30.03.03 Eliza Getman Faithfulness in the Wilderness and Dark Places
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Readings:
Numbers 21:4-9 Psalm 107:1-3,
17-22 John 3:14-21
We find ourselves today embroiled in a global conflict that "none of us wanted" and many of us hoped and prayed we could avoid or at least delay a little longer. Since the Stop the War march last Saturday, I have felt physically shattered and deeply depressed about the state of the world. To the point where I have had to acknowledge that it does both my own body and my unborn child enormous harm to maintain this perpetual state of anxiety. It is out of our hands. These decisions are beyond our power sources. So I have decided to switch off the blow-by-blow accounts of the war’s progression. This does not mean that I am pretending that it isn’t happening. I continue to pray for peace and for the safety of all those directly implicated. But I am no longer bearing the responsibility for my nation of origin’s greed and arrogance. A South African friend wrote recently to absolve me of my shame and guilt by saying that it should have been the responsibility of every country in the world to stand up to the United States a long time ago. For this and other reasons, I have decided not to speak to you at any length about the war in Iraq today.
This morning’s readings speak to us about the journeys that we avoid – the ones that take us straight to the heart of our worst fears and our deepest loneliness. These are the moments when we are most apt to question’s God’s wisdom and even, like the Israelites led out of Egypt into the hostile wilderness, speak against God. They asked: "Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?" In our impatience, we might drag our feet resentfully or even try to go our own way. We might think that we know better path. Even Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane (while he prayed the first Lenten prayers in preparation for his darkest hour) asked that the cup of the cross might be taken from him. Nobody in their right minds wants to suffer. But to go our own way might bypass the necessary struggle that is the key to our fuller lives.
Now in today’s Old Testament passage, we see that when people try to thwart God’s authority there are malicious and vengeful consequences. Poisonous serpents are sent by the Lord to kill some and put the fear of God back into the others. I don’t know about you, but deadly attacks wouldn’t make me feel more receptive towards any leader – but the Israelites in their desperation and fear went to Moses and confessed their wickedness and begged for forgiveness and protection. And through Moses’ prayers and God’s great mercy and miraculous power the snake bite antidote staff of bronze was created to save the people from the curse that they brought upon themselves. A very strange story indeed. And yet snakes are a powerful symbol of our fears. I’m terrified of them. And to know that we can be bitten and live is in some parts of the world still a great miracle.
I have a snake story that I cannot resist telling in this context. When I lived way down a dirt road in a village called Dobwo in rural Mali, my best friend was a little boy of no more than eight called Jean-Anz. Jean-Anz chose me when I first arrived in town to assist the local midwife. He showed me how to climb trees and eat certain strange fruits and local dishes. He was my first guide deep into the mud brick village of 800 residents. He tried to teach me more of the local language but we communicated mostly in broken French. He spent quite a lot of time in my house – he helped me plant and water my garden – and sometimes I took him on the back of my bike to the market in the neighbouring town. Jean-Anz never wanted to leave in the evenings. His own home – a dark mud hut - was very poor and his parents were rough peasants who worked the fields and the daily chores for adults and children were endless. I never received the impression that it was an abusive home – but there was a distinct lack of affection or joy. So he came and laughed with me often and told me that he wanted to be "my little boy".
One day we were at my well and he was pulling the bucket (made from a recycled tire tube) up, bent at the waist, strong arms jutting elbows in the air. And as the bucket came out of the dark, just as it was nearly in his oblivious hands, I noticed a black snake rising out of the water. Despite my shock and horror I managed to alert him just in time. He dumped the bucket and in a flash had grabbed a long stick and with a single blow to the animals head had dispatched it. We were both shaken – but safe.
Several months later, there was an odd patch of days with no visit from Jean-Anz. But it was harvest time and I figured that he was busy in the fields and I was busy with my own work so had not investigated. Then quite unusually, his father, whom I barely knew, paid me a visit on his bicycle. He came to say that his son was recovering from a snakebite that he’d received the previous day while working in the field. He was clearly concerned, but without any idea of where to turn, as there were no primary care medical facilities in the village and the family was penniless. I went with him immediately into the village and found Jean-Anz lying on a mat on the dirt floor in the dark with a dirty bandage around his foot. His foot was massively swollen and he had been coughing blood. It was one of those moments where in my helplessness and fury I questioned the presence of God in Dobwo.
I jumped on my bike and raced to the larger market town to see if the medical attendants had any antidote and if they would come. I found their refrigerators without power because the generators had run out of petrol. So any live medicines that they may have had were now useless due to the broken cold chain. And they would not come to see him because in their estimation there was nothing they could do. I was livid – at their lack of concern because he was just another poor peasant boy – at their Muslim fatalistic attitude about life – at their laid-back African bush slackness and their power games because they had the minor medical training and uniforms. They could play God and decide which lives were worth assisting and which could not afford it. I was angry that children in this country were sent to work in the fields. I was angry with Jean-Anz for going barefoot and for not seeing the snake and whacking it first. I was angry with his father for not providing his son with shoes and for neglecting to inform me any sooner. I was angry with God for allowing it to happen and mostly I was furious with myself for my own helplessness.
But then the minor miracle began - there was an apparition of a white 4x4 heading in the direction of my village. And the driver was none other than the young African Catholic Bishop Gabriel from the nearest city 70 kilometers away. I had never seen him out in the bush before. I threw myself on his mercy and he came immediately to fetch the boy. His father carried Jean-Anz in his arms to the small truck and I cradled him in the back seat while we drove as fast as we could down the bumpy dirt road to a more organised medical centre in a larger more distant town. My small friend lived. And I was profoundly reminded that God is with us - even in the darkest places.
So who am I to question God’s authority or to doubt God’s wisdom and power? The Psalm tells us of those who "cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he saved them from their distress; he sent out his word and he healed them." I had neglected to cry out to the Lord – though I’m certain his parents had - and nevertheless mercy was shown. Like the Psalmist, I was reminded to give thanks to the Lord whose steadfast love endures forever.
Unlike the Psalmist, however, I cannot agree that people are sick or afflicted because of their sinful ways. I cannot believe that God meets out punishments on people. So much is random circumstance and luck of the draw. The Gospel reading reminds us that the new model of the loving God did not send his Son to condemn the world – but to save it. Judgement is no longer the first response. We have come a long way from the unpredictable, vengeful God of the Old Testament to the loving gentle God of the New. It almost seems impossible to reconcile the God who sends poisonous snakes with the God who "so loved the world that he gave his only Son." But these contradictory images speak clearly of human nature and our capacity to reflect both the lovingly tender and the angry hurtful will. I am increasingly aware of these aspects in myself through the responsibility and activity of parenting. There are times when I just want to put my arms around Noah and others when I want to shake him… Yet I believe that ultimately God is not a vengeful God to be feared – because as our liturgy reminds us "there is no room for fear in love". I believe that the most awesome display of strength from the all-powerful God is the gift that we are still freely given of a capacity to make decisions for ourselves. We have the power to make mistakes that betray ourselves and each other and God with devastating consequences. We have the option of choosing the darkness. But we also have the power to choose the light and to make the choices that make our own lives and those of others’ worth living and worthy of God’s approval.
My mother was speaking to me last week about her father who died in December. He was a rather disapproving sort of man with a gruff and acerbic character. And she was telling me that she still in some strange way finds that she continues to seek his approval. She recognises that this is really about craving the approval and the blessing of God. I think we all seek this more than we may even begin to admit to ourselves. Even our acting out is a way of testing the approval and the acceptance – trying to catch God (or our parent or our partner) out with the constant nagging question of whether they REALLY love us – even if we do the unforgivable…
When Jean-Anz was wounded, it was jarring to be reminded that the French verb for "wound" is "blesser". The words "blessing" in English and "blessure" (the French noun) seem so opposite - and yet they are so closely linked. What are the benedictions that we receive in faith? We begin at baptism with the sign of the cross in oil that marks us as Christ’s own forever. We ingest the broken body and spilt blood of Christ at the Eucharist each week. And once a year on Ash Wednesday we recall our baptismal blessing with the sign of the cross in ash and oil to remind us of our mortality.
As an aside, this past week I have been receiving my first courses of acupuncture for my ghastly flu (for which western medical doctors told me they could do nothing…). A complimentary treatment that my Chinese medical practitioner offers is something called "cupping" which involves the use of strong suction on the skin of one’s back. It leaves purple bruises that have horrified both Jonny and Noah – my medical husband because he can’t understand how it could possibly work – and my son because he is concerned that it might be contagious. For me somehow seeing the marks makes me think that something is actually happening in terms of my healing process.
Wounds and Blessings. Think of Jacob who wrestled with the angle and carried a physical reminder of his blessing forever in the form of a limp. The stigmata that replicates Christ’s own wounds is another unexplainable phenomena that is even considered by some to be a sign of saintliness. I don’t understand that either. But I am both fascinated and impressed by holiness that is beyond my capacity for comprehension or acceptance. I do believe that the mark of God is inevitably a wound that we carry with us – apparent or invisible – because we cannot help but be changed by encounters with the all-powerful. I believe that our bodies record every touch that we have ever received – from the gentlest to the most brutal. Our skin memories are the longest.
So how do we actively seek God’s blessing? We are told in John 3 that belief is crucial. We must also strive to do what is true. It is our choice to love either the light or the darkness. Each has a hunger that is insatiable. And then there is this wild comparison right at the beginning of the passage between Christ ascension and Moses’ miraculous snake staff fashioned in bronze: "just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life." I love this idea of Jesus as the antidote. We may be bitten by the poisonous serpents of this life, but if we fix our eyes on the risen Christ we will live. It does not offer us some false sense of preventative or precautionary protection – it does not claim that if we are Christians no harm will befall us. It simply says that we will survive the snakebites of life through our belief. But we must choose to travel the way of the cross. This is what Lent is all about. It is choosing all over again during the forty days in the wilderness before Christ rises again at Easter, choosing to walk the way of the cross. As George Reiss reminded us last week – the Christian road is simple, but difficult. May we be blessed again with both the discernment and the desire to choose to take the journey.