Nu 21:4-9 & Jn 3:14-21
2 April 2000
4th Sunday in Lent
“Nehushtan”
Our gospel reading includes probably the best-known verse in the New Testament. Anyone who as a child spent much time at all in Sunday school is familiar with John 3:16. Even I, who lived most of my first two decades of life outside the church, have known for as long as I can remember (as the King James puts it), “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
Martin Luther called this verse “the gospel in miniature.” There are few scriptures that say so much in so short a space. And yet, as beloved and popular as this verse is, it’s introduced in a rather unusual way. This is, of course, part of the nocturnal conversation Jesus has with Nicodemus. The Lord has already confused Nicodemus by telling him that he needs to be “born again,” or “born from above,” as the Greek (anwqen, anōthen) can also be translated.
Then, in verses 14 and 15, he brings in an event that’s the subject of our Old Testament reading: “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” At first glance (and probably at second and third glances, also!), this strange story from the book of Numbers seems to have nothing to do with Jesus.
This business of Moses' lifting up a serpent is the result of a frequent occurrence during the Israelites' journey through the wilderness—complaining. This particular incident follows some trouble they've had with a certain king of Arad. This guy had some of the Israelites taken captive, and so, they went to war to set them free. This, coming on the heels of the death of Aaron, has the whole community growing weary and irritated at their seemingly endless journey to nowhere. Morale is nearing an all-time low.
And Moses is the one who hears all about it. The book of Numbers characterizes their complaints as speaking "against God and against Moses." An answer is demanded of 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" (v. 5). That "miserable food" is probably a reference to the manna provided by God.
Imagine the grumbling: "Oh, for the good old days in Egypt! We didn't have to worry about things like what to eat and what to drink. We didn't have to worry about things like¼having a job. Our slaveholders—I mean, our employers—provided these things for us. And now look where we are! Our great leader has us wandering around like blind camels!"
Actually, the complaints of the people aren't so surprising when we think of the human need for security. For example, in Russia today, there are those who look back with longing at the rule of Stalin. Forgetting the atrocities of that era, they see present day uncertainties and yearn for the stability that existed then. And who among us has never thought of something in our past, remembering it the way we wish it had been, instead of the way it actually was?
Still, regardless of what motivates the grumbling, this is yet another example of the rebellion that continually simmers just below the surface. The defiant question put to Moses is answered by God. The people are punished for their rebellion with a plague of serpents, poisonous snakes that kill those they bite. The NRSV calls them “poisonous”: a more literal translation would be “fiery serpents” (!ypir;C]h' !yvj;N]h', ha-nehashim ha-serafim, v. 6).
As a result of these unwanted visitors, people start dying. Suddenly, Moses doesn't seem like such a bad guy! The people beg him to pray that God will make it all stop. And it does stop, but only after something that seems too superstitious to be in the Bible. Moses makes a bronze serpent and sets it on a pole; everyone who looks at it survives.
What are we to make of this? What does a bronze serpent have to do with healing? People have sometimes pointed out the similarity of Moses' bronze serpent with the caduceus, the symbol of the medical profession. You know what I'm talking about—the winged staff that has either one or two snakes wrapped around it. That thing comes from Greek mythology. It's the staff of Asclepius, the god of healing.
So if we were worshippers of Asclepius, hoisting the snake would be quite understandable. But as you know, serpents in the Bible rarely get such good reviews! Instead of healing, the serpent is associated with evil, the classic example being the Garden of Eden. Yet in today’s reading, the serpent is used to both inflict pain and to remove it.
Eliezer Segal, who teaches at the University of Calgary, goes into some detail about this strange story of the bronze serpent.[1] He offers an image of it that I want to borrow. It seems that the rabbis of old equated the serpent with what they called the [r;h' rx,ye (yetzer ha‑ra`), literally, “the evil urge”: a combination of ambition, greed, and sexual desire. It’s certainly not the only way to look at it, but it does give a perspective that’s important and helpful.
A Jewish legend tells how the leaders of the people, just after their return from exile in Babylon, decided to put an end to this dangerous threat. They had just rid themselves of the urge to worship idols—the exile helped cure them of that!—so they decided to capture and destroy the yetzer ha‑ra` itself. And with success! They caught the beast and bound it in chains, awaiting the moment when they would remove it from the world for all time.
But soon, disturbing reports started trickling in. Nobody was showing up at work anymore. No one wanted to get married or raise families. Even the chickens became slackers—they all stopped laying eggs! The leaders realized that they had misunderstood the nature of this "evil urge." The drives that they had imprisoned are necessary for ordinary life to go on. They realized that the urge isn’t "evil" in and of itself, but only when it’s allowed to go beyond its proper boundaries.
Sexuality is a wonderful gift when invested in a loving marriage and family, but it can be twisted and used in a harmful way. And ambition is a praiseworthy quality when used for the good of others, but it becomes a hateful quality when it serves an unbridled appetite for yet more and more. It was this failure to set limits to the yetzer ha‑ra` that was represented by the serpent in the Garden of Eden. This made the serpent a suitable instrument of divine punishment—but also of healing.
Aside from this story from Jewish mythology, we can think of things that are both helpful and harmful. Prescribed medicine, taken in the proper dosage, is beneficial to one's health. But when consumed in vast quantities, that same medicine becomes poisonous. In fact, almost anything can be used for good or bad.
That, eventually, is what happens with the bronze serpent. We learn in 2 Kings 18:4 that Hezekiah, as part of his religious reforms, has the serpent destroyed. “He broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until those days the people of Israel had made offerings to it; it was called Nehushtan.” That name "Nehushtan" (@T;v]jun]) is a play on the Hebrew words for "serpent" (vj;n;, nahash) and "bronze" (tv,jon], nehosheth), which are very similar. But it also shows how the serpent has gone from bad to good and back to bad. Serpent as punishment (bad), serpent as healing (good), serpent as idol (bad).
Why does Jesus use the bronze serpent as an image for himself? Why does he compare himself to something used by Moses to save life, but which later degenerates into a shameful object of worship called Nehushtan? Surely, at least part of the answer is found in verse 17 of our gospel reading: "Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him."
It would seem that in speaking of his redemptive work, Jesus could pick a much better example than what he does. Or could he? What better illustration of his transforming power than something that has gone from being a sign of God's grace to being simply a disgrace?
Jesus has not come to destroy the world, but to transfigure the world. Just as he does with his own body in the event we call the transfiguration, Jesus shows how God is active here and now—that the kingdom is already here in our midst. He does this with the ordinary, physical things of our world. He comes as a man, not an angel. And what's more, Jesus, like the bronze serpent, has been given by God for our healing. And just as the bronze serpent meets with a shameful end, so Jesus dies the death of a criminal.
What, if anything, does the bronze serpent say to us today? Thinking of the yetzer ha‑ra`, another way of putting it is this: what challenges do we face in keeping our own drives for ambition and pleasure in check? It's so easy to just focus on ourselves and forget our sisters and brothers, in the neighborhood and around the world. It's much easier than we would like to think to put our own narrow goals at the center of the universe—to, in a sense, worship the idol Nehushtan.
Before ending, I want to leave us with a thought. Banu and I are just beginning to learn the history of Westminster. That’s a task I welcome; you’ll soon learn that I’m interested in history. All who have gone before us have contributed to the heritage of this place. Our challenge as a congregation at the dawn of the 21st century is to understand what path Christ is calling us to follow now. That will include things both familiar and strange. And it comes with a caution. Do we want to reach out for our own sakes—to reclaim what has been lost from the past? Or do we want to reach out for the sake of the other—and to trust our Lord for the results?
When we offer the healing serpent, and not the lifeless idol Nehushtan, we offer the Messiah, who was lifted up “that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”