March 22, 2009

Glynn Cardy

Lent 4     Numbers 21:4-9     John 3:14-21

Fear is a normal emotion. When we feel our security threatened, our physical or fiscal wellbeing threatened, or the wellbeing of those close to us threatened, fear is often part of our response. Learning to control and overcome our fears, both the rational and irrational ones, is an essential part of living a fulfilling, adventurous, and faith-filled life. To look fear in the face and not be afraid is to declare to others and yourself that you will not be controlled or censored by it. To look fear in the face and not be afraid is let the power of love move you and expand to be good news in the world.

In the Fourth Gospel it is written, “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must [Jesus] be lifted up” . This is a reference to the Book of Numbers. The Gospel writer is suggesting that in order to understand the crucifixion of Jesus we might ponder upon an old snake saga.

In Numbers 22 the wandering Israelites en route to the so-called ‘Promised Land’ [which is code for ‘someone else’s land’] were in the desert and suffering from snakebites. As one would expect in ancient times every good or bad incident in their community was a result of their god’s whims. In this story the snakes were biting because the people had been naughty. So, after they’d all said sorry, Moses on instructions from the god made a bronze serpent, stuck it on a pole, and raised it skyward. By raising the effigy of a snake, people were healed of snakebite.

Anthropologists have a name for this. They call it ‘sympathetic magic’ – making an image of a creature offsets the power of that creature. In the medical world immunologists could call ‘sympathetic magic’ making hyper-immune serum. A small part of a disease is injected into the blood stream of a healthy person in order that the person’s immune system would build and develop its own resistance. This is what some vaccinations do. Was Moses raising a symbol of fear in order to vaccinate the people against the fear of pain and death?

Snakes, particularly for those of us unfamiliar with them, epitomize fear. Whether you enjoy their beauty and movement, or like many ancient cultures see in the snake a symbol of regeneration, there is also the knowledge that a snake is dangerous and potentially deadly. To be bitten by a snake is to experience pain and maybe death.

The question then arises about why one of the early Christian writers was likening the crucifixion of Jesus to the raising of a serpent on a pole. Was the author of the Fourth Gospel saying that Jesus’ death was like a snake? And if so how?

I would like to suggest that the snake firstly represents fear. The early disciples were afraid. They had followed their wise and charismatic rabbi for a number of years. They had seen in him not just wisdom and charisma but a spirit and presence that they believed was of the essence of god. They had left their homes and livelihoods to follow him. In his crucifixion it was as if their hopes and dreams also died. They felt terribly alone and abandoned by their god. In addition they feared, through their association with Jesus, that they too would be hunted down and likewise murdered. This fear was not misplaced. Such hunting down and murdering was standard Roman practice.

The Gospel writer is saying: as the Israelites looked at the snake on the pole so look at that which you fear: the pain and death by crucifixion and the desolation of abandonment. Look into the face of fear, acknowledge fear’s power, wrestle with your feelings, and then walk free of it. If you don’t face your fear you won’t overcome it. It will lurk at your back and slide out to bite you.

When the Church talks about Jesus ‘overcoming death’ it doesn’t mean that Christians don’t physically die. Usually ‘overcoming death’ is interpreted as meaning there is a heavenly afterlife for believers. I think however it is more faithful to the biblical tradition to understand ‘overcoming death’ as meaning overcoming the fear of death. To overcome that fear enabled the early Christians to have the courage to proclaim their truth in the face of significant political and religious opposition and persecution.

Indeed it is possible to consider the whole idea of resurrection as hinging around overcoming fear in order to be able to let the power of the Love called God flow unfettered through the community of believers and each individual within it. Most of the appearance stories, when a Jesus apparition visited his cowering followers, addressed the issue of fear. “Be not afraid”, “Peace be with you”, says the Easter Jesus. Until the disciples confronted their own fears the empowering spirit would not resurrect them.

I think in our Christian history we have suffered from parishioners, priests, and bishops who have not looked fear in the face, and who have therefore created mental and emotional walls to keep pain, death, and abandonment away. They have valued security over revelation, surety of conviction over engagement with outsiders, conformity and control over the new ideas that revelation and outsiders can bring. Religious fear is often been projected out onto those who are different, e.g. those of a different culture, religion, or skin pigmentation. Jews, gay and lesbian people, single women, the disabled… have all been victims of the Church’s inability to face, own, and overcome its own fears.

Inability to face fear has led the Church to be fixated with doctrinal control. ‘Exploration’, ‘freedom’, ‘innovation’, and ‘creativity’ are all values that need to be carefully watched and monitored by the ecclesiastical controllers and, when looking threatening, suppressed. Church teaching has elevated the values of submission and obedience, and has been disdainful of anything theologically ‘adventurous’. These attitudes still persist. I long for the day when the whole church will see the one who is strange, who is sexually other, who doesn’t believe what we believe, as firstly a human being like us and secondly potentially a bearer of gifts and grace.

When the Israelites looked at the elevated snake, a symbol of their fears, they experienced healing. The snake however also represents religious otherness. In ancient Middle Eastern mythology it is best known as the symbol of the Goddess, representing fertility and birth, and also the cyclical rebirth of nature in spring. The shedding of the skin, and also hibernation, create associations with the themes of transformation and immortality. Did the wandering Israelites not only fear pain and potential death but also the faith of the Goddess religions they were encountering? Did they need to look at those female gods and realize both the strengths and shortcomings of their own male god in order to be healed in their soul? Maybe then Joshua’s slaughter of the Canaanites might have been avoided.

Did the writer of the Fourth Gospel know this Goddess association when he used the story from the Book of Numbers to talk about Jesus? Jesus’ ministry reveals a remarkable openness, bearing in mind he was a male rabbi, to the insights of both women and other people of other religions. Was this Johannine passage asking Jesus’ followers to see the cross as symbolizing the fearlessness of the Church to not only proclaim its message of love but to engage deeply with those outside its boundaries. Indeed is this not what love demanded of them, and still demands of us?