Snake Bitten

With their patience worn out by the journey, the people complained against God and Moses, “Why have you brought us up from Egypt to die in this desert, where there is no food or water? We are disgusted with this wretched food!” In punishment the LORD sent among the people saraph serpents, which bit the people so that many of them died. Then the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned in complaining against the LORD and you. Pray the LORD to take the serpents from us.”

So Moses prayed for the people, and the LORD said to Moses, “Make a saraph and mount it on a pole, and if any who have been bitten look at it, they will live.” Moses accordingly made a bronze serpent and mounted it on a pole, and whenever anyone who had been bitten by a serpent looked at the bronze serpent, he lived. (Numbers 21:4-9)

“Pray the LORD to take the serpents from us,” so said the people.  The serpent is another way to name Satan, the Devil.  Satan bites us through temptation, and most of us succumb at one time or another.  

A modern-day Moses-like pole to which we look would be a mirror in which we see our reflections – snakes.  But we live when we recognize the snakes within us, and we drive them out.  We acknowledge our sins and ask for forgiveness – our snake anti-venom cure.

Jesus is a cure.  According to John, when we believe in him, we have eternal life.  Our Gospel reads:

Jesus said to Nicodemus: “No one has gone up to heaven except the one who has come down from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who 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 might not perish but might have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. (John 3:13-17)

When we see Jesus on the cross high above us at Christ the King, it’s a reminder of Jesus dying for our sins.  In a way, he was bitten by serpents, the people who betrayed him and the Romans who lifted him high.  Whenever we betray him through word or deed, we “bite” him; however, we perish, not him.  That’s the rub; that’s the irony.  The Devil smiles.

Deacon David Pierce