A pastor friend posts every Monday a meditation on the lectionary texts for the week. This morning, his thoughts revolved around the story of the children of Israel's grumbling in the desert, and the fiery serpents that God sent to bite and kill them. When the people repented, God told Moses to make a bronze serpent and hold it up on a pole. Whoever looked at it was then healed from the serpent's bite. It's a fanciful story, the kind of tale that makes people wonder why we are so insistent upon believing the Bible. My friend and I are at about polar opposites theologically and regarding social and political matters, but he has an insightful way of looking at the Scriptures that has often left me more appreciative of Biblical truth. He writes, "This story is not about a few disgruntled people making a stink—that would have been so normal it wouldn’t have been worth writing about. This is a story about a contagious, hate-speech campaign against Moses and God by all the people; this is negativity, bitterness and complaining gone viral! And as always, that kind of poisoned atmosphere was a breeding ground for fire-breathing dragons whose bite is scorching and sometimes even deadly. The lesson says God sent the lethal dragons but somebody had to open the tent flap and let them in. And remember that dragons have to be fed and nurtured. Blame God if you want, but I think the cause lies much closer to home."
He goes on to comment that "Moses [was] directed to make an image of that fiery, winged serpent—that dragon—that was causing their discomfort, and to direct them to look on that image every time what they had created bit them! The first step in being saved is to identify the dragon and recognize and confess our own participation and complicity in creating and nurturing the beast!"
It's "our own participation and complicity in creating and nurturing the beast," that gets to me. For years, when hounded by my melancholy, I cried out to God to help me, and wondered why God had made some people so cheerful and carefree, while I was stuck with a chronic case of the blues. It wasn't until I began practicing gratitude that the melancholy lifted; turns out I was complicit in my own misery! But I had to look at what was biting me before I could be saved from it.
My friend goes on to remind us that it is our "sin and violence that dragged Jesus to the cross." When Jesus said he must be lifted up to draw people to himself, there is an implicit suggestion that we cannot fully look at him apart from also seeing the cross on which he died, and our sin which nailed him to it. It is not Jesus blessing the little children who saves us, but Jesus, dying on the cross.
He concludes with these words: "Salvation isn’t about God covering his eyes so as to not see our sin, but about God uncovering our eyes to see the fiery beast that is consuming us. That’s why light has come into the world—to reveal what we so like to hide in the shadows." It is never a pleasant experience to see our sin in the light of the Cross, but until I see my own complicity in sin, I cannot find salvation. The Good News is that on the Cross, sin and the Savior meet, and when I look, and confess my sin, the Savior washes it clean. Thank you, Doug Spencer, for your musings on the Scriptures. And thank God for Jesus Christ, who exposes...and forgives our sin.
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