Snakes Alive!

The things we do to survive difficult times are truly surprising.  Wilderness survival has become a staple on Netflix and YouTube, with shows like Man Tracker being popular.  But the ancient Hebrews, wandering around in the wilderness, didn’t have encyclopedias to tell them how to survive, or what to eat.  They didn’t have an app on their phone pointing to where the nearest grocery store was, and they certainly couldn’t skip the dishes!  Survival was not something they could take for granted.  So when snakes moved in to their campground, no wonder they were upset.  They couldn’t contact Fish and Wildlife and rent a snake trap to deal with the infestation.

They did have a clear understanding that their choices had led to their misfortunes.  Their decision to be negative, to complain repeatedly about the food like a bunch of teenagers in the school cafeteria, was very human.  There are at least 14 instances in the books of Exodus and Numbers, of the people complaining about the food or the water, like a broken record that went on and on.  Despite everything Moses did, finding rocks with water in it, or manna on the ground, or quails in the air, the people still complained.  Slavery where they had no choices and they knew what would happen every day of their lives, was better than the unpredictable never-ending hiking trip that left them all tired and grumpy at the end of every day.  Freedom is not as wonderful as they thought it would be.  They were still part of the slavery mindset where it was always someone else’s fault.  They were addicted to seeing only the negative in every situation.  Surprisingly, snakes are supposed to be better protein than beef, and according to one website, rattlesnake meat is particularly delicious.  And since Moses hadn’t gotten time to write down what was clean and what was unclean yet in the book of Leviticus, snakes could have been a real boost to their diets.  At least, if you don’t eat the poison glands in the heads, and don’t get bitten as you try to catch them.  Maybe Moses or the writers of Leviticus knew something about those snakes we don’t.

Whatever the reason, God and Moses cooked up some art therapy for the Hebrews to get them looking up.  They cooked up a snake on a stick, to remind the folks that they had someone to trust in that was more powerful than snakes.  To remind the folks to go to prayer first, not negativity.  To break their slave thinking which assumed the worst in all situations.  To put God right in the centre of all their calamities and fears and frustrations.

Jesus continued that metaphor and built on it in a night-time conversation with Nicodemus.  Nicodemus, an educated believer, was an expert in the bible.  He wanted to figure out if Jesus was legitimate or just a con man, if Jesus was rooted and grounded in his scriptures or just inventing whatever he felt like.  This was a test of Jesus and his theology by a temple official.  This was not a casual chat about whether or not snakes might be edible, a conversation that was light and fluffy between two strangers wondering if they might be able to become friends.  This was the meeting of two great minds to talk about deep philosophical stuff.  Jesus could throw obscure quotes from the bible at Nicodemus because Jesus had studied it well.  Nicodemus would have been impressed that Jesus knew that odd story, and he would have taken it as a sign that Jesus had done his homework.  From the questions Nicodemus asked Jesus, he was honestly open and curious as to what Jesus was teaching, and was listening hard to understand.  That teaching was surprising on so many levels.  We tend to focus mostly on John 3:16 because that has become the most famous passage of the bible, seen at football games and on billboards.  It also has become interpreted in toxic ways.  One person described John 3:16 as a “believe it or else” warning sign used to divide and discriminate against people that don’t believe in Jesus in just the right way.  Which is ironic, because Nicodemus came with questions and an attitude of curiosity.  Jesus treated him with deep respect, engaging his questions, inspiring deeper questions, and having a rich, metaphorical conversation.  If Nicodemus were here today, would he read John 3:16 as an invitation to deeper conversations or as a condemnation of himself as not doing Christianity right?  Would the people he talked to today condemn him for not understanding, or encourage him to keep questioning?  It’s too bad that we stop at 3:16, because 3:17 is in my mind a much more invitational and hopeful verse.  Jesus came into the world not to condemn the world but that the whole world might be saved.  In some ways, that is the true scandal of this passage.  Our secret deeds will no longer be secret, our actions that we’re not proud of, these will be as evident and as prominent as if we had put them on a stick and marched them in a parade in the downtown on Canada Day.  But the whole world will be saved not only from our faults and mistakes and secrets, but from all that has us feeling scared or angry.  The whole world.  Not just the pretty ones, the famous ones, the straight ones, the rich ones, the powerful ones, but the whole world.

The whole world includes people of all ages, races, ethnicity, abilities, sexual orientation, gender identity, and family structure.  It also includes creation, snakes and all.  Jesus didn’t condemn Nicodemus, who helped care for his body on Good Friday.  Jesus came for all of us, in all our glorious diversity.  Whether we are campers who like our microwaves, or survivalists who want to know how to cook the snakes that are edible, we are part of the world that Jesus came to be lifted up for.  May we find courage and strength no matter where we find ourselves or what we are struggling with, by keeping our eyes on Jesus.  Amen.

Got a lovely bunch of Coconuts, anybody?

If you have ever gone wandering along a tropical beach with palm trees, you may have been told not to sit under a palm tree because more people die from falling coconuts than from shark attacks.  That, however, is an urban legend and an exaggeration.  But sitting under a coconut tree can be hazardous to your health.  No one knows the time or day when a coconut falls, and the comparison to sharks started when an emergency room doctor complained about all the injuries he was treating due to falling coconuts.  It created so much kerfuffle that someone wrote a very cheeky song called “Killed by a Coconut”, which is almost as silly as the song “I’ve Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts” which if you don’t know it is very similar to “I want a hippopotamus for Christmas”. 

Sometimes I feel like hope is just as silly as singing about coconuts and hippopotami.  Our scripture readings don’t seem very hopeful either.  And the news these days discourages a hopeful attitude. Who can be hopeful when their power is off because of bombs or they’ve lost family and friends in a nightclub shooting or they have had to wait for an ambulance for hours and then wait in a hospital for a doctor for more hours.

It’s easy to lapse into apathy when our lives are full of such stories.   It’s also easy to fall into the opposite extreme, anxiety.  Will this time be when the flood comes, or the heat wave or the hurricane or the forest fire? Or just assume that every day will be filled with disaster and there’s nothing that we can do to prevent it?  A third alternative is cynicism, the assumption that nothing good will ever happen.  A lot of conversations start with words like “Don’t”, “I can’t”, “We mustn’t”, “That won’t work”, “We tried that once”, or “no”.  Like a tire that has a slow leak, cynical words can completely deflate us until we feel flat, apathetic, cynical or anxious.  If we internalize all those words, that can lead to serious depression.  The negative, cynical, apathetic, anxious thoughts can become self-destructive mental illness that requires professional help to unravel.  There were times when I needed to reach out to counsellors to improve my mental health, but for many in our world, this is a constant struggle that needs medical and professional support.  Which is in short supply these days.  Social workers are facing the same challenges this year as doctors and nurses did during covid, a rise in demand and in workload.  Burn out, retirement, and a health system that does not fund mental health programs consistently or predictably mean uncertainty for both professionals and those who need the programs.  PRAAC, who raises money to fund thrive workers to help people experiencing family violence, depends on government support as well as our fundraising and organizations like Together Talk have to apply for grants to provide free mental health care on one hand but also struggle to get the message out to people that the service exists and it’s okay to ask for help.  People who have hope are more likely to ask for that help than those without hope.

At our yarn circle we asked the question, “what is hope and how does it differ from wishful thinking?”  Wishful thinking is imagining things will work out the way I want without any effort on my part and may involve an exaggerated hope or fanciful thought.  A ten year old can wish for a real live pet unicorn all they want, but they are not going to get one.  A twenty year old can work in a stable to earn enough to buy a pony that they call ‘Unicorn’ and dress it up with a pointed hat.  One is wishful thinking, based in fantasy, the other is based in the real world and with hard work will come true.  But even better than these two examples is the twenty year old taking her pony to the Stollery Hospital and giving sick children rides on her ‘unicorn’.  That is Christian hope.  It comes from thinking of others, and being alert to opportunities to serve our neighbors. 

When Christ said ‘stay ready and alert for no one knows the day’, that is hope – alert and brave and focused on a better future.  Not afraid to face the reality of shoveling manure to get a unicorn.  And Christian hope is also about being honest about the challenges that life throws at us.  We will see disasters, but we are to keep looking and preparing for Christ’s coming. 

The challenge is discerning what is wishful thinking and what is hopeful thinking.  After several days of rain this week, rain in Alberta in November, global warming is becoming more tangible.  Some think it’s wishful thinking to imagine lowering our dependence on petroleum products, and slam environmentalists for such ideas.  Better do nothing than make a baby step towards change.  Yet one person’s wishful thinking is another person’s hope.  It was wishful thinking to imagine the USSR would stop being communist, wishful thinking that the Berlin Wall would come down, wishful thinking that Northern Ireland would be at peace, that apartheid in South Africa would end, that the slave trade would end or that we could have a truth and reconciliation process in Canada, to name a few.  One person’s wishful thinking is another person’s call to hope.  One person may see a coconut as a dangerous weapon, but another person will see it as a fruit that despite its hard shell and brown exterior, is worth the effort of cracking open.  And when we crack that hard nut, we too can be nourished in ways that inspire hope in others.  We are called to choose hope and to work for hope.  Researchers at the U of A in Edmonton are finding that hope impacts our physical health as well as our mental health.  Hope can heal relationships and the world with God being our helper.  Thanks be to God for this wonderful gift!

The Big Thaw

 Just a week ago I walked down to the river. for me it’s a short trip, but it was amazing to see that there was still a lot of ice.  It was just starting to show water in places here and there.  And now a week later, it’s all thawed with nary a speck of ice or snow.

And we can see how fast it runs now that the ice is gone.  It is moving swift and silently once again.  The geese are nesting, the fish are biting, the flies are hatching, the bulbs are sprouting, and the grass is greening.  The season is changing before our eyes and another winter is behind us.

When we still had snow and ice, it seemed like nothing would change and spring would never come. Saul was frozen into such an attitude.  He had built an ice jam of cold fury towards people he saw as a threat.  He would not be moved from that position that these new-fangled ideas were an abominable twisting of the Torah. The more he heard them, the more he listened to them, the more of a threat they seemed, and the more icy he became to their ideas.

He became so obsessed with the followers of ‘The Way” that he asked for special authority to deal with them.  He wanted that ‘double 0’ designation that gave him licence to arrest and kill.  And he was willing to walk all the way to Damascus in Syria!  That’s 275 km away.  At the average speed of most humans, Saul was willing to go on a two week journey to round up and arrest malcontents so they could be punished.

All he could see was the threat.  All he could think of was preserving the status quo.  All he wanted to do was hurt.  He was frozen in his attitude towards people he hadn’t even met in person, condemning them without a fair trial.  Even helping with their execution.  He was the one who held the coats of others while they executed Stephen, he was the one described as ‘ravaging the church by entering house after house; dragging off both women and men to put them in jail’.

But he wasn’t the only one frozen into a particular opinion and attitude.  The real hero in this story, I think, is Ananias. He also was stuck in the attitude that Saul was a threat to his family, friends and his new faith.  He didn’t want to deal with this dangerous man.  He only saw the danger and not the opportunity that lay before him.  No way he wanted to go and be nice to Saul!

But Ananias was a follower of the Way and knew that Jesus taught them to pray for their enemies.  He knew that the resurrection had turned all their assumptions about the way the world worked upside down. He knew that he might not be the greatest at preaching the gospel to cynical people, but he was the ‘johnny on the spot’, the one God could connect with and send.  He was the one who healed Saul’s deep, frozen soul.  He was the one that started the river flowing, and what a river it was!

Saul who was so frozen in his ways and his attitudes and his hate, broke down in front of humble Ananias.  He realized his stubbornness and anger had been not only so unhealthy it impacted him physically, it also pushed him into behaving in ways counter to the faith he honored.  His extremist mindset pulled him into what today’s psychologists call ‘cognitive dissonance’.  Instead of honoring God and studying the Torah, he was persecuting people he didn’t know, breaking the Torah’s command to love God and love neighbor.

Who do we connect with?  Are we a Saul, stubbornly frozen in sure we know what is right and best for our neighbors, and willing to do whatever it takes to prove that we are right, and certain they deserve punishment?  Are we an Ananias, wondering how on earth we can talk to someone as angry and hurting as Saul?  Are we Saul’s companions, helping guide him to the support he needs?  Are we the followers of the Way, wondering what we can do to keep ourselves safe during the threat Saul is bringing?

If we are honest with ourselves, there are times when we are frozen in resistance to God’s message of compassion.  There are times when we are called to help someone in pain, and we feel like we don’t know where to start.  There are times when we can speak a word of comfort, not realizing how thawing simple words can be.  Ananias was not one of the twelve, and we don’t have letters in the bible from him to the other teachers.  This is the only sermon he preached.  This is the only story we have of him.  A simple man, following a simple message, speaking in faith and hope and courage to someone he never dreamed he could influence.

On this Christian Family Sunday, when we honor the many people in our lives who have been sources of love and healing, may we find the courage to speak out to the Sauls in our families who are frozen in cognitive dissonance and hurting enough to recognize their need to change.  May we find the honesty to face our own stubborn blindness and know it persecutes not just family and friends, but even and especially our Holy God.  May we help guide those who are in pain to safe places where they can thaw and find healing.  And may we find God’s healing presence taking the scales from our eyes and bringing us back our sight and energy to flow like a mighty river in God’s plan to end conflict and hate for all.  May we continue the story of ‘The Way’, one step at a time, one story at a time, one thawing river at a time. Amen.