Lenten Meditation: Serpent on a Pole

[angli_fan]

[from Thinking Anglicans]

by Rosemary Hannah

For all of its beauty and joy, this world is founded on pain and loss. Darwin is not a challenge to Christian belief because he shows how species arise over time (rather than being created at one fixed point) but because he makes it impossible to imagine a time before death and pain entered the world. They have been the constant companions of creation, in all their nastiest forms. Even creationists cannot believe that Adam brought death into the world.

Whatever the theological problems this raises, the solution does not include running away. The Israelites in the desert tried that, and died. The cure they were offered was staring at the very thing they feared. They were to stare hard at the serpent death which terrified them so, according to Rabbi Arthur Waskow and Rabbi Phyllis Berman in Red Cow, Red Blood, Red Dye: Staring Death & Life in the Face.

For Christians this becomes even more poignant. For us it is Christ who becomes the serpent on a pole. Looking at him, we see what horrifies us; agonising suffering and bloody death. It is easy, with practise, to become complacent about it, seeing new life springing from this agony. We do not serve our God well by doing so.

The serpent in the wilderness was offered to allow the people of God to face their terrors. They looked into the pit of the image of death. Christ offers us the image of our worst imaginings, and of all the suffering of nature. Every meadow pipit pushed out by the baby cuckoo, every caterpillar split open by the parasitic wasp who has eaten though it, each is summoned up in the image of the creator of them dragging out a slow death from suffocation. Lifted up so, he draws all to him.

Read it all at:
www.thinkinganglicans.org.uk/archives/003709.html

[mewg]

I don't believe adam brought death into the world I believe he brought the finality of death. Until then I believe humans when their time had come like Enoch walked calmly with God, a God with whom they *had walked in the cool of the evening"

[Uriel]

Well, that takes me by surprise. I love the image. But I don't believe in the literal story in any way. I do think that the story of Adam and Eve is one of what happens to each of us as individuals as we go from the innocence of childhood to the awareness of the ages of discretion.

Of course, there weren't supposed to be any humans before Adam, so maybe you don't believe in the literal story either?

[mewg]

When I wrote this I thoght" someone may think I take all this completely literally " I guess someone did. Some parts I guess I do --that mankind upset the equilibrium --perfection of the universe and that some day there will be a new and perfect world again. But I believe opganisms died before "Adam & Eve" but the terror and fear of death didn;t exist because people were one with God--there was no separation, God was the friend they conversed(and played?) with and who simply received them.

[Uriel]

One of the things I like best in Bishop Spong's (gasp! horror!) writings is that he points out that we have not "fallen" (though I would agree that we are the ones who have desecrated creation) - when were we perfect? (A: never) We have this whole time been evolving.

But I imagine that the relationship of non-human beings was, and is, more or less as you describe.

[mewg]

Something descrcrated creation and something made the creation "red in tooth and claw" Was it meant to include earthquakes, tidal waves (I can't begin to spell the "t" word) and all the natural disasters man is not responsible for?

[Uriel]

"Red in tooth and claw" makes me think T-Rex.

[Sojourner]

I don't know about desecrating creation. You do pose an interesting dilemma regarding earthquakes and tidal waves, as well as all other types of natural disasters. I know less than nothing about techtonic plates, the earth's crust, vulcanism and all that. It does appear, however, that these things are inherent in the operation of the earth. I cannot buy that the results of the natural forces, let alone the forces themselves, have any moral component. Is a plate shifting a moral act? I don't think so. Is a tidal wave sweeping over an uninhabited island a moral act? Again, for me, no.

About 30 years ago a killer tornado hit the ground and plowed through Witchita Falls, Texas. It was two miles wide and stayed on the ground for about five miles in forward motion, striking a very populous region. The Sunday after the tornado struck the priest at the Church of the Good Shepherd spoke to the issue. He suggested that folk all over town were asking "why?" He pointed out that climate and other conditions contributed to the development of tornadoes. He suggested that for centuries tornadoes had swept over north Texas and other points of "Tornado Alley." He noted that man's mobility and wandering brought people to Witchita Falls. Had they not settled there, they would not have been affected by this event. Much the same can be said for those who choose to live on earthquake fault lines, or in areas susceptible to hurricanes. Hundreds of people were trapped on interstate highways in New York last week, most of them there armed with the knowledge that a blizzard was possible? Yet, they chose to drive. I really can't see the blizzard having moral content.

[mewg]

I agree. Stuff happens. But why does "stuff"(admitedly amoral "stuff"--hurricanes and the like--have evil consequences? ( I tend to think a maimed child is a mite evil). God is not directly causing any of this pain so what has happened to turn a creation He called good into one which has this stuff