“Jesus in Torah”
By Rev. Dr. Jason Byassee
Sunday, May 4, 2025
Reading: Numbers 21:4-9
Today is the second in a short series of sermons about disappointment. Two of Jesus’ distraught followers flee from Jerusalem. His execution means he was not who they had hoped. And Jesus suddenly walks with them, unrecognized. Ever complain that God is absent? Maybe he’s the unrecognized stranger right there with you.
Jesus explains all the things in Israel’s scriptures that are written about himself. This series tries to listen in on that Bible study that Jesus offers to his two crushed friends. What’s he saying? How does Israel’s scripture refer to him, centuries in advance? What finally made him recognizable was the Lord’s Supper, which we’ll celebrate soon. We are those anguished disciples, wandering our own way, unaware that Jesus is alive and, in our midst, and saving us, until we see him preside the table ... and then he vanishes.
Here is how we recognize him. This image is by Caravaggio, one of our greatest painters (and one of our worst people—explain that if you can). You can see the shock in the friends’ recognition. They’re astounded, ready to fling furniture away. The server does not see at all. We can understand why they didn’t recognize him. Jesus has no beard. One movie version of the story had the risen Jesus played by another actor entirely. Put viewers in the position of the disciples—that’s just a stranger. It takes the gesture of him taking bread, blessing it, breaking it, and giving it away, before they see. Really see. And then he vanishes. The moment we see God, he’s gone. And the moment we are sure we can’t see God, he’s right there. I don’t know why God plays coy like this, flirts with us, God just does. That’s good news if you’re sure God is absent. You’re wrong! And it might be bad news if you’re sure God is present. You might also be wrong!
You also heard the baffling story from the book of Numbers about the serpents. This is one of the stories that we Christians believe points to Jesus in advance. Why? We got a really good authority. You’ll remember the Bible’s most famous verse, John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whoever believes in him might not perish but might have everlasting life.” What’s Jesus say right before it?
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.
That bronze serpent in the wilderness, Jesus says—that’s me. Lifted up on my cross. And we all say, really? Run that by me one more time?
Here’s the story. God’s people of Israel are redeemed from slavery, but their struggle to live free continues. They spend 40 years in the wilderness on a trip that should’ve taken a few months; being tested and complaining. Anyone ever been in a car with teenagers asking how much farther? You’ve been in the wilderness. Congratulations–you passed–you didn’t abandon them at the nearest service station. From the minute the Israelites get out of slavery they’ve been complaining. Or actually we complain. This is us, our story, not just them, someone else’s story.
The desert plays tricks on your memory. Our Israelite forebears moan: ‘back in Egypt we had steak and melons and garlic and onions, the larder was full, and the drinks were free.’ Uh, no, we were slaves, being systematically eliminated. A friend says every church has a back to Egypt committee. Some group determined to go back to some mythical time when everything was fine, the pews were full and so were the coffers. He told that joke in a guest sermon one time and someone said to him after: Back to Egypt? You were preaching in Cairo this morning.
Seven times in the book of Numbers our ancestors rebel against Moses and Aaron and God. ‘Let us go back to Egypt. Why would you drag us out here into the wilderness to kill us?’ Another good lesson this morning: sometimes life feels like death. And sometimes death feels like life. I love this complaint in particular: “There is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food.” (Num 21:5). Which we do not have. We are good at complaining. We can be quite creative about it. This week we had hot one day and I’m sweltering and miserable. Wait—a minute ago I was complaining it was too cold! Most of our complaints about God are that God isn’t running the universe the way I would if I were God. God, make me rich and powerful and worry free and life nothing but pleasure. As if God is our butler and servant. And my enemies? Ruin them please.
But this time God isn’t playing around with our complaining. “The Lord sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died.” God has had it with our complaining. Don’t ask how much farther again! The Hebrew is even more sizzling, God sent “fiery serpents.” Commentators figure that refers to how a snakebite burns—like fire. But the Hebrew is even more interesting. God sends seraph serpents. Seraphim, the fiery angels that attend to God day and night. In scripture angels are not cute and cuddly. They’re horrible, terrifying. God sends his own terrifying, awe-inspiring self.
Serpents mean something more. Remember when Moses confronted Pharaoh? He made his staff turn into a snake and back again. Serpents are a symbol of divinity in many cultures. Specifically, the serpent is a sign of Egyptian power. The people prefer Egypt? Well here comes Egypt. In all its fiery, serpentine misery. Careful what you wish for, God may grant it. I shudder to think what the world would be like if God granted all my prayers. I’d be as petty a tyrant as any who’ve ever terrorized the Earth. But God is merciful enough not to answer every time we call.
We respond well to the snake bites, for a change. We come to Moses and say, “We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you; pray to the Lord to take away the serpents from us.” (Num 21:7). We turn from complaining to repenting. Always a good move: complain less, repent more.
Now this is where things get weird. God commands, “Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.” (Num 21:8). All a bit elaborate. God could have just taken the snakes away or had them stop biting people. But no: this whole rigmarole with a serpent on a pole. Artists can help us visualize, but it’s still odd. Now you know why a serpent on a staff is an international symbol of medicine and life.
I tried to think of a parallel for us here. Sometimes our greatest fears, when we hold them up to the light, aren’t so awful. Movie makers know this: never show the monster. If you do, it’s much less scary than the monster than viewers imagine. Recovery groups like AA know to hold our deadly nemesis way up high and name it: hello, I’m an alcoholic. Making visible the thing that frightens us, that threatens to kill us, can be a way to life and health. As a patient, when a diagnosis comes to light, at least you know what you’re facing. This is what’s trying to kill you. Okay, now we can fight back.
Of course, the bronze serpent raises theological concerns. This all looks a little pagan, doesn’t it? The very first commandment is to have no other Gods before the Lord God of Israel. The second is to have no graven images. Well, this looks a lot like a graven image! A substitute for the one true God. Later in Israel’s history the bronze serpent has to go. King Hezekiah notices the people are bringing offerings to it, instead of to the temple. So, Hezekiah “removed the high places, broke down the pillars, and cut down the sacred pole. He broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until those days the people of Israel had made offerings to it.” (2 Kgs 18:4). Something God arranges for our good becomes a thing we worship in its own right, an idol, and it has to go.
Here’s an effort to make sense of this. God sets up structures for us. Ways to worship, to approach God, stair steps to heaven if you like. Baptism, the Lord’s Supper, scripture, prayer, saints. The goal is not for us to worship those things. We worship God alone. When they compete with God they should go. But when they’re stairsteps on the way to God, they’re magnificent, life-giving. A counterexample that flatters us Canadians: some good interpreters of US culture say my home country’s problem is we treat the constitution the way fundamentalists treat the Bible. It can’t be changed! It came right from heaven! But actually, constitutions are living documents, that’s why they have amendments, that’s why Britain never wrote one down (we Canadians compromised of course). No created thing, however good, is God, and none should be worshiped. Even good gifts can be reduced to idols.
The story is told of a Jehovah’s Witness who comes to the door of a Roman Catholic to convert her. The Witness says God is called Jehovah in the Bible. Bring me a Bible and I’ll show you. The Catholic says okay. The woman points to a passage translating God as Jehovah. And the Catholic rips that page out of the Bible. Okay, where else is Jehovah in this book? Ready to rip out as many pages as she needs to. The Witnesses are so Biblicist in their faith they almost worship the Bible, make it an idol. We would never do that, right? Catholics can so trust in the pope, the hierarchy, the sacraments, that they worship those rather than God alone.
I’m glad here at TEMC we have all these aids to faith: the Bible, the tradition, the church’s history, saints from all communions. Our building, our music, the elegance with which we do things. I wonder what we’re tempted to make an idol. From the reception room upstairs, it looks like we might be tempted to make the senior minister’s position an idol. There aren’t any associate ministers’ portraits up there. No one we sent into ministry. Or maybe our privileged standing in the community. Our building and its beauty. An idol, see, is always a good thing. If it weren’t good, no one would be tempted to worship it. The deadly flaw, the snake’s bite, is to try and put it in the place of God.
We’ve had some adversarial political times recently. Prayers for our new government. Mr. Trump’s trade war has taken special aim at us, not just Canada, but Toronto. We’re Canada’s financial nerve centre so aiming for Canada’s wallet means aiming at us in this room. Elbows up indeed. But I do wonder, is the reason we’re so outraged something more than Trump’s malice? Is it that we worship money in this town? If there is more austerity ahead, and it’s hard to imagine otherwise, maybe that’s a chance to worship money less and God more. I’m not saying to put a Canadian dollar bill on a pole, just for the record.
Jesus, on his cross, takes on himself all the poison that human nature has ingested. He leaches that poison out of us and swallows it himself, leaving us with only life. Maybe it’s not so surprising Jesus compares himself with a snake. God makes snakes in the first place. Snakes are pretty important, to read the Garden of Eden story. Many cultures take snakes to be divine because they’re always shedding their skin, re-creating themselves. They can still be handy—a good black snake kills your rodents and keeps other more dangerous snakes away. What does Jesus see in this analogy between Moses’ bronze snake pole and himself? Snakes are, for all their virtues, pretty frightening, monstrous.
And when we crucify Christ, we make him something monstrous. Look here, he says, see the violence you can do, before I save you all. Amen.