From Mount Hor the Israelites set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom; but the people became impatient on the way. 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.” Then the Lord sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died. 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. And the Lord said to Moses, “Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.” 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. Numbers 21:4-9
Earlier this week, the photo app on my iPhone made a cheerful little dinging sound. “Hello,” the notification said. “Would you like to view your photo memories from one year ago this week?” I made the mistake of clicking on it. And there they were: my last few photos from the “Before Times.” Eating inside a restaurant (!) with my in-laws. My infant daughter, held by an unmasked family friend we haven’t seen since. The shelves at the Wake Forest Target, suddenly and mysteriously devoid of soap and toilet paper. Probably counter to the photo app’s intention, viewing these memories didn’t make me feel happy or nostalgic. It made me feel sad and grumpy.
It has somehow been one year—one year!—since all this mess started, and I am identifying strongly with the Israelites at the beginning of this week’s Old Testament lesson. How long, O Lord?? While I certainly haven’t been wandering in circles through a desert for forty years, I feel like this year has given me at least a degree of understanding about being in the wilderness, about being stuck in an interminable holding pattern with no certain point at which life in its fullness will be able to continue. The Israelites complain to God that they are sick of eating manna instead of the wide variety of foods they used to enjoy. This is sort of how I feel about pandemic life: while I’m incredibly grateful for basic health and security, life feels monotonous and muted, and I miss hugs and in-person conversation and shared meals and shared worship. I have to admit that I sometimes feel like complaining, too.
Except this is where the story gets weird, and hard. After the Israelites complain, God sends a throng of venomous snakes. The snakes bite the people, and some of the people die. Why would God do this?? One commentary I read on this passage emphasized that really, the only possible answer is that we don’t know. While the context certainly makes it sound like God sends the serpents as a consequence of the Israelites’ complaining, the text itself doesn’t actually say this. All it gives us is a series of events: the Israelites were impatient, they complained, the serpents showed up.
Texts like this one force us to admit the extent to which God’s ways are beyond our ability to comprehend them. I, for one, have an extremely difficult time getting on board with the idea that God would deliberately cause suffering and death, ever, for any reason. But I don’t have trouble understanding God as wild, mysterious, even dangerous. After all, as the commentary points out, this is exactly how the Israelites experience God: a God who unleashes devastating plagues in order to free them from slavery, who issues the Commandments from within a terrifying thunderstorm, who leads the way through the desert as a pillar of fire. This is not a dull or predictable God. In the midst of what can feel like the never-ending drudge and slog of pandemic life, I find this reminder—that God is always working in ways beyond what we can understand—oddly comforting even as it is also unsettling.
Even more reassuring, though, is the fact that, regardless of how we might feel about exactly how or when or where it happens, God always shows up. This story is no exception: when the people ask, God is there, providing a means for healing. “Please,” the people say to Moses, “tell God to take these snakes away from us!” This isn’t quite what happens. But God does provide an anti-venom—interestingly, in the form of a snake. Salvation comes not by eliminating the source of suffering and death, but through it. This might be the case in our own wilderness, too. There’s no way that the events of the past year can be undone—we can’t go back to the “Before Times.” But fortunately God shows up with us now, helping us find the seeds of resurrection that our current existence offers, even amidst the (legitimate) complaining. May we nourish and grow them into an even better “After.”
-Karen McGugan