Of snake boots, Jesus, and open faith (Numbers 21:4-9 & John 3:14-21)

“Poisonous serpents moved among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died.”  

 These are the words from the Book of Numbers this morning.  Sometimes Holy Scripture provides us metaphors so clear that they scarcely need interpretation.  You know what I’m talking about: With last Tuesday’s primaries we have entered another election season.  The serpents are moving, and the venom has begun to flow!

I don’t intend to malign dedicated and self-sacrificing public servants, of whom there are many.  I thank God for them, and I commend their willingness to serve.  But there are fewer and fewer of them, it seems to me, and more and more of those who would slither and bite, serving themselves and their tribe rather than the body public.  Their rhetoric gets into us like poison, and we find ourselves fevered by venom from both ends of the political spectrum.

I wish this were constrained to the secular world, but it isn’t.  Within the broad sweep of Christianity, there are plenty who loudly invoke the name of Jesus as the source and backstop of their ideologies; their opinions of the various people who populate our world; and their determination of who is in and who is out of God’s favor and, even heaven itself.  Such folk speak the name of Jesus, but their messaging often comes across as a kind of Christian venom.  It makes many of us deeply uneasy.  We recoil from conversation with such Christians, keeping a bit of distance, as if we fear a quick strike that may undo us.

I’m a bird hunter.  I love to walk quail fields in the high grass.  And I always wear snake boots of thick canvas and leather, designed to withstand the fangs of a copperhead or timber rattlesnake.  I think for many who find themselves gravitating to the Episcopal Church, we think of the Episcopal Church as ecclesiastical snake boots.  Many who aren’t cradle Episcopalians have been bitten at points in their lives by other forms of Christianity.  The wounds are often lasting, and in here we’re safe from the poison.  That could be the new Episcopal Church slogan: “Join the Episcopal Church: We’ll be your snake boots!”

But it’s worth looking again at the prescription God gives Moses for the health and well-being of the Israelites.  As the Hebrews are getting snake-bit hither and yon, God says to Moses: “‘Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.’ So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.”

What’s that all about?  We’ll come back to it in a bit.  First, let’s look at the Gospel text, which explicitly hearkens back to the Old Testament reading from Numbers.  Jesus himself says today, “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.”

That statement is followed by perhaps the most well-known verse in the Gospels, one that I learned as a small child watching football on television, when a 1980s character known as “Rainbow Wig Guy” frequented the endzones of NFL stadiums holding up a sign that read “John 3:16.”  And here it is today, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

People have visceral reactions to this verse.  For some, it is a great comfort, but for others, it seems to have been claimed as the exclusive property of that brand of Christian to which I referred earlier, serving as the very tip of the fang, spoken to pierce and do damage by implying that if one doesn’t believe in exactly the right way—namely, the way of the one striking out believes—then one is condemned.

So, what are we Episcopalians to do?  Are we to stay huddled and a bit confused, protected within our church  walls that serve like the thick hide of snake boots?  Is that what God is calling us to do?  Is that what discipleship to Jesus looks like?

To get at the answer, we need to remember to whom Jesus is speaking in John’s Gospel this morning.  A few verses before today’s reading begins, Nicodemus approaches Jesus.  John says that Nicodemus is “a Pharisee” and “a leader of the Jews.”[i]  This means he is both well-educated and a person of status and standing in his community.  It’s important to note that Nicodemus is genuinely admiring of Jesus and recognizes that Jesus is someone special with a special message.  Nicodemus says to Jesus, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.”[ii]

All the signs point to Nicodemus being at the cusp of a spiritual awakening and a profound faith, except for one crucial nugget of information: John 3 tells us that Nicodemus visited Jesus in secret, “under the cover of night.”[iii] 

Nicodemus wants to follow Jesus.  He wants to be a disciple.  He wants to live by grace.  But Nicodemus is wary and afraid.  He worries that folks will lump him in with all the other religious messianic crazies walking around.  He’s afraid of how his life may change.  He’s afraid of getting snakebit, and thus he wants to remain anonymous.  So, Nicodemus puts on his snake boots, so to speak.  He plays it safe and visits Jesus only at night, when no one will know.   

And this is when Jesus says to Nicodemus, “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.  For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

What, then, is the connection?  Why does Jesus point Nicodemus the Pharisee, who knows his scripture by heart, to this image of Moses and the Israelites?  It foretells the cross, obviously, when Jesus will literally be raised up on the wood the way that Moses lifts the bronze serpent on his staff, but there’s more to it, too.  In the Old Testament story, in which the Israelites are constantly finding themselves struck by snakes, God’s antidote is not for God’s people to hide in darkness or in the armor of snake boots, to recede from the danger and threat.  Rather, God has Moses lift up a blazing icon of sun-burnished bronze and call God’s people to gaze upon it and flock to it, to cleave to God’s grace and power openly—even brazenly—as the way to health and life.  God promises that when one does so, no venom can harm.

And that is what Jesus is saying to Nicodemus as well.  It is what John’s Gospel is saying to us.  Perhaps no one in the Gospel story represents Episcopalians more than Nicodemus.  Like Nicodemus, we are thoughtful and educated, worldly and of standing in our community.  Like Nicodemus, we find Jesus compelling and find ourselves drawn to God.  And like Nicodemus, we are tentative.  We’re often unsure of our faith and so we prefer it to be relatively anonymous.  We don’t want to go toe-to-toe with those “other” Christians who speak so openly of “Jesus this and Jesus that.”  And we surely don’t want to risk non-Christians lumping us in with those other Christians!

And as with Nicodemus, Jesus tells us that we can’t have faith halfway.  We cannot follow Jesus under cover of darkness.  In the end, there is no such thing as mumbling, privatized, anonymous discipleship.   To believe—to adore, to trust, to follow Jesus, which is, we must never forget, what believing truly means—requires openness, gratitude, joy, and a willingness to name in whom we place our faith.  It means gazing upon the cross in the light of our everyday and knowing that, so long as we cleave to God’s grace, no venom can touch us.

If we will come to Jesus in light of day, if we will gaze upon Jesus, if we will speak of Jesus openly and with the brazen confidence of those who feel God’s love, then we will be inoculated from the effect of those who misuse the name of Jesus in venomous ways.  Through our lived and spoken faith, the world will come instead to know the Jesus we know, here in this place: The Jesus whose words always heal, whose love always accepts, whose grace always uplifts the downtrodden.

Nicodemus will show up twice more in John’s Gospel.  The third and final time we see him, he is preparing Jesus’ crucified body for burial.  Finally, he has openly given himself to the one whose life, death, and resurrection saves him, and saves us.           

We don’t have to wait.  As we approach Easter, let this be the time that we say to those we meet, those who are searching, those who need a word of grace in their lives, that here at Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, among this community of faith, we know Jesus.  In a world of vipers, God’s love heals us and makes us whole.  In the light of day, we look to God’s grace.  Openly, we love one another in Christ’s name.    For God so loved the world!

---

[i] John 3:1

[ii] John 3:2

[iii] Ibid