"More Stories About Grace:
Good News For Snake Bit People"

Dr. James Mayfield
Tarrytown United Methodist Church

March 16, 2003

Text: Numbers 21:4-9, John 3:14-16

From time to time when I was growing up, I would hear my grandfather speak of someone as being "snake bit." I knew he was not talking about an encounter with a rattlesnake. He was talking about the way someone encountered life. Folks who were "snake bit" were folks whose past choices had placed them in bad situations, where they made more bad choices which placed them in more bad situations.

The origin of using the phrase "snake bit" to describe those people for whom the ball of life never seems to take the right bounce, is in the story we read today from the Book of Numbers. This morning I want to talk about that story as a way to understand our situation as individuals and as members of the human race.

The story for today takes place after God had freed the Hebrew people from slavery in Egypt. For quite some time God had been leading them through the wilderness and providing what they needed. Time after time the people had complained and tested the patience of God.

The story for today begins with the people complaining once again. Although God had given them freedom and was leading them to the Promised Land and providing food for them to eat, the Israelites spoke out against God and Moses.

How like us (or at least, how like I am). Regardless of the blessings in our yesterdays, we want more and better for today. We complain about our lives, and we overstate our complaint just as the Israelites did when first they complained they had no food and water and then said they detested their miserable food. I hear my voice as a teenager standing in front of the open refrigerator door, looking at all sorts of food, complaining to my mother: "There's nothing in here to eat." Or I hear myself as an adult, after having received many gifts of grace and because of those gifts have had many joys and accomplishments, complaining when problems or defeats come: "Nothing ever goes right." .

We humans tend to take blessings for granted, accept them, enjoy them, and then forget them. What we tend to focus on and dwell on are those things that do not turn out the way we want or those situations that cause us pain. All too often we not only forget our blessings, we speak and act as if we had never been blessed. Our attitude and thoughts imply (if not clearly declare) God really does not care what happens to us.

When the people in the story complained once again, God lost patience with the Israelites and sent poisonous serpents among them. Many Israelites died of snake bite. According to the story teller, the reason the people were snake bit is because they lost their focus on God and God's grace. They were snake bit because the way they dealt with their hardship was with self-pity, resentment and anger. They lived without any awareness of their debt to God, and as a result they lived without any sense of gratitude or the joy that comes with gratitude. When this is the way we live, we stop living. Something in our soul dies, and rather than being a positive force in life, we become a negative force; and the more negative we are, the more our living seems to be snake bit.

Notice in this story, the serpents are not presented as something evil. The serpents are instruments of God's tough love. The serpents are the instruments of God's grace that comes in the form of judgment. When we fail to live as God intends, there are consequences that sooner or later have to be dealt with.

This is not only true of us as individuals, it is also true of us as a society, and as an international community. For example, as a nation we engaged in slavery, and today we are still dealing with the consequences. Or, if we look at the terrible and terrifying problems in the Middle East, we see that this story from the Book of Numbers is a description of our current mess. We are living with the consequences of decade after decade and even century after century of nations and societies failing to live together as God intends. And now we find ourselves in some sort of snake pit and snake bit situation.

In the story we read today, the Israelites went running to Moses saying: "We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you. Pray to the Lord to take away the serpents."

And this is what we often do. The pain and problems that confront us make us aware of our need for God and for God's grace. In the midst of this snake pit, that is the result of what we as persons or we as a society or we as a community of nations have done and failed to do, we pray for some sort of miraculous intervention. We want the serpents that have been set loose because of what we did and failed to do, to be rounded up and taken away.

We want Moses to pray our prayer for us. And our prayer is: "God, rescue us from the consequences of our sin. God, rescue us from the consequences of failing to do the good we should have done in our yesterdays and the consequences of our having participated in the past in much that is evil."

The story tells us Moses prayed for the people. And we, too, pray for the people. We pray to be delivered from the various snake pit situations in which we find ourselves.

God's response to Moses' prayer is interesting, and I think it is a profound reflection of the way God's grace works.

God does not take away the serpents that were set loose because of human sin. God does not rescue the people, and miraculously place them in some sort of ideal, garden of Eden. Listen to what God said to Moses in this story: "Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live." And so, Moses made a serpent of bronze, placed it on a pole, so that snake bit people could survive in their serpent invested world.

God's merciful and redeeming grace does not undo our yesterdays and eliminate the consequences of our sinful behavior. We are not rescued from living among serpents; nor are we protected from being snake bit. But we are given what we need to live in our serpent invested wilderness where we are snake bit from time to time.

God's grace does not take away the problems we have created by our behavior, by our society's behavior, or by the behavior of the international community. What God's grace does, is provide what we need for healing as we live in this serpent invested wilderness.

And what is the key to this healing? In this story from the Book of Numbers, the key to being made whole is keeping our focus on the bronze serpent God told Moses to make.

Is this some sort of superstitious act of magic that is being described? Of course not. That would be in conflict with the very commandments God gave us through Moses. What then is being communicated?

What I understand God is telling us to do is to keep focused on this reminder of God's grace. The serpents sent by God are a sign of God's tough love, God's love in the form of judgment. And this serpent God told Moses to make, is a sign of God's healing love, God's grace in the form of mercy. The message to the people was to keep their focus on reminders of God's grace, these reminders of both God's tough and tender love.

There are many reminders God has given us to help keep us aware of the grace of God. This sanctuary is one. And so are the gifts of the Scripture and prayer and holy communion within a community of faith. All these and more are means of grace to enable us to live in our personal serpent invested wilderness.

Of course, the ultimate reminder, the ultimate gift of grace is Jesus Christ. When we are snake bit, the primary source of healing and wholeness is the grace of God made known in and through Jesus. I think it is worth noting that in the Gospel of John the writer uses the metaphor of this story to describe Jesus as the ultimate gift of grace, the ultimate gift of God's tough and tender love. "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."

Whenever we find we are snake bit, it is a symptom of our having wandered away from God. It is then, we need to focus once more on the reminders of God's grace. We need to look up and see the reminders of grace God has placed in our lives so that we will be brought to our senses and not only say: "Oh, yes. Now I remember." but that we will also go on to change whatever we need to change in order for us to live as God intends.

God, as we move through the serpent invested wilderness of our lives, help us keep our focus on you and your grace so that we are able to live as you intend. Amen.

Let us thank God for the gifts and blessings we have received.

We have come here with a variety of concerns and problems. Let us ask God for guidance and help.

God, it appears that only a miracle can prevent war and its inevitable death and destruction. It is for just such a miracle that we pray. We pray that the leadership of Iraq will take the steps it must take to assure the world of disarmament. We pray that the governments represented in the United Nations will in fact be united in their efforts regarding Iraq. God, enable the leaders of all the governments involved to be open to your guidance. As they carry out their responsibilities related to their individual nations, help them be sensitive to the fact that the day of insolated and isolated nations is past; that we are all citizens of planet earth. Give each of them a vision of purpose that is greater than their own political careers. Enable each of them to speak and act out of their best selves. Bring out in each of them, their best and most noble qualities. Show each of them how to help bring into being a resolution of the current crisis so that there is both peace and justice. And, as we pray for you to bring out the best in them, we pray that you do that for us also. Enable each of us to live as you intend us to live, saying and doing what pleases you. Teach us to live the prayer Jesus taught us: "Our Father ...."