It Seemed Like a Good Idea At the Time
Mar 26, 2009
Dr. Steven Bishop
"It Seemed Like a Good Idea At the Time," a sermon by Dr. Steven Bishop, Assistant Professor of Old Testament, given on March 26, 2009, in Christ Chapel
Numbers 21:4-9; John 3:14-21
How many of you have begun a story with "It seemed like a good idea at the time?"
I have one that begins that way. I grew up not far from here on what some would call a small farm but we called ‘a pasture.' I had a brother who was sixteen months younger and we spent many of our summer days wandering around the pasture looking for or creating some sort of mischief. My father was a ranch foreman and an inveterate collector of things no one else wanted or could use. My mother referred to these things as junk, but to my father they were treasures.
His favorite collectible was lumber no one else would want or use. So we had a very large pile of lumber in our pasture One day my brother and I decided that we would go out to the lumber pile and see if we could find a snake. It seemed like a good idea at the time. We began moving boards and soon found the thing for which we sought. A black snake coiled up under a large piece of lumber. We terrified the snake until it made its move to escape. It was headed back under the pile so I yelled to my brother to grab it by the tail, which he did.
As soon as he pulled its three foot body out of the pile it turned back on him, the way that snakes will do. So, still in charge, I ordered him to begin spinning in circles to straighten the snake out. I picked up a couple of bricks and told him that I would hit it in the head as he swung it by me. It seemed like a good idea at the time. After missing the snake twice my brother let it go flying into the weeds near the woodpile. The snake was surely miffed but being non-poisonous I guess it decided to go back into the woodpile and hope that we could find some other reptile to torment. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
For the Israelites, after a series of plagues, it may have seemed like a good idea to follow Moses out of Egypt with the promise of liberation and new life. Perhaps they went without much thought about what life in a wilderness would be like. Very soon they realized that life in the wilderness was less comfortable than slavery in Egypt, so on more than one occasion the people complained against Moses for leading them into the Wilderness and instead longed for life in Egypt, even a life of oppression. And more than once they ask some form of the question "why did you bring us out here to die."
Prior to the episode just read to us the people have had success in defeating a Canaanite army. A victory precedes the episode of complaint. The text informs us that the people became impatient on their way to the promised land. In their impatience they cry out against God and Moses. This is the first time that they complain against God and Moses, other incidents of complaint are directed against Moses only. So in a bizarre scene God sends super serpents or copper copperheads (there is a play on words here) to kill the complaining Israelites. They come to Moses and ask that God remove the vipers from among them. So Moses prays but God responds with instructions to build a copper copperhead. The snakes won't be driven away. They remain among the people but now when a person is bitten they must look up to the serpent that Moses built and they will be healed.
This bronze serpent appears twice more in our bible. In Hezekiah's reforms we find that the bronze serpent, called Nehustan, is taken out of the Temple where it had been venerated and was broken into pieces. It had become an object of apostasy and was thus expelled in the religious zeal of Hezekiah. Jesus appeals to the bronze serpent in his dialogue with Nicodemus. By all appearances Jesus was not troubled by the Nehustan's shady past.
Jesus refers to the serpent lifted up in the wilderness as an analogy to his own mission. This image includes more than the crucifixion it takes us all the way through his passion to the ascension. The same verb used here is used twice in Acts with reference to Jesus' ascension. It is the entire Easter story that we await and not solely death on a cross.In commenting on the Numbers passage rabbis were uncomfortable with the apparent magical overtones of this act so they insisted that it was not looking at the bronze serpent that saved one from death but looking up to the top of the pole and beyond to God.
In the Wisdom of Solomon there is a Midrash on this episode "For when the terrible rage of wild animals came upon your people and they were being destroyed by the bites of writhing serpents, your wrath did not continue to the end; they were troubled for a little while as a warning, and received a symbol of deliverance to remind them of your law's command. For the one who turned toward it was saved, not by the thing that was beheld, but by you, the Savior of all." (Wisdom 16:5-7) Not by the thing beheld, but by you. Thus the rabbis break the bronze serpent of its magical spell and replace it with the saving power of God.
We too want to access the saving power of God but before we get there we have to endure the fiery snakes. What are the snakes of our own hearts and minds? What troubles us in this season of reflection? The snakes of indulgence and privilege? The snakes of our weakness and at times our inability to sense God's presence. There is a Nehushtan, a deliverance, for us but we have to wait, and in the waiting is a deepening sense of the mystery of God and of our own lives.
It may have seemed like a good idea at the time to come to seminary, not knowing what this wilderness time would hold. It may have seemed like a good idea at the time to trust that God had placed a call on our lives. But now we find ourselves in a place that we did not expect. For some it is filled with manna and quail and at other times we wonder why we must endure this miserable food. The wilderness that we walk through does not always look the same. We are in a corporate wilderness we call Lent, but it is overlaid with our personal experiences. For some it is a time when God's care and provision seem especially evident and for others it is a time when we feel most alone, most vulnerable.
As we come to the end of Lent, as we endure the fiery serpents that have revealed themselves in this time, we know that the One who saves, heals and comforts is being lifted up before us.
It seemed like a good idea at the time to follow Christ but it has turned out to be a life saving one.
