Numbers 21:4-9
Lent 4 - Year B
Speak poison - get poison - poison defeats poison.
Ah yes, pray the snakes of life, the thorns in the flesh, be taken from us.
They do take so much of our time and energy to defend ourself against them - their touch demands all our attention.
Yet, GOD did not take the snakes and thorns away. But did and does send a new way of looking at things. Look up, not at your ankle.
We will be bitten and punctured. We are being bitten and punctured (think war and its consequences).
The way out of such a predicament is to look beyond it, to see it transformed from a snake of temptation and deceit to a snake of wisdom and healing. If snakes can be so transformed, so can our life and the current war.
Pray to GOD but don't forget to look about you for miraculous transformations.
Now what are you going to do with your healing and vision?
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2003/march2003.html
Snakes were and are symbols of both death and danger and fertility, life, and healing. Around and around goes the snake, tail in mouth.
To make a bronze snake is to stop the motion in one state. In theory, the snake here gets caught in healing mode. But even that doesn't stop the cycle. There are reports of this bronze serpent continuing on with the people (see 2 Kings 18:4) and turning into an idol, a source of separation and death. Thus it needs to be cast away as it does the same thing the complaints about lack of food has done in the wilderness, hearkened folks back to what they saw as a preferable time - back to Egypt, back to slavery.
The bronze serpent eventually ends up at the same place as the golden calf. The time frame of their getting to the death place is different, but the arc or cycle of meaning is the same.
Questions of Jesus coming around from being a source of salvation, healing, wholeness to being an idol spring to mind.
What, today, acts as a symbol of healing for the moment but will blowback death? Is it the idol of democracy that will soon raise up worse demagogues than we now have as the fears of the people are exacerbated and played upon? Is it the idol of a free market that never has been free and has always been played by those for whom it is a marker for being successful in society? Is it the idol of settled doctrine that says God was once alive, but has since cease to be a living God that can move on?
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2006/march2006.html
The poisonous language of complaint usually ends up in a community that bites each other. Any way one turns there is complaint ready to strike. Everyone is a heel to be struck and a heel who strikes.
In a poisonous context, working from the inside is no longer an option for healing. It has to come from the outside. A discipline or methodology needs to be designed and followed for, left to one's own devices, the poison is too strong to fight against and poison breeds poison - that which we abhor, we do; that which we intend, we don't.
Look clearly at the result - complaint becomes a snake. Look clearly at this connection. Perhaps by turning it around and seeing the snake on its way (still on a pole, but ready to descend to bite again) we might yet change our complaining ways.
Wherein such clarity that can stop a consequence by seeing it? Here it is prayer. Prayer for a larger context. Prayer of thanks. Prayer for mercy. Prayer for deeds of light.
In this Lenten season prayer is not just duty, but a lens through which we might yet see more clearly. Or, as St. Richard of Chichester prayed in the 13th century and the Shrine of St. Jude modified for use as a midday prayer in the 21st:
Merciful Friend, Brother and Redeemer
May I know you more clearly
Love you more dearly
And follow you more nearly
Day by day.
[may this prayer be more, this day, than a pious covering of crusade preaching (complaint) against another faith - Richard did have his limits and blind-spots, as do we all]
- - - - - - -
a serpent is raised as a question mark
"is this what you want to become"
that question twines itself around our livesa messiah is raised an exclamation mark
"come on in life is fine"
that call echoes within and through our livesa singular you is raised to take them both
and demonstrate that steadfast love endures
that good works are - our way of life
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_03_01_archive.html
The Lord gives and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.
Serpents were sent and bit and many died. Artisan Moses was sent and the power of the serpents was abrogated.
Sympathetic magic, yes, but what else? Surely it can't simply be a one-to-one correspondence or we would have folks sticking a dollar or a stock option on a stick to recuperate from being bit by the invisible hand.
- - - - - - -
Why have you brought us out here? To die?
Sure, have some death! Surprised it didn't come from thirst?
Ouch! Got us there.
Tell you what, I didn't bring you out to die.
So?
So, here's another surprise. Moses, what do have you been doing?
See, a sky snake, not one in the grass.
- - - - - - -
Is the bronze snake antidote over the past or antecedent to idolatry (2 Kings 18:4)?
If the pattern is snake, snake lifted, snake idolized – how does Jesus fit into that and is the danger of his being lifted that he will also be idolized?
Looking at this story raises additional questions about both/and. Who are the fiery, poisonous seraphim disguised as snakes and why are they flitting through this story. Did they also attend Jesus in the wilderness? How about being with Adam and Eve at a tree as well as guarding a gate back in? Were they holding the memory of all this within an ark, a promise?
Might they be a helpful clue about needing to look more deeply than the surface – to see life and its consequences and its hope in the wriggly and the static? Perhaps the bronze serpent helped folks see the angelic host even in the snake that bit them and in that deeper view find the resources to go on. What art work helps you see past the surface?
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2009_03_01_archive.html
Impatience was the source of the snake biting and bronze snake raising. Impatience continues to be a source of intra-communal disputes as well as warring against defined enemies. We want answers and we want them now, a simple response is too process-oriented - presuming another response and another, instead of an easy comfort of a once-and-for-all answer.
Check your language to see if you are talking about giving or asking for an answer or a response. Expectations of ease lead us to attempt to short-circuit reality into utopia.
Imagine the out-of-the-frying-pan-and-into-the-fire comedy here. Such slapstick is almost too much.
Hey, this is taking too long!So how might you come to the wisdom to deal with proximal responses instead of final solutions? I’m sure there’s a funny story involved with this shift.
Oh, yeah? Here’s too long and too painful, too.
Hmm, on second thought we’ll take the too long by itself.
OK, wisdom has begun.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2012/03/numbers-214-9.html