Tuesday, April 9, 2019

Serpent vs calf?

"...and the Lord said to Moses, 'Make a seraph and mount it on a pole, and whoever looks at it after being bitten will live.' Moses accordingly made a bronze serpent and mounted it on a pole, and whenever anyone who had been bitten looked at the bronze serpent, he lived."
Numbers 21:8-9

As often as I have heard and read this reading, and shuddered at the whole serpent thing, today was the first time I ever thought, "Wait! What's the difference between a bronze serpent and a golden calf?" The people of Israel made the golden calf and worshipped it while Moses was off meeting with God. But the bronze serpent was actually God's idea...what gives? Wasn't the serpent a sort of idol? I guess the difference was between life and death. The golden calf was just there to be mistakenly worshipped by the people instead of God, who had brought them out of Egypt. That was life-taking, in other words, didn't give them life but sucked life out of them. The bronze serpent, on the other hand, was life-giving for them. Those who had been bitten by serpents were healed after looking at the bronze serpent on the pole. God is always life-giving to us. We, left to our own devices, come up with things that work to take away life, or zap the life right out of us. Think of addictions and our ill-advised substitutes for real joy--they take life from us. What God offers us is real life, real realness, in God and with God. Okay, so the whole bronze serpent thing is a weird distraction, isn't it? But the point is, that God offers us life--abundant life! Love, heidi

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