Scripture: Numbers 21:4-9 (NRSV)
Had Jesus not used the image of the serpent in the wilderness as a metaphor of the resurrection (John 3:14-15), Christians may have been inclined to neglect the story entirely. In this story, Moses fashions a glittering saraph and lifts it up with a pole so that the impatient people, plagued by poisonous snakes, can look and be healed. This act evokes disturbing images of ancient animal worship and magical healing rites. The report that king Hezekiah eventually destroys Nehushtan as an idolatrous object (2 Kings 18:4), despite its Mosaic provenance, confirms our ambivalence and turns our assumptions about the way God works topsy turvy.
Even if God is pure spirit (belied by a host of biblical metaphors), our encounters with the holy are always physical. We touch the divine through the mundane – sensing the boundless tangibility of the cosmos, straining against the limitations of timing and spacing. We create shrines wherever our awe is especially intense and stock them with ritual objects that help us focus our attention, deepen our reflection and reconstitute our commonality. We throw our bodies into worship and service, inspired and sustained by those precious accoutrements of religious devotion. Like Job, we bear our vexation and our vindication in the flesh.
Beloved, do not despise the earth or any earthly thing, least of all each other. We are not just vessels containing a divine spark, we are creatures (‘adam) taken from and returned to the life-giving soil (‘adamah). The bodily resurrection of Jesus would make little sense to a disembodied race. So lift up the bronze serpent. And lift each other up, as that precious, broken body was lifted, lowered, raised.
Scripture: Numbers 21:4-9 (NRSV)
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. 5The 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.” 6Then the Lord sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died. 7The 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. 8And 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.” 9So 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.