Tuesday of
the 5th Week of Lent
In a nutshell, chapter 21 begins
with the Israelites bargaining with God for a victory over the King of
Arad. All goes well (if murder and
plunder=well;). But despite the win the
people start whining again. Always the
same thing…they look back at their slavery in Egypt and long for the supper
table. This time God is fed up. He sends killer snakes to poison them. They realize their sinfulness and ask Moses
for help. God tells Moses to a make a
“serpent of bronze” and mount it on a staff.
All the people have to do is gaze on it and they will live. Thanks God!
I trained a lector once who said
that she could only read from the New Testament. She simply couldn’t get her head around the
vengeful, bargaining, all-too-human God of the Hebrew Scriptures. And I get
it. Just read this chapter in the Book of
Numbers. But it is an ancient
heresy. Around 144 in Rome a fellow named
Marcion had the same idea. The wrathful
Hebrew God must be a lower entity that the God of love and mercy that Jesus
comes to reveal. The heresy was
rejected. There is but one God.
The revelation in the scriptures
is about God AND God’s people. It is a
revelation about a relationship. Who are
we vis a vis God? The Holy Story appears
to me as a wrestling with that question.
It is an unfolding story. God
stays the same but we humans are constantly in travail…and our texts reveal
that travail. So when I approach stories
like this one I wonder where the movement is.
Where is the chipping away at this wrathful, bargaining, image of
God?
This one is lost on me! But I’m not alone. Here is an excerpt from John C. Holbert, the Lois Craddock Perkins
Professor Emeritus of Homiletics at Perkins School of Theology:
Well, that's
the story. Are we now more enlightened about it now that we have looked more
closely at it? Perhaps. We can now see that it is a part of that tradition of
the wilderness where the Israelites are impatient grumblers thoroughly
dissatisfied with Moses and with YHWH. Both Moses and YHWH become in their turn
angry and frustrated with these ingrates and move to punish them in many and
various ways. That seems clear enough.
But is that all? What about the magic of the copper viper pole?
I am inclined to leave it as is, a piece of ancient necromancy best left in the
distant past. And though John's gospel lifted it up allegorically to refer to
Jesus' saving power, I remain suspicious that such textual use can finally be
useful to us in our time. We need no magic poles to teach us that Jesus brings
to us snake-bitten moderns a power and grace that only he can provide. Numbers 21:4-9
is quaint but less than efficacious as a necessary element in my Lenten
journey. I leave the story and its fiery snakes far behind with few regrets.
(for the whole commentary click here)
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