Who knows what the word “ophidiophobia” means? Only one hand in the air—a zoo keeper. Yes, it means “fear of snakes.” Most everyone I know has this phobia to some degree. And, this fear is magnified in someone who has been bitten by a snake. I wonder if Adam and Eve were ophidiophobiacs after their encounter with the most famous snake in history.
Today’s first reading is a snake story (Numbers 21:4-9). It begins by telling us about Israel’s tedious journey through the desert.
“But with their patience worn out by the journey, the people complained against God and Moses, ‘Why have you brought us up from Egypt to die in this desert, where there is no food or water. We are disgusted with this wretched food!’”
God was not as tolerant of their complaints as we twenty-first century, politically-correct parents are of our children’s complaints. He was not going to let their negativity become a new burden for Moses, nor let it throw a wrench in his plans for bringing salvation to the world. So, God acted.
“In punishment the Lord sent among the people saraph serpents, which bit the people so that many of them died.”
This got their attention. They turned to Moses and asked him to pray that the serpents would go away.
“So Moses prayed for the people, and the Lord said to Moses, ‘Make a saraph and mount it on a pole, and whoever looks at it after being bitten will live.”
Isn’t this amazing! God told Moses to fashion a work of art that resembled a snake and hang it on a pole. Wouldn’t it make more sense if Moses fashioned a flower or a beautiful vase? But, a snake? The very creature that was destroying them became the symbol of new life. When they first saw the snakes, they froze with fear. Now when they looked at the mounted snake, they were no longer afraid because it became God’s instrument of healing and life.
God turned their destroyers into a work of art! Now the people longed to look at the bronze serpent.
“…whenever anyone who had been bitten by a serpent looked at the bronze serpent, he lived.”
Jesus foretold that he one day would become like a serpent on a pole (John 8:21-30).
“When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I AM, and that I do nothing on my own, but I say only what the Father taught me.”
What are the things we most fear? Death, torture, humiliation, imprisonment, being shamed in public, being beat, being rejected and betrayed. Being left alone and deserted by others. And how does God help us deal with these basic fears? He allows the abused body of his Son to be lifted up on a pole, and become a “work of art” for us to look at. When we spend time looking at the cross of Jesus, we look far beyond the gruesome appearance of his bloodied body. We, like the Israelites, see the healing and forgiving power of God flowing from the body of Jesus into our own spirits. If just looking at a bronze snake could heal people of snake bites, imagine what looking at the Son of God hanging from a cross will do for us?
All of us, like the disgruntled people in the desert, come, at times, to our wits’ end. We are tired and beaten down by the troubles that life deals us. Our patience runs out, and all we want to do is complain and wonder why we agreed to follow Jesus in the first place—we get tired of life’s “wretched food.” God lets us wallow in our own misery and pain for a while. Then he gets our attention and points to the image of his Son hanging on a tree. Seeing Jesus lifted up in front of us, we draw close to the cross and raise our eyes to look at him. In his eyes we see love, from his side we watch life-giving blood and water flow, and into our hearts the divine energy from his heart begins pour.
Though most of us have crucifixes mounted on the walls of our homes, how many times are they mere decorations that we never look at? Today we visit Jesus lifted up—a work of art—on a pole. We may even take the cross off the wall and hold it close to us as we pray. After spending time looking at the cross, something inside us begins to change. The story of life becomes much bigger than the snake bites that keep bothering us.
“When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all to myself” (John 12:32)
