came "as a witness to testify to the light" (1:6). And Jesus himself said, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life" (8:12).
While the passage comes from a pre-scientific age, the imagery may feel reminiscent of a science experiment. A student in a lab will add a chemical to a solution and measure the change and reaction of that solution. Some chemical reactions are diagnostic in nature: that is, the application of a chemical reveals what the subject substance contains. And so it is here with light. The light suddenly shines into the world, and it elicits different reactions: some are drawn to it, while others resist and hide from it. Therein lies the judgment.
Jesus' observation here that "people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil" recalls Luke's account of the Garden of Gethsemane. When the antagonists arrive in the garden to smuggle Jesus away, he notes that they had taken no action when he was with them "day after day in the temple." No, but rather they act at night, for "this is your hour, and the power of darkness!" (Luke 22:53).
Application
As we endeavored to illustrate above, the serpent on a pole episode in Numbers serves as its own microcosmic glimpse into how God works. The provision of a remedy, though the affliction is deserved and, in some respects, self-induced; is the required participation of people in God's deliverance, even while affirming that the deliverance is entirely God's doing; the strangeness of God's remedies; and the necessity of faith. These elements can, in their own right, be affirmed as characteristic of how God works.
Now that Jesus makes such a clear connection between that wilderness episode and his crucifixion, however, we are compelled to take it a step further. The serpent on a pole is no longer just a generic model of how God works. Now it is a very specific foreshadowing of God's saving work in Christ.
We rejoice in the truth that our salvation is not our own doing (see Ephesians 2:8-9), while at the same time affirming the necessity of faith (Romans 3:22-31) and our participation in our salvation (Acts 16:29-31). We are prompted to consider again the observation that the remedy recalls the malady. It was not some symbol of health hung on the pole, but a replica of the poisonous serpents. So, too, God "made him to be sin who knew no sin" (2 Corinthians 5:21). Beyond the notion of Jesus paying the price for sin on the cross, Paul goes a dramatic step further and says that he was made "to be sin." So, again, the remedy recalls the malady.
Alternative Applications
1) Numbers 21:4-9; Ephesians 2:1-10. "A Good, Healthy Appetite" -- "I just don't have much of an appetite." I have heard that lament countless times when visiting parishioners in the hospital. "I know that I need to eat," they say, "but I just don't feel like it."
That's a bad sign, for a good, healthy appetite is a sign of good health, and regaining an appetite is often an indication that someone who had been sick is getting better.
On the other hand, not all appetites are good and healthy.
The whole mess in the wilderness episode, you recall, began with the people's appetites. The problem did not begin with the poisonous serpents, but with the people's complaining. Their complaint was about food. "Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?" they whined. "There is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food."
If, in fact, there had been no food, then perhaps their protest would have had some credibility, and their fear of dying would have been justified. But they had food. Daily and miraculously, God was providing food for them in the wilderness, so they allege that there is "no food" simply because they regard it as "miserable food."
Here, of course, is the hallmark of selfish ingratitude: we don't see what we do have simply because we would prefer to have something else.
In Paul's letter to the Ephesians, meanwhile, the apostle observes that "all of us once lived ... in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses." That is his way of characterizing our former condition, and it seems to be all about the flesh. Such a generalization is not uncommon to Paul (see also, for example, Romans 7 and 8; Galatians 5). Nor is a spirit vs. flesh paradigm unique to Paul (such as Mark 14:38; John 3:6; 1 Peter 2:11).
All of fallen humanity, it seems, needs to regain a good, healthy appetite. Not because we have lost our appetite, but rather because the appetites of our flesh are out of control. It's interesting that humankind's very first sin is represented in terms of a fleshly appetite. And ever since -- like the Israelites in the wilderness, whose grumbling against God began with the grumbling of their stomachs -- we have been "following the desires of flesh and senses."
2) Numbers 21:4-9. "Bound for the Promised Land" -- Israel's exodus experience has long been cherished as a meaningful metaphor for the Christian life. We begin as slaves, where God finds us and saves us. The Christian life is a journey, and we are dependent upon his guiding and providing throughout all of it. Some of the journey may feel like a wilderness, to be sure, but we press on with a hope rooted in God's promise.
Given the larger metaphor, one particular line from this wilderness episode is especially challenging to us: "the people became impatient on the way."
The people are on their way from the land of their bondage to the land of God's promise. They have witnessed his grace and his power. They enjoy his daily providence and constant guidance, yet they "became impatient on the way," and that led to trouble and to tragedy.
In spite of all that we have seen in our walk with God, we become anxious about what we do not see. The progress, the answer to prayer, some clarity about God's will, or victory over temptation -- when we do not see these things, we may become impatient on the way.
Nineteenth-century Baptist pastor, Joseph Gilmore, wrote the words that the Israelites ought to have sung -- and we ought also to sing -- when becoming impatient on the way. "Lord, I would place my hand in thine, nor ever murmur nor repine; content whatever lot I see, since 'tis my God that leadeth me" ("He Leadeth Me: O Blessed Thought").
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22
It's been said that people have short memories. It must be so. Simple observation is verification enough. Many can site the passage of time as reason enough. Middle age slips barely noticed into old age. Memories blend and soon come the moments when the reason for walking into a room are unclear. Collectively, we forget the lessons of history, as war after war scars the face of God. Acts of tyrants and lunatics conveniently slip the common mind as the tape loop of history plays again and again. Same story, different characters.
These slippages are troubling, it's true, but there is a deeper, more profound memory loss that plagues us. We forget, as this writer points out, our God who has done great things for us.
For the people of Israel, it was forgetting the great liberation of the Exodus. "The wondrous works in the land of Ham, and awesome deeds by the Red Sea" (vv. 21-22). This is significant. It's rather like forgetting the name of your mother or father.
Before we get too judgmental with the people of Israel, though, we ought to take a look at ourselves. Confession, it turns out, really is good for the soul. The question to be posed here is not if we have forgotten God, but how. A look at our behavior, particularly within churches, indicates painfully our ecclesial loss of memory.
Are our sanctuaries truly what they claim to be? Safe places? Sanctuaries in deed, and not just in name? Have we "broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us"? (Ephesians 2:14). Or do we make distinctions and judgments, pushing the very people from us whom God calls us to welcome and to love? Have we forgotten the God who calls us into "ministries of reconciliation"? (2 Corinthians 5:16). Do we recall the Savior who gave it all so that we might claim a new life of hope and justice?
These are not trivial questions. Think about our churches. Consider your own church. Is the Christian community a place where God is recalled and honored, both in individual and communal lives or is God neatly tucked into the shadows of institutional necessities?
Just as people with no vision will surely perish, so too will the faith community that does not keep the saving God at the core of their being. Church budgets, council meetings, and the chatter of the institution may feel important, but it can all become and easy occasion for idolatry (vv. 19, 20).
It falls to each of us, then, to remember God, not as an act of sentimental recollection, but as the Savior who comes always into our lives to call us to faithfulness. The creating one who is worthy of our worship, our praise, and yes, our obedience.
An older generation, however, remembers the homemade treatments and concoctions that were handed down from Grandma. It was hard to trace the science behind such traditional home remedies, but they had the credibility of years, experience, common sense, and love.
Sometimes our treatments -- whether Grandma's or the pharmacist's -- are quite distasteful. And, as children, we may have pursed our lips and turned up our noses, in need of persuasion that this curdled spoonful was really ultimately good. Likewise, as adults: the procedures and treatments we sometimes face bring both great pain and expense, and we may wonder if it's worth it all.
God looked out once upon a people who were dying. They needed some cures, and fast. And so he wrote out a prescription for Moses to fill: a bronze snake hung up on a pole for all to see. It was not an expensive remedy -- at least not in its original incarnation -- nor was it a painful procedure for the needy patients. And it was only at an intellectual level that this prescription was hard to swallow.
The Old Testament Lesson this week tells us the story of this prescription on a pole. The Gospel Lesson invites us to rethink it, and the passage from Paul reminds us just how God's salvation works.
Numbers 21:4-9
The book of Numbers is seldom mentioned when folks talk about their favorite passages from scripture. Yet, while this obscure story, brief and tucked away in the rarely-read Old Testament, may seem initially unimportant to the people in our pews, the imagery of the episode is endlessly powerful for us as Christians.
First, there is the strange choice of remedy. In the twenty-first century, we think scientifically about our remedies -- there is a traceable cause-and-effect relationship between our treatments and our cures. No such relationship can be detected here, however. There is no explaining how a look at a manufactured snake can heal a snakebite. In that sense, we might be inclined to give this remedy the label of "miracle." We might also label it an act of faith: to trust and obey God's inexplicable prescription.
Moreover, God's chosen remedy is a strange one not just in theory but also in detail. If we grant that the bitten Israelites can be healed by looking at some erected thing, what thing might we choose? What symbol would we guess or select? Not this one. We are surprised to find that the remedy recalls the malady.
Furthermore, we may also think God's remedy strange because it does not seem to strike at the root of the problem. The final line in our Old Testament Lesson reports that "whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live." Isn't it odd that the Lord would provide a cure rather than simply removing the cause? Why should Israel settle for what a person could do "whenever a serpent bit someone"? Why didn't God remove the serpents altogether?
On this last point, of course, we find ourselves in the deep end of the pool. For now we are entertaining questions like "Why does God permit evil to exist?" and "Why didn't God just defeat the devil right away?" and even "Why did God allow the forbidden fruit and the serpent in Eden in the first place?"
Within the immediate context of this story, we observe that the poisonous serpents come into the camp as a result of the people's faithlessness and complaining. Interestingly, we see that God provides a remedy for the consequence of the people's sin, but he does not remove the consequence.
Also, we suggested above that God's remedy does not seem to strike at the root of the problem, but that statement presumes that the root of the problem is the poisonous snakes. Perhaps it is not. Perhaps Israel's real problem is faithlessness, and the serpents are only a symptom -- or at least an effect -- of that root cause. If so, then a remedy that requires a faithful response does, in fact, strike very much at the heart of the problem.
That faithful response brings us to the second compelling element of this story: the required participation of the afflicted. The human role is never static, never entirely passive, in God's saving acts. We are not necessarily instrumental to the deliverance, but still we must opt to participate in it. There is no sense in which the Israelites healed themselves, and yet they did have to make a choice to partake of the healing. They were not just suffering in their tents when, suddenly, they were healed. No, they were required to do something -- to look at the serpent on the pole. In spite of the complete absence of empirical cause-and-effect, the people were called upon to respond to God's prescription, and that response was an act of faith.
That, finally, brings us to the third element: namely, the very limited nature of their participation. The Israelites were indeed required to do something to be healed, but not much. There was no act of heroism required, no expense to be paid, no meritorious deed to qualify for it. Therefore, just as there was no detectable medical or scientific cause-and-effect relationship between the remedy and their healing, likewise there was no real merit or effort figured into the calculation of God's healing. The people were not saved by their diligence, their money, or their righteousness. Instead, there was a simple act of faith, and then they were healed.
Ephesians 2:1-10
Good writing requires a good start. What will catch the reader's attention? What will make him or her bother to keep reading?
Paul catches our attention with the forceful way in which he starts this chapter of Ephesians. "You were dead," he declares, "through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived." To a novice, his language might seem hyperbolic, or at least metaphorical. Of course the Ephesians weren't actually dead; Paul is just trying to illustrate a point.
Taken with Jesus' use of verb tenses in our Gospel Lesson, however, we are confronted with a reality that is neither hyperbole nor metaphor. Jesus said, "Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already" (John 3:18). The condemnation, it seems, is not in the future; it has already occurred. Similarly, Jesus says, "Anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and does not come under judgment, but has passed from death to life" (John 5:24). We see that eternal life is not merely a promise waiting beyond the grave; it is a present reality. It's not that the person who believes will eventually pass from death to life; he already has.
Our human tendency is to draw the line of demarcation in the wrong place. We think of our physical death as the great pivotal moment, but the condemnation, the judgment, and the start of eternal life have all occurred long before that. There is some earlier point on our time line when we pass from death to life. That is the paradigm suggested by Jesus and the reality to which Paul refers when he tells the Ephesians that they "were dead through the trespasses and sins in which (they) once lived."
"Following the course of this world," at first blush, sounds innocuous enough. From a young age, we show our instinct to follow the crowd. It is an essential part of fitting in wherever we happen to be. And, similarly, Paul's later reference to being "like everyone else" seems like a harmless observation. After all, being "like everyone else" is, at times, precisely our aspiration.
But "this world" is never innocuous in the New Testament. And being "like everyone else" is a harsh condemnation when the paradigm says that "everyone else" is a child of wrath, a slave of sin, and dead in their trespasses. Indeed, even in matters of ordinary human goodness, Jesus questions the merit of being like everyone else (see Matthew 5:43-48).
In considering our Old Testament Lesson, we observed the nature of our human participation in God's saving acts. On the one hand, we are not passive objects of his deliverance. On the other hand, we are not necessarily instrumental in our deliverance, either. Instead, in the case of the Israelites in the wilderness, they were required to participate, but their participation was more an act of faith than a cause-and-effect contribution to their healing.
In the light of Paul's explanation of the gospel here, we see that the Israelites' healing is an apt metaphor for our salvation. "By grace you have been saved through faith," Paul writes, "and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God -- not the result of works, so that no one may boast." The Israelites would have been hard-pressed to argue that their "works" had healed them -- that is, that they had done anything to heal themselves. Likewise, we don't really do anything to save ourselves. But the Israelites around the pole -- like Christians around the cross -- access God's gracious remedy only through faith.
John 3:14-21
We may be accustomed to turning to Romans, Colossians, or Hebrews in order to explicate for our people the person and work of Christ. But here, in the familiar environs of John 3, we have Jesus' own explanation of who he is and what he came to do.
No single verse of scripture may be as familiar in our churches as John 3:16. Even in a day of such biblical illiteracy, a sizeable majority of the people in my congregation would be able to recite John 3:16. At the same time, however, I would be surprised if anyone in my congregation could recite John 3:14-15. One would think that such a bright spotlight on verse 16 would have cast at least a little light onto verses 14 and 15, but I suspect that Jesus' allusion to the serpent on the pole is largely unfamiliar to the people in our pews.
Nevertheless, that one reference by Jesus takes that obscure episode from the wilderness and elevates it to an event with enormous significance and meaning. It ceases to be just a strange little incident in the desert, and it becomes a grand foreshadowing of the grandest event of all. Now, as Jesus connects the dots for us in John 3, that peculiar pole becomes the cross. And, more remarkable still, Jesus becomes the bronze serpent.
The familiar passage moves beyond the reference to the serpent on a pole.
Verses 16 and 17 state marvelously the motive and purpose of God. It is surely an essential part of the proclamation of the gospel to report not only what God did but also to reveal what God wants. He does not want to condemn, but to save (see also Ezekiel 18:30-32). He is motivated by love, and that love prompts him to initiate. It is not merely that he responds mercifully when we come to him, but rather that he begins by coming to us (see also Romans 5:8). His love and salvation are not limited to an exclusive group, a covenant people, a worthy few, but for "everyone who believes" so that "the world might be saved."
The end of this Gospel Lesson makes abundant reference to "light," which is a large and significant theme in John's Gospel. At the outset, John identifies "light" with the pre-existent Word. And just as God spoke light into the darkness and chaos "in the beginning," so now again his light "shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it" (1:5). John the Baptist, we read, came "as a witness to testify to the light" (1:6). And Jesus himself said, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life" (8:12).
While the passage comes from a pre-scientific age, the imagery may feel reminiscent of a science experiment. A student in a lab will add a chemical to a solution and measure the change and reaction of that solution. Some chemical reactions are diagnostic in nature: that is, the application of a chemical reveals what the subject substance contains. And so it is here with light. The light suddenly shines into the world, and it elicits different reactions: some are drawn to it, while others resist and hide from it. Therein lies the judgment.
Jesus' observation here that "people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil" recalls Luke's account of the Garden of Gethsemane. When the antagonists arrive in the garden to smuggle Jesus away, he notes that they had taken no action when he was with them "day after day in the temple." No, but rather they act at night, for "this is your hour, and the power of darkness!" (Luke 22:53).
Application
As we endeavored to illustrate above, the serpent on a pole episode in Numbers serves as its own microcosmic glimpse into how God works. The provision of a remedy, though the affliction is deserved and, in some respects, self-induced; is the required participation of people in God's deliverance, even while affirming that the deliverance is entirely God's doing; the strangeness of God's remedies; and the necessity of faith. These elements can, in their own right, be affirmed as characteristic of how God works.
Now that Jesus makes such a clear connection between that wilderness episode and his crucifixion, however, we are compelled to take it a step further. The serpent on a pole is no longer just a generic model of how God works. Now it is a very specific foreshadowing of God's saving work in Christ.
We rejoice in the truth that our salvation is not our own doing (see Ephesians 2:8-9), while at the same time affirming the necessity of faith (Romans 3:22-31) and our participation in our salvation (Acts 16:29-31). We are prompted to consider again the observation that the remedy recalls the malady. It was not some symbol of health hung on the pole, but a replica of the poisonous serpents. So, too, God "made him to be sin who knew no sin" (2 Corinthians 5:21). Beyond the notion of Jesus paying the price for sin on the cross, Paul goes a dramatic step further and says that he was made "to be sin." So, again, the remedy recalls the malady.
Alternative Applications
1) Numbers 21:4-9; Ephesians 2:1-10. "A Good, Healthy Appetite" -- "I just don't have much of an appetite." I have heard that lament countless times when visiting parishioners in the hospital. "I know that I need to eat," they say, "but I just don't feel like it."
That's a bad sign, for a good, healthy appetite is a sign of good health, and regaining an appetite is often an indication that someone who had been sick is getting better.
On the other hand, not all appetites are good and healthy.
The whole mess in the wilderness episode, you recall, began with the people's appetites. The problem did not begin with the poisonous serpents, but with the people's complaining. Their complaint was about food. "Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?" they whined. "There is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food."
If, in fact, there had been no food, then perhaps their protest would have had some credibility, and their fear of dying would have been justified. But they had food. Daily and miraculously, God was providing food for them in the wilderness, so they allege that there is "no food" simply because they regard it as "miserable food."
Here, of course, is the hallmark of selfish ingratitude: we don't see what we do have simply because we would prefer to have something else.
In Paul's letter to the Ephesians, meanwhile, the apostle observes that "all of us once lived ... in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses." That is his way of characterizing our former condition, and it seems to be all about the flesh. Such a generalization is not uncommon to Paul (see also, for example, Romans 7 and 8; Galatians 5). Nor is a spirit vs. flesh paradigm unique to Paul (such as Mark 14:38; John 3:6; 1 Peter 2:11).
All of fallen humanity, it seems, needs to regain a good, healthy appetite. Not because we have lost our appetite, but rather because the appetites of our flesh are out of control. It's interesting that humankind's very first sin is represented in terms of a fleshly appetite. And ever since -- like the Israelites in the wilderness, whose grumbling against God began with the grumbling of their stomachs -- we have been "following the desires of flesh and senses."
2) Numbers 21:4-9. "Bound for the Promised Land" -- Israel's exodus experience has long been cherished as a meaningful metaphor for the Christian life. We begin as slaves, where God finds us and saves us. The Christian life is a journey, and we are dependent upon his guiding and providing throughout all of it. Some of the journey may feel like a wilderness, to be sure, but we press on with a hope rooted in God's promise.
Given the larger metaphor, one particular line from this wilderness episode is especially challenging to us: "the people became impatient on the way."
The people are on their way from the land of their bondage to the land of God's promise. They have witnessed his grace and his power. They enjoy his daily providence and constant guidance, yet they "became impatient on the way," and that led to trouble and to tragedy.
In spite of all that we have seen in our walk with God, we become anxious about what we do not see. The progress, the answer to prayer, some clarity about God's will, or victory over temptation -- when we do not see these things, we may become impatient on the way.
Nineteenth-century Baptist pastor, Joseph Gilmore, wrote the words that the Israelites ought to have sung -- and we ought also to sing -- when becoming impatient on the way. "Lord, I would place my hand in thine, nor ever murmur nor repine; content whatever lot I see, since 'tis my God that leadeth me" ("He Leadeth Me: O Blessed Thought").
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22
It's been said that people have short memories. It must be so. Simple observation is verification enough. Many can site the passage of time as reason enough. Middle age slips barely noticed into old age. Memories blend and soon come the moments when the reason for walking into a room are unclear. Collectively, we forget the lessons of history, as war after war scars the face of God. Acts of tyrants and lunatics conveniently slip the common mind as the tape loop of history plays again and again. Same story, different characters.
These slippages are troubling, it's true, but there is a deeper, more profound memory loss that plagues us. We forget, as this writer points out, our God who has done great things for us.
For the people of Israel, it was forgetting the great liberation of the Exodus. "The wondrous works in the land of Ham, and awesome deeds by the Red Sea" (vv. 21-22). This is significant. It's rather like forgetting the name of your mother or father.
Before we get too judgmental with the people of Israel, though, we ought to take a look at ourselves. Confession, it turns out, really is good for the soul. The question to be posed here is not if we have forgotten God, but how. A look at our behavior, particularly within churches, indicates painfully our ecclesial loss of memory.
Are our sanctuaries truly what they claim to be? Safe places? Sanctuaries in deed, and not just in name? Have we "broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us"? (Ephesians 2:14). Or do we make distinctions and judgments, pushing the very people from us whom God calls us to welcome and to love? Have we forgotten the God who calls us into "ministries of reconciliation"? (2 Corinthians 5:16). Do we recall the Savior who gave it all so that we might claim a new life of hope and justice?
These are not trivial questions. Think about our churches. Consider your own church. Is the Christian community a place where God is recalled and honored, both in individual and communal lives or is God neatly tucked into the shadows of institutional necessities?
Just as people with no vision will surely perish, so too will the faith community that does not keep the saving God at the core of their being. Church budgets, council meetings, and the chatter of the institution may feel important, but it can all become and easy occasion for idolatry (vv. 19, 20).
It falls to each of us, then, to remember God, not as an act of sentimental recollection, but as the Savior who comes always into our lives to call us to faithfulness. The creating one who is worthy of our worship, our praise, and yes, our obedience.
