I'm writing this on Monday morning and I'm relaxing after a pretty good weekend.
Yesterday morning I made it to early service at The Venues and dropped off some hand warmers and foot warmers for our homeless friends as well as a bag of groceries for the food drive. Participating in the community service projects at The Venues is one of the things I like best about the place.
After dropping my stuff off at the proper places, I enjoyed the morning worship and Rev Dev's take on the classic children's story of Noah and the Ark.
Since we're in a series that takes the stories we heard as children and puts a more adult spin on them, be prepared to have your understanding of the biblical story challenged if you choose to listen to it here.
After 1st service I joined the welcome crew and volunteered to greet people as they came in for the 2nd service and then joined the high school kids for their class. Part of the class recapped the Gospel of John daily devotion and part of it addressed some of their questions about God, about suffering in the world, about choices and consequences, etc. Hopefully some of the other stories of the bible helped them to better understand God.
Speaking of other stories of the bible...
I want to backtrack to John 3. In verses 14 and 15, Jesus says, "And 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."
To understand what he was talking about we have to go back to a story told in the Old Testament Book of Numbers. You can read it for yourself here or I can give you my take on it.
It seems that the Israelites were getting pretty tired of the whole wilderness wandering thing and began to gripe about it to Moses. "Why'd you have to bring us out here to die? We could have stayed in Egypt. It's the frickin' desert, for cryin' out loud! There's no water, no food, and we are tired of this worthless manna stuff!"
So God gets a little ticked at the ungrateful brats and sends poisonous snakes into the camp. People get bitten by the snakes and they die. Now the people are crying out to Moses, "We're sorry! We're sorry! Tell God we're sorry so he'll take the snakes away!"
Moses intercedes and God tells him to make a bronze snake, put it on a pole, and set it in the middle of the camp. If anyone gets bitten by a snake, all they have to do is look at the bronze snake and they'll live.
That's it. That's the story.
I wonder how that worked out for them. I know I'm a little weird, but I wonder about a couple of things...
First, I notice that God didn't do what the people asked by taking away the snakes. It seems they still had to deal with the pain and fear of getting attacked and bitten by the snakes. God did provide a way for them to escape the consequences of the bite. They didn't have to die.
Second, that's a pretty bizarre way to deliver them from the death sentence of a snake bite. I wonder if there were Israelites that died because they just didn't believe that looking at a snake statue could save them? Or maybe there were people that never heard about the snake in center of the camp and so they died. I mean this is a big camp -- a few million people! And it's not like they had group text available to them or could Google "How not to die from a snake bite."
In my weird head, I see a couple of scenarios playing out in the camp city of the Israelites.
Scene 1
Two men walking through the camp.
Yosef: Hey, I heard that Saul got bitten by a snake last night.
Samuel: Oh crap! Has anyone told him about the snake statue by the Tabernacle?
Yosef: Surely, he knows, right?
Samuel: I don't know. It's pretty new news. Why don't you swing by his tent and check. I would but it's a little too far out of my way.
Yosef: Man, I've got to get this manna home so my wife can fix breakfast for the kids. I'm sure one of of his neighbors or other friends have told him.
Samuel: Yeah, you're probably right.
Saul dies in his tent, never having heard about the saving power of the bronze snake.
Scene 2
A man lies on his bed, dying from a snake bite. He is in agony and afraid of dying.
A couple of friends burst into his tent with a stretcher made of skins and poles and begin to move him from his bed to the stretcher.
Dying man: What are you doing? Leave me alone! Can't you see I'm dying?
Friend 1: Yes, but there is a cure at the center of camp. Moses spoke to God and God told him to put up a snake statue. All you have to do is look at it and you won't die.
Dying man: That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Leave me alone.
Friend 2: No, really! It's working! Lots of people have been bitten, but they live because they looked at the snake. We're here to carry you to the center of camp, where the snake statue is located.
Dying man: Why didn't God just take away the snakes? Or take away their poison? Or just heal everyone? He could have done that instead of making sick and dying people go all the way to the center of the camp.
Friend 1: Who am I to question God? All I know is he has delivered us from certain death. Let's go!
Dying man (refusing to be moved to the stretcher): You two are crazy! Leave me alone to die in peace.
Friends leave in great frustration. Man dies alone in his tent.
Something to think about --
Jesus has been lifted up.
Do these two scenes still take place today?
John <><
No comments:
Post a Comment