🦁 Lent 4 👑

Readings: Numbers 21:4-9; Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22; Ephesians 2:1-10; John 3:14-21.

From the TRNG Room:

Reflection

Hello and welcome to first Forward Advanced Scriptural Insight for Christian Soldiers. This is Brother Logan Isaac broadcasting from Albany, Oregon. The readings for Lent four come to us from numbers 21, Psalm 107, which I usually reflect on Psalm Ephesians two and John three, specifically in numbers 21 versus four through nine. This is in the middle of the wilderness. They are there grumbling against God and so on in response gods and serpents amongst the people and these serpents begin biting people and says poison serpents so they die. 

And the people that Moses Moses goes to God and God says, okay, make it a poisonous serpent and put it on a pole. And everybody who has been bitten by this, these snakes can look at this serpent and live. And Moses goes ahead and makes the serpent out of bronze and puts it on a pole, just like God says. Sure enough, whenever serpents admit someone, they look on the bronze serpent and live. And so it's this kind of weird thing. It's like it's not exactly an idol. It is made by human hands, but it's this idol that apparently has the ability to heal people. And if you you know, if you are familiar with the Bible, you know, the serpent, you know, usually fulfills a kind of adversarial role. There appear, as far as I can remember in the in the plagues, the frogs, the livestock. But of course, in in Genesis, it's the serpent in the garden that tells Eve or convinces Eve to try the one fruit that is not supposed to be sampled by humanity. Adam and Eve, the mother of all land beasts, does. And then there's this whole bickering thing and the the thing that she ate. Sometimes we see it as an apple, and it's much more likely a fig because they're wearing fig leaves. Of course, the implication pretty strong implication is that the fig is the first fruit that they've eaten that they weren't supposed to eat. And this fruit, the thing that happens, the thing that the serpent suggests, is that by eating this fruit, they will know the difference between good and evil. You'll be like God. And that's a very particular result. You know, in effect, you know, it isn't necessarily poison, but something does occur in our brains where, you know, even in the story, like once you have it, whatever you feel, you're going to attribute that feeling to God to being like God and you'll call it the knowledge of good and evil, right? This is the original sin, not one. Cain kills Abel. That's not the the worst thing that can happen to you, though. It is a sin. The worst thing that can happen to you is for you to think that you are God. And now in the story, we don't know if Adam and Eve are gods, right? They don't. They don't live forever, which is usually what we think of when we think of gods. Even the Greek world on which the Septuagint was composed. 

You know, the gods were the ones who were kind of above and yet intermingled in human affairs, but a different differed from humans in that they never died. So the two trees in the garden are the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In Genesis, that is this phrase oid gnosis to know the knowledge between good and evil. And then the other tree is Zoe, the Zylon Zoe the Tree of Life. And so when we read in Ephesians and specifically John three as well, it's weird to know these things and hear Jesus use this weird image of not a golden calf, but a bronze serpent and a serpent that doesn't kill you or convince you that you're God and thereby condemn you to death. Because those are the wages of thinking that your God. You can be surprised when you die. But here is a sort, a bronze serpent that heals the people. And so Jesus says it himself, and he leads up to, you know, the foregone soul of the world. Just as Moses left up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the son of man be lifted up that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. Now, there's a sharp distinction here between knowledge and life and the serpents and what they do right. The serpent. The serpent can heal you. This idolatry, you know, this idol, this thing crafted by human hands, you look on it. If you were bitten and you are, you live instead of die in Moses's, you know, crafting of this bronze serpent, it's it's this contrast, you know, the the flip side of the coin not death through knowledge, but life right through just life. 

And so the the flipping of the the effect of the serpent and the usage of these two things, knowledge or life are being put on full display. So Jesus here is using this. I think, to remind people that, look, you know, serpents are serpents and they can and idols are idols. They're not gods, but they become the thing that you make them. If you think that eating a fig will make you like a God, you'll think you're a God. And then you'll think that you're entitled to everlasting life. But when you know, when you look upon Christ and the bronze serpent with full intention, knowing that you are not God, in fact, that's the point. Jesus is God and we are not. And God is God and we are not. And so it's this this, you know, stark contrast, almost binary contrast brought together in the symbolic figure of the snake and also in the symbolic figure of Jesus. And so I whenever I think of this, whenever I think of like, okay, now I like knowledge, I delight in, you know, the brain, the mind that God gave me. And I know not everybody gets the same kind of brain. I really like mine. So it's like I want to think about what it means. That knowledge in Genesis is kind of a problem. And I think that knowledge throughout is kind of a problem. And there's a very fine differentiation right, between, you know, if, well, I'll put it like this I see in that same duality, a duality in my head between what Solomon asked for, which was wisdom, and what Heschel Abraham Heschel asked for, which was wonder, When you ask for wisdom and you think you've got wisdom, it's easy to think that you're better than other people, that you have certain knowledge that other people don't have. Back to the original sin, he couldn't. Solomon could have asked for a lot of stupid shit. He could have asked for women or money or a fancy temple or a capital in his father's hometown, some of which he got whether he asked for it or not. But there are also better things that Solomon could have asked for, like what Heschel asked for, which is wonder not knowing, but seeking and wisdom. I always get this. I just I don't know. I'm really critical of Solomon because even when he asks for wisdom, what does he do? He entertains the idea of and invites the completion of the act of cutting a baby in half. And now his his use case was very appropriate. Right. Well, okay, whoever doesn't want to kill the child is probably the mother. Right. But also like, is there not another way to get there other than suggesting child sacrifice, which is very clearly condemned in the Bible and he's not saying that you should actually do it. I don't I don't I don't think he was actually saying to do it. I think he was hoping that the two women would sort it out. And the woman who was lying would be outed by her saying, oh, that's fine. Right. And she was. But it's also so close to evil. Close. It's not it's not evil. I don't think anything what he did was evil, but it's so close. It's so close to entitlement. It's so close to thinking that your God right. But when you ask for wonder, it implies a certain openness. It it's like that platonic idea of like, the more I learn, the more I realize how little I know. The more you seek to learn, the more you'll find to learn. But the more you seek to accomplish, to accumulate, to be in control, the more you might get that control and realize how little control you really have. It's a very fine line. I think, between wisdom and wonder. And I think in that, you know, in those grays, I think is where we need to have these conversations. I think if you're just skimming the Bible, Solomon looks like this great figure. But if you take a step back, you realize something in his lifetime led to Israel and Judah splitting into two. Something made all ten of the other tribes. Look at Judah and Benjamin and be like, No, thanks. You did something wrong. Now, as you know, a populist or a Democrat, like maybe we should listen to that. There were probably more people numerically in the north than there were in the South. And yet, you know, something is going on there. I have some idea of what that is, but I'm not going to get into the whole details. But if you love the Bible and if you love God, it's not about getting more stuff like wisdom or knowledge. It's about realizing what you have is enough and rejoicing in the things that you continue to find when your heart and your mind are open to whatever God has to give you. And so the you the what are we looking at? Do we realize it's a serpent made of bronze that has a specific purpose to heal us when we've been bitten. Or do we take something instead of look at something, We take something and think, Aha, this will make me like God, this will make me better than my fellow man. This will make me immortal. Oh, wait. Nope. We find out in the end that's not the case. And so I think there's a lot going on between John three and the Serpent and knowledge and life and who heals and how and why and through what means. Like there's so much here. And I think it's in Lent because, you know, we're we're evoking some of our worst mistakes. The serpent, the idol, right. And I don't think that we should look away from these hard texts. And I think that there's a lot more that the Bible can offer us when we dive into these hard texts instead of kind of skimming them over or opting for things that are a little bit more clear and simple and linear and formulaic.