March 8, 2026 – Third Sunday in Lent
Numbers 21.4-9
John 3.11-17
Snakes on a Plain
Third Sunday in Lent
“Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes?” It was Indiana Jones who asked the question in “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” although Adam and Eve may have wondered the same thing a couple years earlier, and I found myself asking that very question as I read through this week’s Lent Devotions. I wonder if you did too. Not just one, but two different writers decided that the decidedly obscure story about snakes in the wilderness in the book of Numbers would be just the thing to get us through the third week of Lent. We heard the story once again, or maybe for the first time, this morning. The people of Israel were in one of their complaining moods again – indeed, they complained so much that there is actually a technical biblical term for it – it is called murmuring – the people were murmuring against God. They hated the wilderness, they didn’t like the food – the manna that God provided to keep them alive, by the way – and they wanted more water, which God also provided by turning a nearby rock into a water fountain, but no, this was not good enough. So, the story goes, God sent poisonous snakes among the worst complainers, and many who were bitten died. But wait – suddenly they were sorry for their murmuring, the survivors repented, and the remedy was to gaze on bronze serpent affixed to a long pole Moses held up, and they were miraculously cured. Yes, just another typically inscrutable Old Testament miracle story.
As a minister, one of the questions I hear with some regularity is, Why doesn’t God perform miracles any more like the ones we read about in the Bible? Why are there no more resurrections? Where are the miracles, the exorcisms? Where are the practical miracles, ones we could really use like changing water into wine and walking on water? The question usually boils down to, Why doesn’t God do these things any more? But this morning’s reading from Numbers prompts the opposite question, at least to me: it isn’t Why doesn’t God do things like this anymore, but rather Why in the world did God do something like this in the first place?
In last Monday’s Lent devotion, and then again in yesterday’s, Chris Mereschuk, who is on staff here in the Southern New England Conference, and Vince Amlin at Bethany UCC in Chicago, reflect on the story of the snakes. I have no idea why they both chose to write about the same obscure and semi-magical tale from deep in a biblical book hardly anybody reads, but I suppose we can ask the same question of our own minister on occasion. Both Chris and Vince take away the lesson that we need to face our own sin, our shortcomings and faults, head-on, as the Hebrews were compelled to do. Chris writes, “As for me, instead of trying to snake-proof myself with pride and denial, I need to figure out why I attract fiery serpents in the first place. And that’s only going to happen when I’m willing to stare at them head-on. Until then I’ll keep getting bit.” Vince takes the same tack. Referring to James Collins’ book Good to Great, he writes, “Greatness (apparently) lies in the courage to meet my mistakes head-on. Healing (apparently) too. That’s the prescription God offers the Israelites. Having fallen into faithlessness and been bitten by venomous snakes, the antidote is a long, hard look at what went wrong. A confrontation with the brutal facts.” And while I think they hit on part of the reason for this outlandish Old Testament story, I also think there is more to it.
There is a scene in the Monty Python film, Life of Brian that reminds me of this story from Numbers. The movie takes place in biblical times: Brian is a neighbor of Jesus. In one scene, a small group of anti-Roman rebels called “The People’s Front of Judea” is sitting around complaining – murmuring – about their Roman oppressors. The leader tries to stir up their anger with the question, “What have the Romans ever done for us?” And one of them, not realizing the question was meant to be rhetorical, says, “the aqueduct?” The leader, not expecting a response, and annoyed by it, replies,
- “Well, yes, I’ll grant you, the aqueduct.” Someone else pipes up: “And sanitation – you remember what a mess the city used to be like.” “All right, I’ll grant you that the aqueduct and the sanitation are two things that the Romans have done…” Another says, “And the roads.” “Well, obviously, the roads, that goes without saying. But apart from the aqueduct, the sanitation and the roads, what have the Romans ever done for us?” And then the others begin chiming in: “Irrigation.” “Medicine.” “Education.” “Health.” “And the wine – that’s something we’d really miss if the Romans left.” “Public baths!” “And it’s safe to walk in the streets at night now – they certainly know how to keep the public order.” And with the conversation quickly going off the rails, the leader tries to cut them all off: “All right, all right! But apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and sanitation and public order… what have the Romans done for us?” And just before the scene ends, one more person timidly suggests, “Peace?”
I’m reminded of this scene when we read about the Israelites complaining to Moses here in Numbers. “All right, all right! But apart from our freedom from slavery and our rescue from Pharaoh and our impossible escape through the Red Sea and the destruction of our pursuers and the giving of the Ten Commandments and the promise of a new home in Canaan and having all this sweet satisfying manna waiting fresh for us at breakfast every morning, and fresh water springing from mere stones – what has God done for us lately?”
One of the things about folks who like to complain is that, sometimes, the complaint comes back to bite the complainer. You’re going to complain about God’s provision? Really? Something like this says a lot more about the complainer than it says about God. Maybe this is where those poisonous snakes came from. There was a lot of venom in the crowd that day, resentment about Moses’ leadership, the hubris that they knew how to do it better, the borderline longing to return to Egypt – that is, to slavery – where they imagined they had it better. Bitterness and gossip and criticism are not the kinds of things community is built on. They are poison. And maybe this is where those snakes came from. Maybe God did not actually send them after all, but rather maybe they represented the effects of the people’s bitterness and resentment and rancor. Maybe it was their own complaints that came back to bite them.
Last November, the Center for Disease Control altered its guidance on when and which vaccines should be recommended for children. The new guidelines are based on a discredited 1998 study that linked the measles vaccine to autism. Since the measles vaccine is usually administered as a part of a suite of vaccines, the MMR or measles-mumps rubella shot, parents who latched onto the new CDC recommendations and refused to have their children vaccinated against measles have also left them vulnerable to the other two diseases. We know what happened next. In the past year the United States has experienced a six-fold surge in measles cases over what they were before the CDC altered their guidelines. Ironically missing its own irony, it is the CDC that reported the surge in cases. Like the snakes in the Old Testament wilderness, this is a classic case of poor decisions and faithless behavior that come back to bite you.
Is there anybody outside the nation’s capital who believes that bombing Iran is not going to come back to bite us? A week into this war no government official has offered a clear rationale for it, nor the slightest whiff of an idea for an exit strategy. That is an awful lot of snakes on the plains of the Middle East. It is telling that some of the most vocal opponents to this war are veterans of the Vietnam, Iraqi and Afghanistan conflicts, men and women who know first-hand the dangers of shooting first and asking questions later. It is also telling that few if any of those who initiated the war have any experience in military service. The venerable tongue-in-cheek question applies in spades here, “What could possibly go wrong?”
Now I realize that I could have waited until next Sunday to talk about snakes, coming as it does two days before St Patrick’s Day. But this will give us a whole week to think about them before the patron saint of Ireland comes along to shoo them all away. It might not be a bad idea could be good to sit with our snakes for a week. Because remember, as the serpents in the wilderness were of the people’s own making, so in some ways are ours of our own. “We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you; pray to the Lord to take the serpents away from us.” Lent is the season to consider the ways we fall short, the things we can do to improve ourselves and our world, the things we do that we should not and the things we do not do that we should. Because like those poisonous serpents in the wilderness, those “fiery snakes” as the Hebrew Bible puts it, our sins not only hurt those around us, those closest to us and those who are part of our community, but invariably, they will come back to bite us as well. The unkind word spoken in anger often comes back to bite us. The outstretched hand of the homeless person we rushed by in a hurry keeps us awake at night. The sexist or racist joke we shared in private will haunt us the rest of the day. The people Israel looked up in repentance to the bronze serpent for healing and new life; as we said at the start of worship today, we also look up to God for relief and hope, we look up to God for peace and understanding, we look up to God for strength and encouragement. These are the sure remedies for snakebite, not so much the relief and hope and peace and understanding and strength and encouragement, but the looking up to God. This is where repentance and healing begin.