Sermon – Facing Idols
March 12, 2025
FPC – FAMA Lenten
Back in my college days, I ended up in Louisiana once. We were visiting a friend down there, and part of that trip inevitably took us to New Orleans. You cannot go down to Louisiana without visiting such a culturally iconic place. My appreciation for jazz and brass band music has only grown over the years. Plus, the food in New Orleans is fabulous, but when I was there, I somehow ended up with some food that I had not anticipated. A street vendor was selling these treats, but there I was with alligator-on-a-stick. Before I knew it, I had eaten alligator-on-a-stick. It was fine. I have no real recollection of it. You know what they say about meats and the taste of chicken….
It was certainly nowhere nearly as memorable as something else on a stick. The more I read this story from Numbers, the more of an impression it makes on me. Just for starters, it is so strange. Honestly, most often when the Israelites are wandering around in the wilderness and they have a problem, they are usually able to remedy things with a sacrifice or some religious act. This time it is something different, something very different, something so different that it inches right up to breaking the very first commandment.
This is an incredible scene. The people are grumbling against God which is a broken record kind of happening throughout the books of this journey. The people are always grumbling against God, and it almost always does not go well for the people when they do this. This time it is especially gruesome. I cannot imagine people back then enjoyed snakes more than we do today. These were fiery snakes whatever that actually means. It could be like the color of bronze or just that they had particularly painful or deadly bites. People were certainly dying from the bites. Maybe somehow the serpents were literally fiery. We have seen fire incorporated in remarkable ways in Scripture. Whatever that means, people were dying, and they repented from their grumbling and cried out for help. Only, the help was not to remove the serpents. The serpents were still there. The help was just to save people who were bitten from dying. To do this, God commanded Moses to construct a fiery serpent and put it on a pole. Bronze and snake are not far off from each other in Hebrew, and that’s what Moses does. He makes this bronze serpent for people to look up and see, and when they do, they will at least be spared death. And they go on.
They could have had anything on the pole though. God could have commanded a flame or circle or flower or rainbow or rock or water or triangle or a red cross. That might have been a good one. Instead, the instruction was for the very thing that afflicted them. It would be like making a coronavirus molecule back in the COVID days, which is somewhat what we did, but just looking at one for us would not have vaccinated us. In another context, maybe we are terrified by money issues or the other political party or crime or Alzheimer’s or death itself. Imagine having to fashion a giant dollar bill or a donkey or elephant or a masked villain or a hurting brain or a headstone as protection from whatever terrifies us. I do not want to equate all of this. God never asked us to do any of that, but that never stopped us from trying.
Apparently, the snake worked so well that the people kept it and the tales of its miraculous power. For generations, they kept this snake on a pole which was called Nehushtan. For hundreds of years, they kept this bronze serpent and worshipped it. In 2 Kings 18, good King Hezekiah went around tearing down the pagan decorations and monuments, including a certain thing called Nehushtan to which people had been burning incense. They considered the snake godly, and Hezekiah smashed it. That snake changed from an image of repentance to an idol. It shed its skin to become a crutch for people of weak or misguided faith. Those poor, uninformed, and simple people (do you hear my tone?).
In case you are wondering if that is the last we hear of this idol, guess what? The average follower of Christ tends to have favorite passages, even certain verses, that are especially important. Many like Psalm 23 or 1 Corinthians 13 or maybe Romans 8 or Matthew 5-7. I am a fan of 1 John 4. But there is one verse that nearly all of us learned as a child that is at the core of our Christian belief – John 3:16. Do you know that one? For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. That pretty much sums it up. Jesus says this as part of his larger and sometimes confusing conversation with Nicodemus. Guess what Jesus says immediately before our most important verse?
And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
What a curious thing to say. Just consider this at face value. Jesus could have said that he would lifted up without any reference to the snake. In fact, he does this elsewhere. Yes, he is speaking to a Pharisee, and a reference to Moses is probably a good move, but the snake story did not end so well, and he cannot honestly expect that our salvation would require our having to see Jesus on a cross to live. I’m pretty confident that we do not ever have to even see a cross, let alone Jesus on a cross, to know salvation from God. Something else is going on here. And I think it is about the snake.
As I mentioned before, God could have had Moses make anything to be put on the pole, but it was specifically an imagine of their trouble, their affliction. It was the picture of the very thing that was causing them to suffer and die. In order to be saved, they had to face the cause of their problems. No, the snake did not save them, but admitting their powerlessness over the snakes did. They had no remedy in their hands. All they could do was look up for help.
When Jesus was hanging there on the cross, he was the dying embodiment of the worst of humanity. He was the collection of hate and fear and control and pride and brokenness. He was the mirror showing us the worst of humanity, the worst that we could do. We killed God’s only Son. We had every opportunity to refuse. Pilate tried to set him free, but we would have none of it. Jesus was lifted up for us all to see. It would be like today having to watch the Holocaust and see every person who went into furnace or shower. That inhumanity is what looking to Jesus means. The world is still so full of evil and sin and wickedness. We have no answer to how bad it can be. When we realize there is no hope by ourselves, we look to the one on the cross. When we see we are powerless to be light and hope and forgiveness on our own, we look to the one on the cross. When we recognize the ugliness in ourselves that destroys relationships and tears at our neighbor, we look to the one on the cross. When we face those false things that we hold so dear and recognize how empty they make our lives, we look to the cross.
In these days of Lent, we are especially invited to face forward and to recognize why this church season even exists, why did Jesus have to be lifted up on a cross, and why he was swallowed up in death. There is no life without his death. There is no resurrection without his cross. Do not mistake that image for an idol or some comforting decoration. It is life and death, and it is that mirror that brings us to God’s grace. To God be the glory. Amen.