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“We detest this miserable food.” It’s the same chorus I sang as a middle-schooler whenever there were not snacks that I liked in the pantry full of edible options: “There’s no food in this house!” I’d whine at my mom, a woman who, for as long as I have known her, has gone grocery shopping every single Thursday night – with the exception of Thanksgiving – that I can remember. Of course, I knew just as well as she did that there was in fact food in the pantry. It just wasn’t microwavable or the exciting snacks that my friends had in their homes.
Needless to say, my woes were far less reasonable than the woes of a people on a decades-long journey from enslavement to a land flowing with milk and honey. This text is the final of many “murmuring” stories of the Israelites in their exodus from Egypt to Canaan. So far, they have complained about the food, the bitter water, their hunger, their thirst, Moses’s leadership style, and the journey itself. This time, they not only speak against Moses; they speak against God.
They question God’s care for them. This doubting, even anger, against God is nothing new for the someone familiar with the Bible. Anyone who’s taken a class on the book of Psalms with Bill Brown knows this to be true.
“How long will you forget me, Lord? Forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
Look at me! Answer me, Lord my God!”[1]
Frustrated petitions to God are still a form of relationship-building communication. Their anger turns to fear as venomous snakes appear with fiery bites that kill their fellow journeyers. They apologize to Moses, asking him to relay their confessions to God, which gives us this peculiar bronze snake on a pole.
The Israelites are in a multitude of in-between spaces in this brief narrative. They have escaped their enslavement in Egypt but have yet to reach their destination of the Promised Land. Evidently, they have food, but it’s miserable food. The serpents have brought about death to their journey companions, but God has given them an antidote for the bites. They have received forgiveness from God in the shape of the antidote, but the serpents are still among them. It’s a “two steps forward, one step back” scenario in my mind.
The Lenten season can feel a lot like a journey through the in-between. We’re walking toward the betrayal, arrest, and death of Jesus, all while knowing what happens on the Sunday after Good Friday. This balance of experiencing anguish while knowing the truth of God’s love is one that God’s people have long maintained.
We’re also enduring Lent with the acknowledgement that this week marks a year since our worlds were completely flipped around. It’s been a year since we gathered in sanctuaries for worship as we once did. It’s been a year since, in the middle of our midterm week, CTS moved to online classes for an indefinite amount of time. And there has been lots of murmuring ever since. We know that we will continue to be in an in-between space even as we celebrate the resurrection on Easter morning.
“The passage tells us that the answer to the Israelites wandering in the wilderness was lifting their eyes to see death on a pole,”[2] writes the Rev. Dr. Craig Kocher. It sounds counterintuitive to gaze upon something that has caused affliction; to look at a bronze snake in order to heal one’s venom-filled bites. Hebrew Bible scholars, rabbis, and pastors alike each have their own take on what’s truly happening in the interaction between the wounded Israelites and the bronze snake. Is it magic? Is it purely a symbol? Is it both? The Gospel of John will later use this snake as a metaphor for Jesus on the cross – death on a pole that somehow brings new life.
We know that “whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live,” but I have to wonder if there were some in the crowd who did not look at the bronze serpent. Some whose attention continued to turn toward the opposite direction – toward Egypt. Some whose attention continued to face down, toward their aching feet, or toward their loved ones who’d died from the bites. Some who felt that they did not have anywhere hopeful to look.
But I also hope that some of those who had no issue gazing upon the bronze snake wrapped their arm around their friends, their mothers, their cousins, and helped them find the courage to turn their chin up toward the snake on the pole, and maybe a little further toward their God.
Karl Jacobson, a Lutheran pastor, writes, that the “movement in these [wilderness] chapters [set the table] for the cleansing of Israel, for the new generation to be born and begin to grow in faith and trust.”[3] There’s a shift happening thanks to this in-between space. And it’s not just happening to Moses or Aaron or Joshua. It’s happening to the whole tribe of Israel. It’s happening in their communal grumblings, in their interactions with God and their leaders, in their gifts of manna and water from God, in their apologies and forgiveness, and in today’s radical act of looking up at the bronze serpent.
And isn’t that kind of what Lent is? Many of us might individually take on a spiritual practice or give up a habit in this season, but aren’t we doing it for the sake of the community? Aren’t we doing it with our eyes turned toward God? We go through Lent in rhythms of reading God’s word, confessing, and moving toward a life in deeper faith and trust. It can feel like a process that is very inward-focused; focused on one’s own soul and relationship with God. But, when that process is focused on God – and consequently, on God’s creation – it’s really bettering the greater community. It will bring us all new life.
Friends, as we continue through Lent, may we have the courage to turn our attention toward God’s restorative grace. And when that feels difficult, may we have the courage to ask a fellow journeyer for help.
All glory to the Creator, Christ, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
[1] Psalm 13:1,3 CEB
[2] Kocher, Feasting, 102.
[3] Fortress Commentary, 223.
Rev. Natalie Wolf 