Look and Live

Reading the Word

From Numbers: The people became impatient on the way. The people spoke against God and against Moses, "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." Then the LORD sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died. The people came to Moses and said, "We have sinned by speaking against the LORD and against you; pray to the LORD to take away the serpents from us." So Moses prayed for the people. And the LORD said 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.

From Psalm 98: "O sing to the LORD a new song, for he has done marvelous things. His right hand and his holy arm have gotten him victory. The LORD has made known his victory; he has revealed his vindication in the sight of the nations. He has remembered his steadfast love and faithfulness to the house of Israel. All the ends of the earth have seen the victory of our God."

From John: "No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. 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. 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. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him."

Reflection

The people do not complain about nothing.

They are hungry. They are thirsty. They are sick of manna, the daily provision that kept them alive but never satisfied their desire for Egypt's plenty. "We detest this miserable food." It is not a tantrum. It is exhaustion. The wilderness is long. The memory of slavery is strangely sweet. And their words against God and Moses are the words of a people who have forgotten that liberation is better than comfort.

God does not send the serpents to teach them a lesson. That is not how God works. The serpents are the natural consequence of their complaint, the venom of despair, the poison of preferring bondage to freedom. They bite...people die. And then, in the midst of death, God does something strange.

God tells Moses to make a serpent of bronze and lift it up on a pole. The very image of what is killing them becomes the sign of what will save them. Look at it, God says. Look at the thing you fear. Look at the poison in your system. Look at the consequences of your despair. And in the looking, find life.

This is not easy faith. It is not positive thinking. It is the refusal to look away from what is real and deadly, trusting that God can transform even the symbol of death into the means of healing.

John takes this strange story and makes it the lens for the cross. Jesus, like the serpent, must be lifted up. The cross is not a beautiful thing. It is an instrument of state terror, the Roman Empire's tool for crushing dissent. It is the symbol of everything that kills...political violence, religious complicity, the state's power to destroy bodies. And Jesus says: look at it. Do not look away from the suffering. Do not sanitize the violence. Look at it, because in looking at what humans do to the innocent, you will see what God does to save.

For the Christian faith, this is essential. The cross is not a cosmic transaction where an angry God demands blood. The cross is the revelation that God enters into human suffering and transforms it from within. The serpent on the pole does not destroy the serpents in the wilderness. It heals the bitten. The cross does not destroy the power of empire. It reveals that empire's violence cannot kill the love of God.

And the promise is universal. "God so loved the world." Not the church. Not the righteous. Not the ones who get the theology right. The world. The cosmos. Everything and everyone! God did not send the Son to condemn but to save. Condemnation is already here...it is the serpent, the empire, the despair that makes us prefer slavery to freedom. Salvation is the gift.

Look, and live.

Psalm 98 sings the new song that this strange mercy makes possible. God has done marvelous things. The victory is not military. The vindication is not revenge. It is steadfast love...the same love that provided manna in the wilderness, that lifted up the bronze serpent, that lifted up the Son of Man on the cross. And the whole earth sees it. The ends of the earth are witnesses to a God who saves rather than condemns.

Prayer

O God, we are tired of the wilderness. We miss the false comforts of Egypt. We complain against your daily bread and against your daily mercy.

The serpents of despair have bitten us. We do not want to look at what is killing us. We want to look away, to numb ourselves, to pretend the poison is not real.

But you lift up what we fear. You make us look at the cross, the violence we do, the systems that kill, the despair we choose.

And in that looking, you give us life. Not because the cross is magic, but because you are there, transforming death into healing, despair into hope, bondage into freedom.

We look at you, lifted up, and we live. Amen.

For Today

What serpent of despair has bitten you? What would it mean to stop looking away and look at what is really happening, trusting God to transform it? And where is the cross being lifted up in your world...the suffering you are called to see and name?