A Vision of Christ in a World of Serpents (March 10)

Readings Numbers 21:4-9 and John 3:14-17
Image, ​Moses and the Brazen Serpent, Augustus Edwin John (1878–1961)

At its heart, Lent is about learning where to look to see the glory and consolation of the living God. Where to raise our eyes to behold the path to life.
 
As the Israelites trudged through the wilderness, the initial glee of their liberation from slavery diminished. In its place came a very human, perfectly understandable, and comically relatable kind of revisionist looking back. Were things really that bad back in Egypt? Was our toil so unbearable? Was our exploitation completely without benefit? Look maybe it was terrible, but at least it was consistent. I wonder how many of us can identify our own moments of such revision as we and pine for a time we couldn’t stand.
 
As calamity for their ingratitude come the serpents, and as result of the serpents comes repentance, and from repentance emerges a solution: a bronze serpent held aloft, at which the people need only look in order to live. But is this not a rather inelegant solution to the problem of the serpents? Couldn’t God just blast them away, or at least send a pack of hungry mongoose. What meaning might we take from such a peculiar story?
 
Last week we spoke about the difficulty of proclaiming redemption in a world so flagrantly unredeemed. The difficulty of trusting Christ’s triumph over sin, evil, and death, in a world wracked by all three. The foolishness of God which proclaims Christ crucified as the site of God’s power is not reached by signs and wisdom but encounter and embodied faith. Is the cross not itself an inelegant solution to the problem of the serpents of sin, evil, and death?
 
But this is what makes the image so compelling for the Christian alive in the world today. For even though we have encountered Christ, have gone down into the waters of his death through baptism and been raised up to share in his life, serpents abound. The wickedness in human hearts and structures that fuels the imperial violence that put Christ on his cross besieges cities and makes martyrs of the innocent to this day. The fear and fragility in the human heart that caused Peter to deny, Judas to betray, and the disciples to flee, wells up in us to this day, clouding our moral compass with apathy and self-protection. The short-sighted ingratitude of the wilderness generation which made them pine for the familiar evil over unfamiliar new beginnings, takes hold of communities still today, foreclosing the possibilities of the radical changes needed to avert a climate catastrophe.
 
We still live in a world of serpents, reminders that the sins of the world bite at our heels, and lead people to ruin. But what good would the Christian be without an awareness of these serpents: the ones which constrict our own hearts, and the ones that have their fangs in our neighbours. What good would the Christian be if we were able to turn our eye from the inequalities and injustices of our world? If we cease to feel the tragedy of those exploited in workplaces, intimidate in their homes, and bombed while seeking refuge… what good would the Christian be if they were sent into the world without the wisdom of serpents? 
 
But, in the same breath, what good would the Christian be if all we saw were serpents? What good would we be if there was no north star to set our course, no way to live amongst sin and death without being consumed and defeated? And Christ, like the bronze serpent, is raised up for us to see. We have Christ crucified, a symbol of God’s willingness to stand in complete solidarity with the world so that we might live. For our sake he was raised up, so that we can lift our eyes to see the one who trampled serpent under foot, swallowed death, vanquished sin, overcome evil with good, and ascended to the right hand of God, advocating mercy for all, until the great and glorious day when he shall return, and all wrongs will be made right, all tears wiped from our eyes, and all creation restored. What a sight to behold!
 
The sight of Christ in the present age, does not occlude our vision of the serpents of this world. Serpents remain in the present age and we must not ignore the sorrows of our neighbour or the suffering of our world. But we are not overcome. For the sight of Christ gives us somewhere to look to empower us in our vital task of defanging the serpents of our times. It gives us somewhere to look to console us that a day will come when the sin, death, and evil of the world shall be no more. The sight of Christ crucified and glorified, standing with and setting free, shows us the path to the kind of life a Christian is good for: a life of doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with our God; trampling serpents under foot.