Snakes… It had to be snakes. I hate snakes. They’re little death tubes. I don’t know why I hate them so much. It’s a visceral reaction. I’m 6’4”, I tower over these little dust-eaters, and they are limited in their habitats. Being cold-blooded, they aren’t out much these days. I still hate and fear them. Maybe it’s the efficiency, they don’t need feet. Maybe it’s Biblically based; a snake tricked Adam and Eve and got us kicked out of the Garden of Eden.

Snakes are sneaky. They come in all different shapes and sizes. They can climb trees. How can something climb trees that doesn’t have limbs? Doesn’t seem right.

Some snakes are venomous. The King Cobra can spit its venom. It’s the largest venomous snake in the world and it comes with a fashionable expanding hood to make its head look bigger. Its bite is lethal to around 60% of people, but don’t worry, its cousin in Australia, the coastal taipan, is smaller but packs more of a punch as 80% of those bitten die. It delivers a veritable witch’s brew of toxins. The venom consists of a complex mix of neurotoxins, procoagulants, and myotoxins that paralyze muscles, inhibit breathing, cause hemorrhaging in blood vessels and tissues, and damage muscles. Even if you’re one of the lucky 20% who do survive, you will be permanently affected.

Today God sends snakes. They bite the people, and the people are dying. Moses, who has had some complications on this journey to the Promised Land, makes a metal snake and puts it on a pole and anyone who looks at it gets better.

My scientific mind wants to explain this passage. How did this work? The Bible doesn’t care. My theological side wants to challenge the idea that God would send snakes as punishment. The Bible doesn’t care. Someone once challenged me on a similar statement. I once said that God sent Kate to me. I was challenged, and I didn’t appreciate it. I feel like God has called me to you. We’re coming up on a year, and I feel like I was sent here, that God placed you in my life. I know how poorly I would react if someone challenged me on that. If the people feel like God sent snakes, then who am I to argue?

Maybe the snakes aren’t the point. The snakes were venomous, but the people were already poisoned. They were poisoned by their complaints. They were complaining about God and Moses. They were longing for Egypt. Sometimes I think nostalgia could be the 8^th Deadly Sin. We long for a golden age that never was. The people wanted to return to Egypt, life seemed better there. Let’s recap Egypt: In Egypt, the people were slaves, discriminated against, asked to make bricks without proper materials, and worked to death.

The people were complaining. Man, I love complaining. It feels so good, but it’s also so hard to get out of that spiral. Once I start, it’s hard to stop. I’ve started playing basketball again. The first time I was out there, I was playing confidently, I was hitting my shots. I felt good. The second game, I was tired. I wasn’t used to the pace of the game. I started missing shots and then I mentally complained about that. I felt my confidence drain, and I didn’t make another shot the rest of the day. I forgot the trick of basketball–keep taking shots. Keep playing confident. Don’t complain. Don’t focus on a missed shot. Focus on taking the next one and doing what you can to help your team win with rebounds, assists, and good defense.

I have to remind myself to stay positive. I feel that I’m at my best when I’m positive and not sweating the small stuff. Yet that’s hard. I once complained to my buddy Jon who’s a pastor about a church member who kept wanting to talk about my sermon ,and see what the next church event was. Jon politely reminded me that this wasn’t a problem. That this type of church member is the goal.

“You’re seriously going to complain about someone wanting to talk about a sermon,” Jon asked incredulously. “Sermons are all you talk about! Sermons, pop culture, and geek stuff. Sometimes sports. That’s your range, man.”

My complaining had poisoned my thinking, and I couldn’t perceive the man as I should. I was thankful for Jon’s reminder.

I once knew another man, a retired professor, who called up every Monday morning to complain about some point in the sermon. I was the associate, and I guess it was my initiation in those first years to talk to this man. I felt like it was a success if I could get off the phone in ten minutes or less. Then I had to spend a few minutes alone before I calmed down enough to be suitable in public. One morning he was especially fired up about a sermon delivered by another pastor on our team.

“I take issue with Sunday’s sermon,” he began in his typical way. “In the sermon delivered by Joycelyn, she stated that we should be ‘as innocent as doves and as wise as serpents.’ How could she say such a thing?! Doesn’t she know how the Bible views serpents? She should…”

“I’m going to stop you right there, Professor,” I said. “Your problem isn’t with the preacher, but with Jesus. That’s who Joycelyn was quoting, specifically Matthew 10:16.”

That was the last time I got a Monday call from the Professor. Complaining can poison us from hearing the very word of God. Just because we’re in church or have attended it all our lives doesn’t make us immune. In fact, it could make matters worse.

Every church likes to think of itself as a warm and welcoming place, yet this is not true. Not every church welcomes, not every church is warm. A visitor walks in and isn’t greeted by anyone because we that’s someone else’s job. Or that one friendly person will do it, but they are on vacation, the new visitor is out of luck. Remember, it takes a lot of guts to walk into a new church. You might sit in someone’s pew. Visitors will walk right through these unspoken prohibitions, new pastors as well come to think of it.

Young children are the worst at breaking the unspoken rules and interrupting the worship with burbling or crying. The older kids might ask out loud the question that everyone is thinking, and things can get awkward. We might want to give them an annoyed look. Throw a little shade. Give a little side eye. But that doesn’t help anyone, and it will chase away the parents. A noisy church is a growing church. We need to be respectful of one another, yet we also need to be forgiving as well. This poison has chased away the new generation from many a church, and people are scratching their heads wondering why their church is dying.

Complaining about the budget. Complaining in the parking lot and not to the people who can help find the solution. Complaining just to complain. That’s poison.

There are times to complain. There’s an entire book in the Bible about it, Lamentations! Israel complains to God about their exile. The prophets and Jesus complain about the behavior of Israel to God. There’s are Psalms of laments. The difference between these complaints and the people’s complaint against God and Moses is the purpose. Complaint without purpose, complaining just to complain, is what we read here today in Scripture. The Israelites complain and forget why they are in the wilderness to begin with, they are on a mission from God. They seek the Promised Land. They have a new law, a new way to live together. Complaints with purpose are different and I think God finds those helpful.

Sometimes complaining can be poison, sometimes it can be the antidote. Just as the bronze serpent heals in this context, but as Dan Marty pointed out in our Facebook conversation, it ends up being the object of idol worship until it was destroyed by King Hezekiah a thousand years later. Idols are hard. The Pharisees complain about Jesus and his disciples and show how tradition is their idol. Jesus and his disciples don’t follow the rules, they are going against custom, they heal people and pick grain on the Sabbath. They hang out with all the wrong people. These complaints show how invested the religious people of Christ’s day are to the social order, not to the order of God. They cling to their tradition and they don’t care if it matches the path God would have us follow.

I recently went to a listening session on how we should reorganize our denomination at the Ohio conference level. We used to have a conference of 17 staff. We’re down to 2 1/2. Churches are dying, resources are more limited. We have two levels of judicatory with the association and the conference. We have to get rid of one or the other. Yet most of the session time centered on people complaining that things weren’t how they used to be. I came to the session ready to talk about the Promised Land, and we spent the time longing for Egypt.

What was a faithful response in a certain time and place might not work in another. Instead of just sitting and complaining about God and Moses, sometimes we need snakes to be sent. Sometimes the situation has to be so bad, that something has to happen to get us to move.

Women speaking out. Students speaking out. Black folks speaking out. LGBTQ folks speaking out. Immigrants speaking out. What might look like pointless complaining to those of us comfortable with the way things are might be people who are tired of being bitten, trying to move us toward the Promised Land.

Moses gives the people a symbol to look on and get rid of the poison. He gives them a metal snake on a pole, but I hate snakes. I love pulpits. And crosses. And conversations over coffee and around the table. Honest conversations where we can discern the difference between the poisonous ways of complaining and the antidote of prophetic lament.

Sometimes the sign will be a symbol like a cross, a steeple, or a pulpit and sometimes it will come in the form of a person. Like a new visitor to our church to remind us to be hospitable. Or a crying infant to remind us to be forgiving. Or an honest child to remind us to ask questions/say what we mean.”. Or a group of students reminding us that schools being shot up isn’t right or normal. Or women telling their stories reminding us that they are people and not property. Or black and brown brothers and sisters reminding us of our pledge “indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

We are about to celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day which is one of the most magical days of the year. Suddenly, everyone’s Irish! Polish, Swedish, and German people are suddenly drinking green beer and wearing green! Saint Patrick is credited for chasing the snakes out of Ireland. Science and history tells us that there were no actual snakes in post-glacial Ireland.[1] Yet we know that snakes can come in many forms. As much as we don’t like them, sometimes we need the snakes to remind us what we’re about. And when reminded, we move a little closer to the Promised Land, that Beloved Community of God. Sometimes we just need to stop complaining and start walking.

Works Cited

[1] https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/03/080313-snakes-ireland_2.html