March 11-Num. 21-sympathetic magic, controlling an adversary through manipulation of a replication. ...Deliverance comes, not in being removed from the wilderness, but in the very presence of the enemy. The movement from death to life occurs within the very experience of godforsakenness. The death-dealing forces of chaos are nailed to the pole.Terence E. Fretheim But the serpents do not go away, nor do they stop biting. Instead, God instructs Moses on how to heal the people who are bitten; they are still bitten, but they live. Deliverance does not come in the way that they expect.But then the pole of life is carried to Jerusalem and ensconced in the Temple. ..And so one day the pole must reappear in another godforsaken place, high on a hill, overlooking the holy city. God himself has taken to the pole! Once for all. So that all those who know they are dying in the wilderness can be healed. Look up to him and live... in the wilderness. Howard- Moses’ serpent-on-a-pole shows up again in the Old Testament, at 2 Kings 18:4: “[Hezekiah] removed the high places, broke down the pillars, and cut down the sacred pole. He broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until those days the people of Israel had made offerings to it; it was called Nehushtan.” and they focused instead on a bronzed, domesticated, manufactured idol that they could see and understand. Perhaps it is the task of preaching to break up our bronzed serpents and to turn our attention instead to the God of the wilderness: dangerous, maybe, and unpredictable for sure, but always present, always faithful.Ps 107:17-22
John 3:14-square one- so loved the world/cosmos-not condemn it- Light.John’s poetic nature, why his is symbolized as the eagle, why called a spiritual gospel sees the image of another poison, the cross as instrument of execution, as a healing image. It takes the poison out of lives. It provides an antidote, an antivenom if you will.Think of the healing symbol of the snake in the pharmacy.(That is a mistake as it confuses this symbol with the healing of Asclepius as well).James Kay speaks of the cross drawing the venom from us, as we lift high the cross, that most downhearted destructive image.In the Buddhist culture, there is a tale about a woman whose child has died. In her agony, she went to the local guru and begged him to give her her child back. “Of course,” he replied – with a challenge. “Just bring me back ONE grain of rice from a household that has escaped the pain of grief.” She ran to the cottage next door, and to the one next to that, and to all the cottages in the village, she learned that life, is struggle, with suffering its frequent cost, and death its final price.
Eph. 2 WP How do we live in a venom-filled world, with snakes in the grass and often ready to strike? We’re not saved just from our bad individual choices or what we “follow.” God delivers us from an entire mode of existence -- indeed transfers us from one sphere to another -- not just from the inability to make enough of the “right” choices.-according to “the course of this world” (NRSV; ESV); “the ways of this world” (NIV).The word translated “ways” or “course” is aeon. Scholars debate whether it should be best understood as a force in a temporal sense “the age of this world.” Since the early 2nd century B.C.E., people personified Aeon, and it referred to a deity of sorts. Something to which certainly some people could be captive from Paul's perspective..
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