Moses has his moments of frustration, but overall I am amazed by Moses’ patience as a spiritual leader. God is apparently satisfied to thin out the herd with a few well-placed snake bites, but Moses hears the pleas of the people. The complainers finally realize that they have gone too far. Remorseful, they turn to Moses for help.

“Help us Moses. Pray to the Lord to take away the serpents. God will hear you.”

And Moses did it. He prayed for the very people who were making his life miserable. He prayed for their sad and shallow lives, and because he did, God gave them an escape hatch. “OK…Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.” Moses listened, and in doing so saved even more lives.

Who were the real snakes in this story? I’m less concerned about the actual reptiles with a frightening defense mechanism than I am about human beings who knowingly act in reptilian ways. Sadly, we’ve all been there. In fact, recent brain studies show that at the base of our human brains there is a portion we share with the reptiles. Humans can go into reptilian response mode based on our anxiety in any given situation. It is the location of the fight or flight response. It is probably the part of the brain that is acting when we say something that instantly we’d like to retract into our mouths. It is the part that causes us to strike back when we feel attacked. But the upper level human brain, the part located in the frontal lobes, has the capacity to sort out what’s really a danger from something that is making us either uncomfortable or anxious. By using our whole brain, we can understand our emotions, solve problems, and respond with both thought and feeling rather than just dig our fangs into the ankles of our enemy.

Our reptilian nature gets the better of our rational minds sometimes, well, a lot of the time. But God’s fearless leaders have never been hesitant to let us know when we’re acting like snakes, or worms, or worse. John the Baptist and Jesus himself have both been known to use the term “brood of vipers” to address those who were outwardly acting religious but were inwardly conniving against spiritual truth. John Calvin, as you may well know, was famous for his pessimistic words about the human condition. More so than any of his theological counterparts, his writings taught about the total depravity of people in general. No way could we earn salvation by our righteousness, or good deeds, or even by our belief in Jesus Christ. Humans are not capable of such things. He thought we really were that messed up. I tend to agree. We love the darkness. We cannot escape the temptations of evil. Snakes? Yes, it’s probably a reasonable analogy. Worms? Well, we do frequently choose to reside in our own dirt. Like the dissatisfied Hebrews, do we deserve to have a swarm of angry, fiery serpents striking out at us? Probably so.

But the good news is that the story doesn’t end there with a punishing God giving us exactly what we deserve. Moses argues on the people’s behalf, and God gives them life. God loves the world so much that God gives the only son, so that everyone who trusts in him may not perish, but have eternal life. Putting these two texts together gave me new insight into the depths of God’s love and mercy. God loves us, not so much because we’re good or perfect or blameless. Nothing could be farther from the truth. God loves us precisely when we’re acting like complete idiots. God loves us when we’re obsessed with our own comfort and complaining about everything under the sun. God loves us when we are operating from the reptilian instincts of our brain structure – even when we’ve been given the gift of so much more.

Amazingly though, this love of God is neither conditional nor condemning. It doesn’t require that we change, but it does change us. It doesn’t tell us how wrong we are, but it steers us toward what’s right and good. Did twenty or thirty or a hundred people have to die from snake bites in the wilderness for the people to realize that they had turned their hearts from God? Did Jesus have to be lifted up on a cross like that bronze serpent to show us that we could be bitten by the power of evil and still live eternally? Maybe, but maybe not. There’s a religious history that teaches that the death of Jesus is an atoning death. Jesus died with our sins pinned to him, the death of the sinless on behalf of the sinful. That kind of death seems awfully cruel to me. How could a loving God make such a tragic choice? But perhaps because it is so unnecessary, so extravagant, so life-affirming through its total sacrifice that we can begin to see the beauty of the cross as opposed to its utter cruelty. Perhaps because of God’s complete grace and steadfast love, human beings have a chance.

We didn’t deserve this grace. We loved the darkness. We embraced evil. But God gives us light and love. The light exposes our snake-like nature and the total love gives us permission to change and do something differently. It is the great nevertheless. We were awful, pathetic, self-centered, jerk-face, know-it-alls; nevertheless, God so loved the world…

God so loved the world. God loved the snakes and worms, the mosquitoes and cockroaches, the men and women who turned away, and turned away, and turned away. God’s love turns us back. God’s love gives us our lives again. No poison is too strong, No evil too great, No venom too powerful to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Amen.