March 10, 2021
Numbers 21:4-9
4From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom; but the people became impatient on the way. 5The 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.” 6Then the Lord sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died. 7The 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. 8And 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.” 9So 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.
I think at this point in our worldwide pandemic we would all just do about anything to make this end so that people could stop suffering and dying from this virus. If I could sculpt a bronze covid virus so people could look at it and live, I would do it in a heartbeat. While I wish with all my heart that this was the solution and wisdom that this week’s Old Testament lesson had for us today, we have to go deeper.
Because we all want an easy kind of faith where we can just hold up a bronze statue on a stick- we don’t want to do the hard work of our faith. We don’t want to spend time in prayer, actively love our neighbors, or live our our baptismal promises– we want to wave a bronze snake on a stick and be done. We have no problem bending over backwards for other things- jobs, sports teams, politics, money. We’re not afraid to put in the extra time or effort into those things, to craft them into bronze statues that we give our time and worship too. So why are we so quick to make idols of these things to prioritize these things and not our faith?
Even though we continually sin, separate ourselves from God and one another making idols out of insignificant worldly things. God always acts on behalf of God’s people.
Like in our text from Numbers, God is responsive to the needs of his complaining people. He provides what the context could not. The protests are answered, the cries are heard, quite undeservedly. There is a gift of healing where the pain experienced is the absolute worst. Deliverance comes, in the very presence of the pain and suffering. Deliverance comes from God.
In this season of Lent as we are reminded of the covenants that God has made with humanity. We are also reminded that humanity repeatedly breaks their end of the deal. We learn who God is in response to humanities constant need to make idols and break covenants. We learn that God is merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love- even when we are not.
Leave a Reply