John 3:14-21

And just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so must the son of man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life (v14,15).

Why would Jesus compare himself to a snake or to the act of Moses lifting up a snake in the wilderness? What is the story behind the lifting up of the snake?

The story comes from Numbers 21:4-9 - The people of Israel were grumbling about God and Moses for leading them out into the wilderness because there was no food or water and they were sick of the manna from heaven (so, the story goes).  Then God sent poisonous snakes to punish the people and many people died. When the fear hit them they came back to Moses and admitted that they had sinned by speaking against God and against Moses and begged Moses to pray to God for the snakes to be taken away. So Moses prayed and God told Moses to make a poisonous snake and put it on a pole and whenever someone would be bitten by a snake if they looked up at the snake on the pole they would live. So Moses made a snake out of bronze and put it on a pole and whenever someone who had been bitten by a snake looked up at the snake they did not die, they lived.

When I came across this story years ago, I thought it was amazing. It was another wondrous story of what God can do and how silly were those people not to trust God. Now when I read it I am appalled. It speaks of a God who treats people as totally dispensable in order to get God’s way. What a cruel way to control people, punishing them indiscriminately with a plague of poisonous snakes. God had rescued the people from Egypt by bringing terrible plagues on the Egyptians now this rescuer is controlling the people with the same bullying and fear invoking methods. I don’t believe in this kind of God anymore. If there is something of a God in this world then I see this God as totally different. For me God is love.

Why would Jesus compare himself being lifted up (on the cross) to the snake being lifted up on a pole? Does Jesus become a snake or is he merely referring to the act of being lifted up? Is Jesus a snake or made a snake? The whole picture is bizarre to me.

I can’t get the image of the snakes crawling about biting people out of my mind. As this is St. Patrick’s weekend I’m reminded that St. Patrick is said to have driven all the snakes out of Ireland. There are a number of very strange stories about snakes in the bible and which have led people to believe all sorts of things, like the snake handling Christians in the USA who base their rituals of handling poisonous snakes on Mark 16:18 which says ‘they shall pick up snakes with their hands’ and on the story of Saint Paul who was bitten by a snake but survived. Pete Rollins in his book ‘The Fidelity of Betrayal’ writes how in the third century there was a Gnostic group called the Ophites (Ophis meaning snake) who understood the snake in the garden of Eden to be a great hero who stood up to the tyrant God in an attempt to free humans.

Can the snake episode be viewed as prophetic of the future when anti-venom came to be made from the very venom that could kill a person. A drug is a poison that, taken in the right dosage, is also a remedy. One takes the anti-venom and lives. For us Christians Jesus is seen as innocent, sinless. From the view point of the religious leaders of his day Jesus would have been a snake, evil, tempting people away, leading them astray, his words were seen as poison yet for Jesus his very words were what would bring life, …whoever believes in him may have eternal life (V15).

Is the snake symbolic of grumbling against God? In the garden of Eden the snake quarrels with God or rather with Eve and questions God. In the wilderness the snake may represent those who question God and those who represent God. While they are complaining about God there is also truth in their claims, the antidote, the answer, the cure is also found in the cause, in the source. In Jesus’ time the leaders take one who is causing trouble and have him crucified, in the one who is causing trouble is also our salvation.

On the night of my initial conversion the minister ‘leading me to the Lord’ used John 3:16 ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.’ At that point in my life I took that to mean that by believing in Jesus I would go to heaven when I died. Now I think eternal life is something to be discovered and lived in this world. A few weeks ago I discovered that the original meaning of believe was belove. Whoever loves me may have eternal life. This implies more than head knowledge but relationship. Jesus is asking us to do more than believe that he died on a cross but to take up our cross and follow him in relationship, in solidarity, with him.

In John 3:19-21 Jesus speaks about the light that has come into the world and people preferring to love the darkness rather than the light. I’m reminded of the gruesomeness of how the Emperor Nero is said to have dipped Christians in oil and put them on a pole a set them alight to illuminate Rome at night. Jesus is lifted up like a light so that all who come under the light or into the light are not afraid to come openly and honestly and truthfully, they have nothing to hide in the light of Christ.

In John 2:18 the religious leaders ask Jesus, “What sign can you give us?” John is fascinated by signs. Jesus is raised up as a sign. The same word for raised as a standard also means sign or miracle. Jesus being raised up is the ultimate sign to which all other signs point. The light comes from the cross, the ultimate sign, the darkest moment, not from the resurrection.

Was this a sacrifice by human beings to God? Did God really require a human sacrifice? Would God really take a Human being and require him to be stuck on a pole, a cross, like the snake in the wilderness? Surely such ideas can only come from human beings who use violence to control and intimidate. I think it was a sacrifice but not in the way animals were sacrificed to God. Sacrifice literally means ‘to make sacred’. The violence of killing makes the victim holy. The irrational requirement of sacrifice is seen as absolving people from all responsibility. But I think that responsibility for our actions is the very sacrifice God wants us to make. The sacrifice Jesus made was made in his refusal to have anything to do with violence. Jesus is lifted up on the cross and placed for all to see. In being lifted up Jesus rises above the violence. Rene Girard (Things hidden since the foundation of the world) says that violence is the controlling agent in every form of mythic or cultural structure, and Christ is the only agent who is capable of escaping from these structures and freeing us from their dominance. Jesus is the only person who achieves the goal that God has set for all humanity, the only human who has nothing to do with violence and its works. Jesus alone, the son of man, the true human being, has fulfilled a calling that belongs to all human beings: to live in love, to love one another. Jesus comes to Jerusalem not as a sacrifice for sin but to break the cycle of violence. Jesus, by this action, breaks out from the cycle of murder and death. He gives his life in order not to kill. Jesus doesn’t mimic our actions like we mimic each other's actions and desires. Love God and your neighbour as yourself…you shall not covet, you shall not kill…

Again I finish with some quotes courtesy of Brian McLaren from the Book ‘Things hidden since the foundation of the world’ by Rene Girard

Rene Girard - ‘A non-violent deity can only signal his existence to mankind by having himself driven out by violence – by demonstrating that he is not able to establish himself in the Kingdom of Violence. (p219)

But this very demonstration is bound to remain ambiguous for a very long time, and it is not capable of achieving a decisive result, since it looks like total impotence to those who live under the regime of violence. That is why at first it can only have some effect under a guise, deceptive through the admixture of some sacrificial elements, through the surreptitious re-insertion of some violence into the conception of the divine. (p220)

Behaving in a truly divine manner, on an earth still in the clutches of violence, means not dominating humans, not overwhelming them with supernatural power, it means not terrifying and astonishing them in turn, through the sufferings and blessings one can confer; it means not creating difference between doubles and not taking part in their disputes.(p234)