Between Our Steps: Finding a Way Forward

Columnist Cathy Hird reflects on a story about snakes.

Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash

COMMUNITY CONTRIBUTOR

There is a story in Hebrew scripture that I never expected to spend much time with. I might refer to it as one of the trials that the people experienced as they journeyed from slavery to the promised land, but to delve into it? Not likely. Part of the problem is the place Jesus refers to the story and the way that passage is usually interpreted. Part of it may be that it has to do with snakes.

It’s taken me a long time to come to terms with snakes. They appear from nowhere. In too many countries I have visited, they are dangerously poisonous. I remember the time that neighbours' teenagers found a green mamba behind their microwave. That was in South Africa.

On the farm, we had milk snakes, often in the house. I came upon one in the kitchen drinking from the dog’s water dish. It slipped back under the fridge out of my reach.

Another time when the hay baler got jammed, I found a snake curled around the part that I had to deal with to get the machine going again. Once I could tell the difference between milk snakes and massasauga rattlers and came to understand that milk snakes are an at-risk species that helped with the potential mice problem in my house, I accepted their place in the local ecosystem. Now, back to the story about snakes.

The story from the Book of Numbers goes like this. The Hebrew people were travelling in the wilderness after their escape from the Egyptian army. They were provided with manna to eat every day, but while it nourished them, it was not an interesting meal, and the daily repetition weighed on them. So did the long journey.

They got impatient. They complained to 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.” (Numbers 21: 5, NRSV) Then, God sent poisonous serpents among them, and anyone who was bitten died.

When the people acknowledged that they had been wrong to complain, God instructed Moses to make a bronze image of a snake and place it on a pole. Anyone who looked up at this snake was healed. 

The clue that caught my attention this time was that the people had to look up at the snake. They had to look away from the snakes that were tormenting them and up at the image Moses made. They had to change their perspective. I think it is important that the image they looked to was a transformed image of what tormented them.

The times we are living in helped me to catch that important shift. Our attention is held by the troubles in the world: an impossibly long war in Ukraine, a humanitarian disaster in Gaza, and a collapse into violence in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. I am not saying we look away from these horrible situations, but we need to look toward an answer to the suffering. 

In a CBC interview, a Haitian living in Montreal commented on the headlines that say Haiti is overrun by gangs. The capital city is, yes, but not the countryside. Not the other cities and towns. Yes, the chaos in Port-au-Prince is a problem for the whole country—farmers can’t get their produce to the people who are hungry. But people are relatively safe in other places. And there are Haitians who are working toward a solution to the violence.

We need to look away from the gunfire for a moment in order to see hope for something new. 

I now think this is the clue to what Jesus said about this story. He is in a nighttime conversation with a religious leader, Nicodemus, about the situation among their people. Both see problems. Both see the dangers—that’s why Nicodemus came at night. Jesus says that just as Moses lifted up the servant in the wilderness, he must be lifted up.

Now, the natural reading seems to be that this is a reference to Jesus’ death on the cross. But the immediate reference of the symbol might be to Jesus’ life right then: “I am being lifted up before the people to take their eyes off what is hurting them and help them look toward solutions in the present.” He is like the snake that brought healing to the people right there in the wilderness. 

Moses held up a snake, an image of what was tormenting the people, both revealing the issue and providing healing. Jesus did much the same in his ministry.

Can we look for places where today’s suffering is acknowledged and a new way is put forward? 

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