Numbers 21:4-9

When God rescued our ancestors out of slavery in Egypt, they spent forty years wandering in the wilderness. It was anything but a direct route to the Promised Land. They often complained about the conditions, thinking God must not care. It would have been better to stay in Egypt. The water is bitter. There’s little food. We’re thirsty. We miss eating meat.[i]

God sent manna, miraculous bread from heaven, a flaky white substance they gathered each morning. God gave water. God sent quail. Today’s text continues this theme. The people became impatient. “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food.” This time God sent snakes, poisonous serpents, from whose bites many people died. The people repented: We sinned by complaining. Please take away the snakes.

God did not take away the snakes. Curiously, God instructed Moses to make a bronze serpent and put it on a pole. Then, when someone is bit, they looked at the bronze serpent and lived. This is challenging story. God sends poisonous snakes that kill. God lets snakes stay, and they keep biting people. God has a bronze image made for people to look at. That sounds like an idol.

When the people complained about food and God sent manna, there were conditions. Manna had to be collected for each day not stored ahead.[ii] It taught trusting God to provide for tomorrow. When the people complained and asked for meat, God did not just send quail to feed thousands of people. God sent so much quail that they ate it for a month and got sick of eating it.[iii]

Walking in the wilderness was hard and intentional formation. God invested forty years to shepherd a generation from slavery toward freedom. The first part was exciting with victorious departure and crossing the Red Sea on dry ground. The second much longer part was hard as God taught trust, hope, and love in the wilderness with great challenges.

Being near a poisonous snake is frightening. Egyptians and others had serpents as gods. They are a powerful symbol. God did not take away the snakes. God provided a cure by looking up at one. Amid pain and death, God saves. God doesn’t erase pain and death but provides in the midst.

In our Gospel text, Jesus said: “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will realize” who I am. Just prior to the famous verse John 3:16, it says: “And 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.”[iv] The serpent in the wilderness foreshadows Jesus on the cross. Amid pain and death, God saves. God doesn’t erase pain and death but provides in the midst.

How do you identify with complaining, pain, and fear in the wilderness? God is mysteriously and sometimes confusingly present. God is with you in the pain, and God provides the cure. As they looked up at the serpent and were healed, so we look at Jesus on the cross. There Jesus sees and holds all pain and suffering. Nothing is impossible with God. In our wilderness this Lent, look up and trust the One who loves and heals.

[i] Exodus 15, 16, 17, and Numbers 11

[ii] Exodus 16:19-21

[iii] Numbers 11:18-20

[iv] John 3:14-15