The Old Testament Reading this week is one of those too strange not to be true stories. Israel is wandering in the desert and it is probably quite late in their 40 years of wandering. The high priest Aaron has died, although exactly when it is in that time frame isn’t possible to pin down. But not much has changed. They are impatient. They speak against God and Moses. They make comparisons to how good it was in Egypt. They want food and water while despising the manna and quail. (Numbers 21:4-5). It’s a replay of the greatest hits. Nothing has changed. Sinful human nature remains a constant. 40 years in the wilderness has taught them nothing.
The LORD’s response this time is not the slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love character. Neither does he give Moses a chance to negotiate. The LORD sends fiery serpents among the people. That descriptor itself is interesting. The word translated as fiery is simply Seraphim, as in the Cherubim and Seraphim. The LORD sent seraphic vipers. The leap to fiery is that the Seraphim are those angels closest to God. They are the ones who take burning coals to Isaiah (Isaiah 6:6). The serpents bite, so maybe the fiery is meant to capture the sting of the bite. But, it is still evocative. When we are grumpy and giving in to anger and complaining to God, how easy are our tongues and actions given over to Screwtape and his sort – Seraphic Vipers. Even if they aren’t demons, it’s evocative. And maybe a reminder of the world we live in – visible and invisible.
And when we are suffering the slings and arrows of fortune or Wormtongue what is our prayer? Take it away. “We have sinned, we have spoken against the LORD and against you. Pray to the LORD, that he take the serpents from us. (Numbers 21:7).” Put us back on the top of the wheel of fortune. Remove the thorn in my flesh. Make things perfect again. Restore it like it was. Yes, we will admit our sin. We might even mean it. But what we desperately want is the peace we forfeited.
And God’s answer to their prayers is instructive. Does he take the serpents away? No. He instructs Moses to make an image of one of them, put it on a pole, and tell everyone bitten to look at the image. “When he sees it, he shall live. (Numbers 21:8).” Israel is not restored, but enabled to live in the midst of the Seraphic Vipers. Another reason I’m not so confident of just calling them snakes. Because they never come up again in the story, but they are not driven away either. They just go to the background. While the pole with their image is in the foreground.
What did they see when they saw it? What do we see when we look at the cross? That man hangs there because of what we did. We put Jesus there. Risking a step out, it is the holy God that causes our pain. Yes, we deserve it, but it is still suffering. And when he came to us, we preferred to kill him. “Here is the heir, let us kill him (Matthew 21:38)” But when we look at the cross, if we see it rightly, we also live. God suffered with us. He was raised up that we might see him rightly. This one is not the Seraphic Vipers that divide us, but the innocent Son of God who loves us. Who loves us that even when we are living our greatest hits, died for us. The sign lifted up for all the world to see. Towering o’er the wrecks of time. No, we are not delivered from the Seraphic Vipers. But we can see them rightly in the light of the cross; see them rightly, and live.