Some Thoughts for the 4th Sunday in Lent

A few weeks ago I began a Lenten series of messages dealing with covenants in the Bible. The community I lead began the series with a message on God's covenant with Noah (and all of creation) and the idea that our only part in this covenant is to have faith (trust) in God's steadfast love, and that the foundation of any covenantal relationship with God is faith/trust.

The second message dealt with God's covenant with Abraham and Sarah and how covenants give us a new identity and Divine purpose.

The third message was a look at God's covenant with Israel in the 10 Commandments. Covenantal expectations on how we order our lives with God and with each other.

Today was a look, again, at how integral faith is in terms of our covenantal relationships.

Numbers 21: 4-9:
From Mount Hor they 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.

To talk about faith in an abstract way is easy. To make faith an idea that we understand doesn't require much from us, not really. Faith = trust, Faith = belief. For example, I believe that when I leave my house in the morning I trust I will get to work safely; I believe I will get there with no issues of mechanical nature. (Driving in the country of Japan requires a bit more than faith in my car's mechanics or my ability sometimes, which takes faith and trust to a whole new level, but that's for another time...)

It is also easy to take faith in God for granted when life is good. I've not had anyone come into my office and say, "Daniel, I'm having a hard time believing in God. I mean, how can God exist when life is so FREAKING great? How can God be real when I have full cupboards, a great job, an ideal family"...yeah, I don't have those kinds of conversations with people very often.

It's when we are standing in the desert, looking at the forward direction, and all we see is sand, and heat waves rising from the sand...and when we look at where we have come from and all we see is dust from the group of people we're traveling with. When all we can see from blinding hot horizon to blinding hot horizon is sand, sand, and more sand, dotted with the occasional dust devil, those are moments when our faith turns a little Jello like. "Watch it wiggle, see it jiggle..."

This is where the people of Israel are as this passage from Numbers begins to unfold. They are a company of several thousand; they have been traveling through the wilderness for a long, long time.  they have been at the edge of the promised land, and yet they chose to walk away in fear.  So they travel in a world of hot, hot sand.  And we all know that in the mix of large groups there are folks who like to murmur and complain. There are folks who are like Hudson from Aliens, "That's it man, game over man, game over! What the f--k are we gonna do now? What are we gonna do?" 

One pastor says that no matter where you are there is always a "Let's go back to Egypt committee."  It's staffed by people who weren't happy in Egypt, but they aren't happy where they are either; they would rather go back to the known evil than travel through an unknown in order to arrive at the blessing.

So as they murmur and complain, wondering how much worse it could be: snakes.  ("Why did it have to be snakes?")

And the snakes didn't just affect the "Let's go back to Egypt Committee."  They got after everyone, because murmurers and complainers aren't content with their own misery, they have to make life suck for everyone:

When I reported to San Diego in 1990, no one told me my ship was going to be at sea. No one told me what "Transient Personnel Units" were, or that I was supposed to go there. I was a freshly minted penny from training, looking for my ship--which wasn't there--and I got dropped into a "holding group" for people who getting out of the Navy, voluntarily and involuntarily. I was surrounded by murmurers and complainers, life sucked.  No matter what I thought or believed, the word I kept being exposed to said, "Life sucks."

I was bitten by the fiery serpents of my company's misery, just like the community that was happy with God's provision was impacted by the fiery serpents.

The community knows what to do, though; they have become adept at repentance--they are master artists when it comes to asking Moses to make things all better: "Pray to the Lord to make the serpents go away!"  And Moses, being a good shepherd for his people, goes before God and does his thing.  

And this is where it gets interesting.

God doesn't make the snakes go away.

Go ahead, scroll up and check it out.  Look it up in your own copy of the good book if you don't believe what I have up there.  You'll see it though.

God does not remove the snakes.

God makes the people choose.  Live in misery or look up and be saved.  "Whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live."

Trouble still exists; but so does hope.  This is why we have to circle the wagons every now and again and talk about this word faith.  Faith is easy when life is good.  Faith is necessary when life is hard.  

Lift up your face.