Moses Deals With Cranks and Snakes

Numbers
21:4b-9

John 3:13-17

Moses practiced management by wandering around. 

It drove his people nuts. They were disobedient ingrates.

Surrounded by whiners, Moses must have reflected a lot on the good old days when his heaviest responsibility was sheltering sheep. Back in the day, he had no distracting ambition, no overweening desire for a prestigious title or better pay. He liked sheep and the sheep liked him.

Then the Celestial Headhunter appeared in a burning bush and pressed upon Moses a job he was sure to hate.

“No thanks,” Moses said respectfully, but the Celestial Headhunter insisted it was a promising sales job with straightforward goals and objectives: (1), convince Pharaoh to release his entire labor force, and (2), lead said labor force to the land of milk and honey.

It sounded simple enough. The Celestial Headhunter refused to listen to Moses’ demurrers that he was not the man for the job.

And as we all know, the job wasn’t as simple as the Celestial Headhunter made out. 

But as we also know, whenever Pharaoh or the uncooperative children of Israel challenged Moses’ authority as CEO, the Celestial Headhunter assumed a more controlling role of Chair of the Board. 

The Chair had an uncanny (if unnecessarily dramatic) way of removing obstacles to the enterprise’s objectives.

Plagues, angels of death, parting seawaters, and pillars of fire were enough to convince investors that Moses had some powerful backers.

But if Goal 1 seemed difficult, Goal 2 proved to be a four-decade-long disaster.

The Children of Israel, who might have shown a little gratitude when Moses freed them from slavery, were never happy.

They started kvetching the moment they were free. 

We’re tired. We’re hungry. We’re thirsty. Yahweh is invisible, let’s worship something pretty, like a golden calf. What gives with these stupid commandments? Moses is a lousy leader.

Amazingly, God the Chair of the Board calmed everyone down by showing Moses how to do amazing tricks, like making food fall from the sky or water flow from a rock. The tricks usually placated the unions.

Even so, at some point during the 40-year-trek in the desert, the people went too far and both the Chair and Moses lost their patience in a dramatic way.

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.” Numbers 21:4b-6.

That seems a harsh response to legitimate grievances, and surely the shop stewards were furious.

I also suspect Moses was beginning to wonder if his turbulent trek to the Promised Land was about to end right there on the arid plains, with everyone ankle deep in writhing hissers. 

What a terrible sight that must have been: ravenous snakes with hideous fangs, snapping at the toes of terrified Israelites as they leaped away in a macabre ballet.

As it turns out, the scene was also too much for God the Chair of the Board. Clearly something had to be done, and the Chair – as always – had an idea:

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 21:8-9.

Moses may have been thinking sardonically of a certain bovine idol when he placed the shiny figure on the pole, and no doubt people stared at the bronze serpent far more intently than they had beheld the golden calf.

As it turns out, the story is an excellent model of crisis management. It reminds me of a couple bosses I had who solved problems by creating crises that needed urgent attention and made people forget everything else.

In this case it worked. One can almost hear the placated Israelites singing:

Turn your eyes on the serpent,
Behold his tongue and his teeth
And as we stare we feel strangely calm,
It’s God’s style of blessed surcease.

The travails of the Children of Israel, from slavery in Egypt to privation in the desert to eventual settlement in the Promised Land, are rich metaphors of life.

We take it as a given that life is unfair. 

Some people are born to a life of desperation, trapped in poverty so lethal that the only way out is slavery and human trafficking. 

Some people are born into comfortable homes where money and possessions are plentiful. But status does not protect anyone from fatal diseases or abuses or addictions that destroy life.

Some people live all their lives in peace and harmony with their neighbors, and work until they retire in comfort. But others people lose their jobs when they are too old to seek new ones, and lose their homes and livelihoods and happiness.

Some people live safely in their homes. But others die in crimes involving guns, or in unexpected accidents on the highway or in mishaps in their own dwellings.

“There is always inequality in life,” President Kennedy said, putting it in military terms. “Some … are killed in a war and some … are wounded and some … never leave the country. Life is unfair.”

Certainly the Children of Israel did not think it was fair when their complaints were met with vicious snakes snapping at their feet.

The fact is, God who loves us beyond our powers to understand it does not promise us that life on earth will be fair. God does not promise us tomorrow.

But God does promise us not to desert us amid the vicissitudes and tragedies of life.

John writes in the famous third chapter of his gospel:

No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. John 3:13-17

No one knows what is in store for us today, or where we will be, or how we will feel, or what we will be doing at sundown. 

Nor does God make any promises about our wellbeing, or assure us that we will always be happy and treated fairly.

But God does promise this: that even if we stand in nests of snakes, or face devastating illness, or lose loved ones, or lose our jobs, or lose our minds, God will find a way of letting us know our God is with us.

And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

No matter what happens today, or tomorrow, or this week, or this month, or this year, this promise remains:

Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
Look full in his wonderful face;
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim
In the light of his glory and grace.