I know I haven't written on this for a while, but just haven't felt the muse - until I started reading over the texts for this week. Granted, I did write a pretty in-depth paper on John 3 for my Gospel of John class several years ago, but I decided to spend some time this week really looking at the "serpent vs. cross" imagery that gets played out here.
The bronze serpent story in Numbers 23 I've always found to be a fascinating little story - albeit a somewhat bizarre story. Why Jesus would pick up this particular event to illustrate the meaning of being "born again/from above" is particularly intriguing. Of course the commentaries on workingpreacher.org and the like will point us to the fact that in both cases, the snake on a stick and Jesus being lifted up on a cross make us realize that in order to be healed, we have to look to these instruments of death.
(Just a quick background for those who might be unfamiliar with the story - the Numbers text is about the Israelites grumbling against God yet again and then being bitten by snakes. God tells Moses to hold up a bronze serpent and if they turn and look at it, they'll he healed of their snake bites. In John 3, Jesus then states that likewise, the Son of Man must be raised up and in order to be healed, people must turn to him in faith. The more obvious and predominant point within this is that in both cases, we must face these instruments of death, these instruments of our own demise - our own sin, brokenness, etc. in order to be healed. And of course, Jesus offers something greater than Moses - he offers eternal healing).
Much more could be said about all of that. But for the purposes of this posting, I really want to concentrate on this whole bronze serpent imagery. It got my mind whirling about all the things I know about serpents and serpent imagery. As many of you know, my father is a physician. So I grew up seeing images of serpents on sticks all the time since the "Staff of Asclepius" is the universal symbol for most medical associations that deal with patient care (ie: the American Acadmey of Family Physicians). When my dad became a Family Physician, he was given a pin that he wore on the lapel of his jackets and lab coats of a snake wrapped around a stick. This was a familiar image to me that I didn't think too much about for a very long period of time.
However, as someone who loves history, mythology, ancient cultures and of course, theology, I find this all so intriguing because of the juxtaposition of the "serpent" imagery in the ancient near-east as opposed to how the Bible deals with this same serpent image. Just in case anyone is unaware of this point, the serpent in the ancient near east was a symbol of wisdom - dating back to ancient Mesopotamia where evidence of serpent worship abounded. In fact, the single serpent staff appears on a Sumerian vase from about 2000 B.C. representing the healing god Ningishita. The Greeks picked this up later and transformed it into the healing god Asclepius. Healing and wisdom are intrinsically tied together in the image of the serpent even today.
Yet, the serpent--this enigmatic symbol for worldly wisdom--is also what appears in the Garden of Eden to tempt Adam and Eve. The temptation is to embrace the wisdom the serpent has to offer, to potentially know all the things that God knows. Now, this is not to say that wisdom in and of itself is a bad thing - Proverbs points us to the fact that wisdom, when used in its proper form, is indeed something to strive for.
But in the case of the Garden of Eden, the Biblical message takes on a very radical point here: the worldly wisdom that is so worshiped by both ancient civilizations and our own is also the very thing that brings about our downfall and death. The knowledge itself is not the problem. The wisdom itself is not the problem. The problem is - we worship it. Many would say we would never worship a snake - how silly is that? But we DO worship knowledge. We worship worldly wisdom. We hunger for it - we seek it out and at times, we trust it far more than we are willing to trust God (I count myself among probably the worst of these!)
Like the Israelites, we've been "bitten" by our trust in worldly wisdom, by our trust in the ways in which we seek out "worldly" healing. Moses indeed held up the bronze serpent and the people were healed of the venom - but something that is important to note about this particular store... it was not a permanent fix. It put a band-aid on the problem, but didn't fix it. Death would still eventually come for the Israelites. Their immediate ailment was removed - but their state of being had not changed. They would return to their grumbling and would return to their sinful way of living.
Jesus now gives us a compare and contrast. The serpent vs. the cross. Both are instruments of death in their own way. The serpent brings death because it represents everything worldly that we embrace. Yes, that wisdom can help us in this world - we've used its wisdom to prolong life, cure diseases, etc. These in and of themselves are not "bad" things. But like the bronze serpent - it was not a complete healing. It still can't cure that one problem we all face. I think back to what the serpent said to Adam and Eve - "you will not die." A truth mixed with a lie. Death might not have been immediate - it may have been put off... but ultimately, death would eventually be the end result of trusting the serpent rather than God.
Our medical profession today goes to great lengths to not make a liar out of the serpent's words. They do everything they can to try and circumvent the process of death and spend their lives dedicated to trying to find ways to extend life. Again, I am not suggesting in and of itself this is a bad thing - but we're talking here about trust issues. What do we put our trust in? Do we trust our medical professionals... do we trust worldly wisdom... or do we trust God?
Jesus on the other hand holds something else up. He holds up the cross. Now, the cross is also an instrument of death. It was where the worst criminals were sent to die. Yet, it is this very foolish image that God now says we must look to for healing - but not necessarily worldly healing. Jesus says those who look upon the Son of Man lifted up and embrace him in faith will be given the gift of "eternal life." While the snake/worldly wisdom might provide a type of healing, it is only temporary. It is not eternal. The foolish image of the cross, however, provides something more complete. It is how relationship with God is restored. It is how we are spiritually healed and made whole again.
The world seems to be faced with two choices - follow the snake on a stick and the healing it offers, or God on a cross and the healing He offers. It has become clearer to me now why Jesus pulled upon this story to try and explain the concept of being "born again/from above."
Jesus states earlier in the text that we all must be born of both water and spirit when he's telling Nicodemus how one enters the Kingdom of God. It would thus seem that the bronze serpent parallels the "water" element Jesus is discussing - the physical world we live in. (For all humans are "born of water" - just ask any mother who's given birth the reality of this. As does Nicodemus since his immediate question is how one returns to the womb to be "reborn.") However - to be born of "spirit" as well is the point Jesus wants to drive home, and is the point that Nicodemus doesn't get for two reasons.
First, Nicodemus doesn't get it because he's Jewish, and his understanding of "salvation" revolves around the physical nationalistic type of salvation that one was expecting the Messiah to usher in. For Nicodemus, a physical salvation of Israel was not tied to issues of the hereafter. The second reason is popular Greek Platonic thought separated the "physical" from the "spiritual" to the point that the physical/material world was seen as "bad" and the "spiritual" was what one would strive for. Either way, for Nicodemus, "both" water and spirit together was a somewhat baffling concept (and still is for many who are incapable of comprehending the incarnation, of God becoming flesh).
Jesus is introducing the idea that BOTH are necessary, both are good, and both are a reality - we need the physical AND the spiritual. So he continues his juxtoposition of physical and spiritual by pointing out the two types of healing: the physical healing one receives from worldly things, represented by the serpent and his wisdom. The second type of healing that must be melded with the first is the cross - in all its utter foolishness is the true Wisdom of God. So while physicians, etc. are indeed important and are necessary in our physical, material world, we must incorporate the whole package - the physical with the spiritual. Because to rely and trust solely on the physical leads to incomplete healing. It is insufficient. The healing Moses could provide through the bronze serpent falls woefully short of the healing that God provides through Christ on the cross. So while we do not shun the old snake on a stick, our trust does not lie there. It lies in Christ on the cross and his resurrection from the dead.
"He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. (1Pet. 2:24)" The cross has been transformed so that it not only represents death to us, but also death to that which brought death, nullifying its effects - because we always remember that the cross was the curse, for "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: 'Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.'" (Galatians 3:10) But the resurrection is the promise that overcomes the curse.
