The Bronze Serpent

Exaltation of the Cross

The readings today are challenging.  The Israelites complain against God for bringing them into the apparent "death" of the desert, where they are facing starvation and exposure.  God punishes them by sending snakes among them.

Are we not supposed to rail against suffering?  Cry out to God for its elimination?  Why does God plague the Israelites in their distress, instead of sending them relief?  Yet when the Israelites complain, God punishes them.

There is a deep irony in God's method of punishment, and in the mode of their relief from punishment.  The snakes that bit the Israelites must have recalled the snake in Eden, the source of human pride and rebellion against God.  Yet God chooses the snake - the very symbol of sin and death - to be the means of the Israelites' restoration to life: Whenever anyone who had been bitten by a serpent looked at the bronze serpent, he lived.  

For Christians this irony foretells the irony of the cross.  The cross: a symbol of oppression and humiliation, of illegitimacy and death, becomes the source of our life and hope.  Jesus Himself made the parallel between Himself and the serpent clear.  

How does this irony help us understand why God punished the Israelites for crying out against their suffering?  Because the Israelites needed to learn the irony of God's justice: that it is through suffering that we are saved.  Sending the serpents to plague the Israelites was not just a punishment; it was a lesson.  God wanted to teach us that we cannot overcome suffering by running away from it.  We can only defeat suffering by facing it head-on.  Just as the Israelites could only be saved from the serpents by confronting the bronze serpent, so too are we saved from suffering only by confronting it.

This is the message of the Cross: to defeat death, Christ had to die.  The Israelites had lost sight of the meaning of suffering.  They had lost their hope, their faith that beyond the suffering lay their triumph.  God's discipline forced them to remember that, through and beyond their suffering in the desert, their salvation awaited them.

This is not a comfortable message.  But it is a hopeful one.  It means that we do not need to be afraid of suffering.  Our response to injustice and pain need not be one of fear, of running away, of avoidance.  Our response to suffering is based on our knowledge that we, in Christ, are stronger than suffering; that we can face it, confront it, endure it, and defeat it. 

The Israelites had lived a life of fear in Egypt.  They allowed their fear to condition their response to their trials in the desert.  God had to teach them that they, with Him on their side, were stronger than the serpents, were stronger than the hunger, were more powerful than all the forces of the desert arrayed against them.

We too live our lives in fear of suffering.  We are tempted to prefer comfort to freedom.  We give this "comfort" all kinds of fancy names: autonomy, mercy, even justice.  We dress up our fear to try to hide from ourselves the fact that we are afraid of pain.  We arm ourselves with our comfortable accoutrements - our technologies, our nationalities, our race, our political ideologies, our academic philosophies - and convince ourselves that we are strong.  But this kind of comfort is not strength.  It is cowardice.  We are afraid to face the world as the naked, suffering creatures that we are.

God asks us to set aside our weapons and let Him gird us.  He asks us to set aside our fear and let Him be our strength.  In all of His interactions with humans throughout our history He has tried to teach us this: that in Him, and Him alone, are we strong enough to face our real fears, to confront suffering and death and emerge victorious.

Are you suffering today?  God asks you to believe that you are stronger than your suffering, because He is at your side.  In Him you can endure all.  You are braver than you think, because it is not only your courage that lives in you - but the courage of God.