Email a reflection
Christ Church Uniting
Disciples and Presbyterians
1300 Kailua Rd.
Kailua, HI 96734
262-6911
Numbers 21:4-9
I’m hoping some day to preach the great American peace sermon, but I’m not ready today. Former New York City Riverside Drive Pastor Ernie Campbell told a preaching seminar I was attending that “great congregations make great preachers.” So I’m asking you, how should this peace sermon that I want to preach go?
I’ve already heard from a former member, Pat Ritter. She sent an article about a talk her son Scott gave recently at Cornell University. He’s a former UN weapon’s inspector and served twelve years as a U.S. Marine intelligence officer. He said, “No matter what the U.S. does, it will not win this war.”
I took his meaning to arise not from a tactical analysis of the military situation but rather from a prophetic insight that in war, no one wins. This will have to figure in my sermon when it happens.
Meanwhile, it’s mid-Lent. We continue looking at covenants in Hebrew Scripture, pictures of our relationship with God and one another. Today, we consider what I will call the “Grumble Covenant.”
We’ll start by working
through verse by verse.
Numbers 21:
4
From 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.
They were quite close to the Promised Land but refused passage through Edom even when they offered to pay. They asked God for an intervention but received none. They were frustrated at having to double back and around Edom. They became impatient on the way.
5
The 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."
Grumble, grumble, grumble. “We detest this Miserable food.” Literally, “lite food.” The Hebrews, only recently liberated from Pharaoh’s oppression under which they had almost no food at all, regarded the manna God was providing them as fluff without any nutritional value whatsoever.
6
Then the LORD sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the
people, so that many Israelites died.
Anyone here been to Teotihuacan in Mexico? Remember the glyphs of speakers? Painted on the walls are profiles of heads with feathery swirls coming out of their mouths. This, experts tell us, was to represent speaking.
It is possible to think of the image of poisonous (the Hebrew is actually “fiery”) snakes morphing from the venomous grumbling the people were doing. People get hurt when angry, hurting words are thrown out into community. Reminds me of the only lie I remember my mother telling me. She said, “Sticks and stones can break your bones, but words can never hurt you.” Not true.
7
The 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.
Interesting, isn’t it, the people’s realization that their grumbling against Moses their called leader is grumbling against Yahweh who called the leader, and visa-versa.
Not laying the groundwork for the divine rights of kings, presidents, or pastors here. Simply noting the biblical inference that if you regard me and the Council as called by God to lead and serve you, then how you treat us has a corollary in how God feels treated by you.
8
And the LORD said to Moses, "Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a
pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live."
9. So 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.
Later Christian commentators would say, “Look, the serpent on the pole prefigures the image of Jesus being raised up on the cross.” The writer of John’s Gospel certainly took and used it that way. John has Jesus say, “and when I am raised up, I will draw all people to myself.”
I’m wondering if there isn’t a meaning or learning a bit more direct, something which arises from the Old Testament itself.
For example, suppose we think of our own grumbling as the projection into our psychic environment (bear with me on this) of fiery serpents that potentially can injure, even wound, perhaps mortally, the spirit of the endeavor before us.
Specialists in human relations and corporate dynamics have figured this out and even made rules about it in customer service: smile, no grumbling, certainly no grumbling in front of the client! Anyone ever been to a restaurant in which the waitress and the cook were screaming at each other? Just makes you lose your appetite. It’s the same in the church.
Alban Institute published a book called Behavioral Covenants for Congregations. Its premise is that in these testy times, the health and vitality of the body of Christ depends upon church members treating each other with civility and respect, in short, watching their language.
How easy it is to wound the enthusiasm of a child! Mom, Dad! Look at this. That’s nothing Billy, throw it away. Let’s pretend Dad. You be… Not now Susan. I’m really busy.
And how easy it is to empower and guide a child by nothing more than listening, affirming, playing along. Oh Billy, that’s great. What do you see? O.K. Suzie, I’ll take that role. What role are you taking?
The enthusiasm and imagination of adults is just as precious and fragile. Grumbling in the social community kills not only the joy of life together but reduces our ability to reach the high goals to which God invites us.
Disappointments and frustrations, missed opportunities, the need to double back over old ground are inevitable in our life together. And no one is perfect. The placing of a bronze serpent in the midst of the traveling Hebrew community reminded the people that even at their best poisonous words would be spread into the community.
The bronze fiery serpent could serve as a check on their grumbling. As a reminder of their fundamental vulnerability, it would remind them also of the need to take care with one another, to trust in God’s presence among them.
Some might want to see the bronze serpent as an instrument of supernatural intervention to clean up a mess the people created.
I see it rather as an intentional reminder of a potentially dark and certainly dangerous power we all possess in the way we treat one another when we are upset, frustrated, disappointed, frightened.
I see the presence of the bronze serpent as an invitation to the people to take back the serpents released by their grumbling and an empowering of the people to use their speech for healing, for building up, for advancing the cause or causes which have brought them together.
To those who are angered, frustrated, distraught by the conflict over the war in Iraq, I say “take care” in how you act. Be careful what you say. Our speech must transcend grumbling. Let our speech be carefully uttered seeking truth in love, healing in the face of distress.
Let us pledge to conduct ourselves in a manner that shows courage and commitment to the highest ideals of our faith. Never belittle those with whom we disagree. Always look for ways to bring out the highest humanity among those with whom we work as well as among those whose work we profoundly and conscientiously oppose.
Perhaps, we should raise some kind of bronze serpent on a banner here in the sanctuary as a reminder that while, like the Hebrews, we may not get to the promised land, we want to learn to carry ourselves in community with each other, in such a manner that our children can.
Fabian M. “Buddy” Summers,
Pastor
Christ Church Uniting Disciples and Presbyterians
Kailua, HI
(3/30/2003)
Return to Sermons Page