This is a first for me. While in the parish, I was never able to use the readings for the fourth Sunday of Lent. Instead, we always used the alternate readings set, those for Mothering Sunday. I had thought that that was a difficult subject to preach on in the middle of the Lenten season, but the readings today… well, they appear to bear no relation to the season at all. Or do they?
So many ideas permeated my empty head as I pondered them that it was hard to know where to begin. Could it be as simple as pointing to Christ’s resurrection, or was something else to be found in the text?
Suddenly, it became clear. It was there around me all the time… snakes. I thought of using something contemporary that we could all relate to, like a film—Snakes on a Plane, perhaps. Still, when I suggested it to my better half, I was told that I really shouldn’t because, firstly, I hadn’t seen the film, and secondly, doing things like that always tends to come back and bite you in the end.
In our reading from Numbers, snakes were biting the Israelites, and many died as a result. So it’s no wonder the people tell Moses, “Pray to the Lord to take away the serpents from us”. They are travelling together, hoping to reach the Promised Land, but instead, they are in a problematic place full of snakes. Instead of the hope and trust they once had, they are now tetchy and wandering in the wilderness. They didn’t like their lot in Egypt, and now they want to return to what they had there. They’re complaining, and nothing is ever right. Yet this is more than just being unhappy. Everything is difficult.
While they moan that they have no food, they also detest the miserable food they don’t have! But what they do have, in abundance, is poisonous snakes. I honestly don’t think this reading is about what’s happening around them at all but about what’s happening within them. Their stomachs may be empty, but there’s poison and venom in their hearts and in their lives. They’re in a place full of snakes, and, truth be told, we’ve all been there.
It’s not like we go out of our way to go to such a place. These things come out of nowhere. We can be relaxed and happy when suddenly, out of nowhere, a snake strikes and bites us. We may not have deserved it, but it happened anyway. And on those occasions, don’t you just want to run away? Don’t you want the ground to open and swallow you up?
“Pray to the Lord to take away the serpents from us.” How many times has that been our prayer? “Just make it stop, God. Take it away.” In a few weeks, we will all recall Jesus, in the Garden of Gethsemane, saying the very same thing: “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me.” He knew all too well about the difficult, poisonous places of life. We all do.
Yet what does God do when this cry for mercy goes up? Does he send the precursor to St Patrick to rid the country of all the snakes? No, he tells Moses to “Make a poisonous serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.” Strange as it may sound, God provided a remedy for the poisonous bites of life.
It’s curious. The very thing that bites and kills is that which heals and gives life. It doesn’t make sense, but what if it’s right? What if all those problematic poisonous places are not times, situations or people to escape from but where real healing can be found? Can opposites overlap like that?
We do know that to treat a venomous snakebite you need anti-venom. But where does that come from? It’s made from the snake’s venom. Immunisation that protects from disease often comes from the same virus that caused the illness in the first place.
Elsewhere, we’ve heard opposites in scripture: When I am weak, then I am strong. “Those who want to save their life will lose it; those who lose their life for my sake will find it,” Even as we turn to Good Friday, the Cross upon which our Saviour is hung, upon which he is killed, is also the tree of life. So it’s never as simple as saying it’s this way or that. One way or another. There is a tension to be found. Here, we have a serpent that bites and kills all around them and another serpent that heals and gives life raised upon a pole. The question is, which do the Israelites choose? Which do we choose? These ‘opposites’, these choices, are always all around us.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus says, “All who believe in him are not condemned, but those who do not believe are condemned already.” “All who do evil hate the light.” So they love darkness and don’t want to be seen. “But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be seen that their deeds have been done in God.”
Now, we can mistakenly use these words to define ourselves or others as people of light or darkness who do what is true or what is evil. One or the other. Which one are you? Which one am I? But perhaps it’s not one or the other but both together. Maybe Jesus is simply describing precisely who we are entirely. We all sway from one thing to another at different times in our lives. Just think back to when you said or did just the right thing, and you knew it. Or when you did the wrong thing and you knew that, too? Well, that’s the same for everyone.
Realising that we are caught in the middle of this tension helps us better understand who we are, what is of real importance to us, and where our focus actually lies. Recognising this makes us face up to things, makes us face up to ourselves. When we get to that point, we need to decide to which we will give our time, attention and focus.
This is the point in Lent to take stock, to look at those areas where we get bitten by poisonous things, recognise the oppositions within us, remember the sneaky serpents that have bitten us, and ask what we are giving our attention to. Would you like to change your direction, your focus? Maybe from the biting serpent to the bronze serpent? As we look back, we also look forward to what is coming.
Each of us knows that those venomous serpents are real, but we also need to understand that the life-giving one is real, too. Both are always found in the same place. So, when it seems that all is lost. When it seems that all is broken or that things can get no worse, it is then that Christ is to be found. You may recall the story of the Footsteps, when you saw just one set, it was then that Christ carried you. There is a reason that it is so popular: because it speaks the truth.
Whenever we find ourselves in difficult, dark, poisonous places, the promise of the gospel is also there, that there is healing for every bite, an antidote to the venom that can appear so strong that we fear it may consume or destroy. There is hope, forgiveness, reconciliation, and light in the midst of despair, sin, brokenness and darkness. We have the knowledge that the joyous Easter season does come after penitential Lent, but there is no resurrection without the Cross.
We must remember that there’s a bronze-healing serpent to be found for every biting, poisonous serpent out there. For every snakebite that may kill, there is an anti-venom that heals. It is not about whether the healing, the medicine, is present and available but whether we will take it. What have you set your eyes, your mind and your heart upon this day?