Lent 4, Year B, Of What are you Afraid?
Of what are you afraid? Snakes have scared humans since before time. In the Harry Potter series, some of the scariest moments have a huge snake slithering through walls, its eerie hissing voice resonating through the stone walls.
Some places have to be literally afraid of snakes. At the Lakota Sioux congregation of Christ Episcopal Church in Red Shirt, on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, they need to make snake guards to cover the steps since the rattlesnakes will curl under the stairs up to the church and could strike a person entering to worship. When I visited, I was petrified of visiting the graveyard, where they said rattlesnakes loomed.
And every year, the youth of our diocese clean out that same graveyard and help with such projects, after knowledgeable adults scare off any loitering critters.
The Israelites traveling with Moses in the desert sure had a genuine reason to fear snakes—here they had them come, seemingly out of nowhere, to strike their fellow travelers. And when they pray for God’s help, the Lord tells Moses to make a bronze snake and put it on a pole, so that those who have been bitten can look at it and be healed.
Now, if you are like me and remember last week’s reading, one of the Ten Commandments was about not having any idols, and yet here we have something that sounds a lot like an idol.
Don’t make any graven images, but look on a bronze snake and be healed? Whaaat?
Well somehow this worked at the moment. They were able to look to this bronze snake and see God’s healing power.
Well somehow this worked at the moment. They were able to look to this bronze snake and see God’s healing power.
We do know that ultimately this image did become not an instrument of God’s healing, but an idol in itself, and about 500 years later in the time of King Hezekiah, it was destroyed in order to help the people refocus on the one true G-d. [1]
Sometimes, things that are edifying in one moment hold us back in the next—be they relationships or graven images.
But in the moment, this much feared object was lifted up, and looking to it somehow helped the people focus on God and they were healed.
Now, except for if we go hiking with some frequency, we, like St. Patrick, don’t actually have too many snakes in our lives in Oxnard—at least I don’t. I don’t literally have to be afraid of these critters very often. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have slithery things slide into my consciousness sometimes, speaking parseltongue fears and distrust.
Now, except for if we go hiking with some frequency, we, like St. Patrick, don’t actually have too many snakes in our lives in Oxnard—at least I don’t. I don’t literally have to be afraid of these critters very often. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have slithery things slide into my consciousness sometimes, speaking parseltongue fears and distrust.
The hissing voice may speak in the fear-mongering words of a friend saying others can’t be trusted. Or it may whisper cunningly in the worries that visit at night, or the false guilt that keeps coming back refusing to be laid to rest. These things can be like snakes curling around our hearts.
If you have done the Stations of the Cross any time recently, you may have had shivers go up your spine of a similar sort. When I truly enter into this rite, I find myself recoiling in horror at times at the fearful aspect of human cruelty we see—how Jesus suffered at the hands of humanity. He was so loving and good as God, but he was killed on a cross.
And yet here in John, we are told to look to Christ, lifted up, as a sign of salvation, just like so many years ago we looked to the serpent on the stick and were healed. That ancient symbol became the symbol for the medical field—God’s healing from something so frightful—life from a death-dealing object.[2] And Christ, lifted on a cross becomes for us the symbol that even the fearful things inside of each of us, the hissing that speaks through the walls of our own hearts, can, no, has been conquered by Christ. Looking up to Jesus, we see the healing we need.
If you have done the Stations of the Cross any time recently, you may have had shivers go up your spine of a similar sort. When I truly enter into this rite, I find myself recoiling in horror at times at the fearful aspect of human cruelty we see—how Jesus suffered at the hands of humanity. He was so loving and good as God, but he was killed on a cross.
And yet here in John, we are told to look to Christ, lifted up, as a sign of salvation, just like so many years ago we looked to the serpent on the stick and were healed. That ancient symbol became the symbol for the medical field—God’s healing from something so frightful—life from a death-dealing object.[2] And Christ, lifted on a cross becomes for us the symbol that even the fearful things inside of each of us, the hissing that speaks through the walls of our own hearts, can, no, has been conquered by Christ. Looking up to Jesus, we see the healing we need.
We can look to the cross not only to be reminded of our sin and where we are still striving, but we can be reminded that we are saved already, that we already have God’s healing. Just like the medical profession has become separate from the church in many cases, healing and cure can look different, depending on whether you use a religious or scientific lens. But we have God’s healing.
What comes up when I talk about this hissing voice? Can you put the fearful things of your heart up on the boughs of the cross—place them in Jesus’ loving arms that stretched out to embrace humankind?
Can you remember that no matter how big these things may seem, we have the God who conquered death, and all that deals death it in this world. Who turns hissing voices into angel’s tongue and turns fear into love.
Let us bind unto ourselves today the strong name of the Trinity and remain in hope that nothing—not death, snakes, fear, or any other tribulation can separate us from the love of God, from the embrace of Jesus, and from the free gift of salvation we have in Christ.
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