An Idle Tale?

Lent 4
sermon by Torin Eikler
Numbers 21:4-9 Ephesians 2:1-10

Just this past week, our family went out to the plot of land that has been sitting idle in the back yard all winter and planted the first seeds of our garden – sugar snap peas. It was a marker of sorts for the beginning of spring. We were, perhaps a bit early since that season didn’t officially start until yesterday. But our early planting does not speak to a sense of hope or anticipation as much as it shows how disorganized we have been this year. Others have had seeds in the ground for a couple of weeks, and we have been eager to get into the garden for a few weeks now. We just didn’t get our ducks (or our seeds) in a row in time to join the earliest plantings. It’s a relief, in some ways, to have that first planting done. All the pressure and anxiety has found a release. The ball is rolling, and now we just have to keep up. Yet, in another way those seeds represent a whole new challenge – waiting.

Ever since I was a kid, I have had trouble waiting for the first delights of the garden. I used to go out and check on the plants each day, and I was talked to more than once about eating the spinach before it had a chance to grow large enough to produce very much. But my very favorite thing – the thing that I just couldn’t wait for – was the sweet peas. Not only were they crunchy, juicy, and sweet, they were fun to pick and a challenge to find. Needless to say, my mother made a rule very early on that we had to wait until she picked the first peas before we could plunder the plants. Not surprisingly, we rarely followed the rule. Our way of enjoying the garden, in this case, was not in keeping with my Mother’s way.

Well, I never lost my love of those emerald treasures or the burgeoning impatience that comes between the planting and the time when the first pods begin to appear and fatten. This year, I think, will be even harder now that my son has discovered sweet peas and all the impatience that goes along with being two and a half years old. It’s amazing how hard it is to wait for anything at that age. If I had forgotten what it was like to be so impatient, Sebastian has reminded both by showing his own frustration with waiting and by evoking it in me. My own particular weakness seems to be when Sebastian can’t see that I am busy with Alistair’s diaper or “refuses” to follow the rules we have made – never mind the fact that it’s developmentally normal for two-years-olds to want things their own way. I mean really, how many times does one need to tell a child that he is not to take things off the counter without asking first?! How hard can it be to wait for just a minute before I come to read to him?!

It has been an eye-opening few months for me, and I have begun to wonder if any of us ever really outgrows that impatience or if it just goes underground. After all, we all feel the urge to honk at someone if they are not moving as soon as the light turns green or make annoyed comments in our heads or under our breath when we are stuck behind someone who seems to be disorganized and dense in the checkout line. Waiting is just something that we all have trouble with. Perhaps that’s tied up in the protestant work ethic that has come to obsess our culture. After all, most of us grew up with the concept that “idle hands are the devil’s playground” somewhere in the back of our minds.

And, if we are dogged by the need to keep busy in the relatively easy lives we live, is it really surprising that the Israelites would be impatient after years of wondering in the fruitless wilderness after lifetimes spent at work from sun up to sun down? They had been waiting for years to get to work on their own land, living on manna with the tantalizing promise of abundance always before them. I think that they actually showed an enormous amount of patience. How long were they supposed to wait on God? … But, then again, I look at things from a human perspective, and things are clearly different in God’s eyes. And so, in much the same way that my children reap the consequence of their own impatience despite a different understanding of time the children of Israel find themselves beset by fiery or poisonous serpents – actually seraphim in the Hebrew – when they complain about having to wait.

Now, this passage has always been a little hard for me to stomach, and I’m sure some of you have the same reaction. Even as parenting has helped me to see things a little differently, I still have trouble with a God who seems so vindictive. Wider perspective or not it seems out of proportion to condemn so many people to death because they are impatient – even if that might imply some lack of faith. Why not just find some way to sit them on a stool or in the corner for a timeout. After all, in the words of Morgan Freeman playing the role of God in “Evan Almighty,” ‘if you want someone to be more patient, you give them opportunities to be more patient.’ You don’t sentence them to death. None of us would still be here if God dealt with every lack of faith in such a harsh manner.

What is one to do when faced with a face of God that leaves us shaking – a tale that seems so incompatible with the God who came to offer mercy to humanity in the person of Christ? Well, I try to look deeper and find a different interpretation – a perspective that reveals a link to the God of I John 4 – the God who is love. Usually, when we do that, we can find something – some piece of information that opens a way out of our quandary which is precisely why it’s important to question the process. No matter how much we don’t like some of the stories about God, it is important to remember that we cannot throw out things that make us uncomfortable. In some ways, God is simply beyond our understanding, and we should be wary of simply re-making the image of God to suit our own sensibilities – simply trying to fit God’s way into our way. In a sense, that’s exactly what the Israelites in this passage were trying to do. And yet, the question remains… What was God thinking?


I certainly can’t answer that question, and I’m not sure anyone can. Still, it is interesting that poisonous snakes that plagued the Israelites were actually seraphim. That’s the same word that names the fiery beings that float above the throne of God. According to Isaiah’s vision, those same serpents were actually his salvation. Standing before the power of God, imperfect as he was, the burning power of the seraphim was able to purify him, making him holy so that he was not destroyed. It seems that though the fiery serpents can be deadly as the story relates, as bearers of the power of divine holiness they can also be agents of healing and purification.


When I was working as a chaplain, several cancer patients spoke to me about the harrowing experience of chemotherapy. As anyone who has been around a cancer patient can attest, it is not a pleasant experience to have deadly chemicals injected into one’s system week after week. You become weak and tired, and there is a lot of nausea as the body struggles to deal with the poisons circulating in the blood. And, there is a particular sensation that comes along with each new dose. Some people have trouble describing the feeling, but the overwhelming impression is that of a burning that starts at the injection and spreads as the drugs are carried along in the blood. In the end, many people feel as if their whole body is on fire. The only thing that keeps them coming back is the hope that this suffering will purify their bodies of the insidious tumors. Not everyone survives the process, but most feel that it’s worth the risk given the alternative.

Perhaps the fiery serpents in the wilderness were intended to serve a similar purpose. Certainly the people were not physically sick, but scripture often describes sin in terms similar to those we use to talk about cancer. While impatience and complaining probably don’t qualify as sins in anyone’s book, this story characterizes them as a symptom of a tendency among the people to turn away from God’s guidance in favor of more immediate, more understandable gratification. That, we know, was one of the ongoing struggles of the chosen people – a struggle that we have inherited in our own turn – and that path does lead to sin.

When the body of the people recognized the situation it was in, the people found themselves faces with the same choice – do we continue on with things the way they are, or do we turn toward the path of hope for the future. And, like others, they chose hope. They turned back toward God, and the burning of the seraphim became a healing presence, purging the chosen people of the death that dwelt among them, purifying them as it purified Isaiah. It still seems like an extreme solution, but sometimes the extreme is justified.


The good news for us is that the seraphim are not coming. We do not have to worry about poisonous serpents appearing among us because God has taken even more extreme action. Leaving behind the fiery servants, God has come among us to show us the hope and the promise of following God’s guidance. Through merciful grace, Christ has justified us in the eyes of the divine perspective even if – even when we don’t always realize that we need it.

To paraphrase Paul’s words: ‘even though sin still lives and grows within us, Christ is continually at work, healing and purifying us.’ When we follow our own paths, trusting ourselves and our lives to the work of our hands and the wisdom of our minds, we journey more deeply into the sin and the spiritual death it brings. Yet, Christ journeys with us, rests beside us as we suffer, and stands ready with grace to heal us and bring us back to life.


In the greatness of perfect love, God desires that we turn over all that we have and all that we are to the divine guidance so that we may become all that God dreams for us. Yet, where we are impatient, God waits. When we turn away, forget the wisdom we have heard again and again God waits for us to turn back. Each time we hold a part of ourselves back, screaming “no” into the face of our teacher and protector, Christ sighs, waits for the tantrum to pass, and calls us once again to come to our senses. Every time we realize what we have done and what we are becoming, God greets our apologies with a smile, offers us a healing embrace, and invites us to accept the grace that brings new life.

We have been invited to repent and be purified. We are being invited even now to turn back from our own ways – the ways made inviting by our impatience and the false promise of gratification – and follow God’s way. And God is waiting… welcoming … offering new life … life filled with joy and surrounded by the loving embrace of our God. We have been invited to come, and this time we don’t have to wait.

We have been invited. Let us turn and go and receive our promised welcome.