9...SNAKES IN THE GRASS, THE REEDS, & ONE ON A POLE!

Let's follow that snake as it slithers away from Adam & Eve & God when He gives it a piece of His mind in GN 3. It's a great example of Biblical story-telling. This ‘snake motif’ also crops up elsewhere in Scripture. Here God is commenting on the fact that human beings do react to the presence of snakes near them. Spelling danger for both. The part the snake plays in the story of The Fall is also the story tellers’ response to feelings & questions human beings associate with snakes. Like, ‘Why are we afraid of snakes?’ or, ‘Why do snakes hurt us, or even kill us?’ The more possibilities in a story the richer & more fruitful that story can become for us. There's a lot more to our snake motif than meets the eye! So let’s take a look at some more connections.

Here in vv.14 & 15 we have what is often referred to as a 'glimmer of a Gospel’. A kind of prophecy in which the snake stands for the evil that will come upon the human race through failing, falling out with God, & also the fate that will befall the Son of God & Humanity, Jesus the Christ. The woman here starts out as Eve, but the motif extends to all women & their offspring, & then to represent Mary the Blessed who gives birth to Jesus. Jesus will be ‘struck on the heel’ by evil, represented by the snake, & dies. But in so doing He ‘bruises the head’ of the ‘snake’ of death in His resurrection.  

Jump to NUM 21: 4-9 & we come across a strange story of fiery (‘poisonous’ in some versions) snakes that threaten the Israelites as they make hard going of their continuing escape from Egypt. As they travel beside the Reed Sea (part of the Gulf of Aqaba, itself connected to the Red Sea) on their way to the Promised Land, the reedy nature of the terrain poses new hardships. It is infested by snakes! The Israelites are in fact travelling through an area anciently rich in copper deposits. Models of snakes made of copper or bronze have been dug up there. Put snakes & copper together & maybe Moses is copying what the locals do, making a snake of copper / bronze to ward off attacks from the real thing! In making the metal snake & setting it up on a pole for people to look up to Moses develops this from just a superstitious practice into a test of faith in YHWH. Emphasising the connection between human ills & God’s will for our healing. (If you ask, ‘Why does God tell Moses to make a copper snake in contradiction of the 2^nd Commandment He’s recently given him?’ that’s a good question. Whether we have a good answer is another matter!) A fascinating comment in 2K18:4 tells us the Israelites keep the snake, known as ‘Nehushtan’, until the reforming King Hezekiah orders its destruction hundreds of years later! 

Looking ahead, into the N.T. this time, we find the story of Moses & the fiery serpent burns deep in Jesus’ soul. We sometimes pass over JN 3: 14-15 in our haste to get to the much loved v.16. But to do this is to miss the vital connection Jesus Himself makes between the story of Moses & the snakes (NUM 21) & His own ‘being lifted up’ on the cross & the healing it will bring to those who ‘look up to Him’. Jesus Himself, the new Moses, also becomes a new 'snake' lifted up on the cross, for the healing (salvation) of those who look up to Him & believe! But that’s another story…. Next time: Where there’s Fire there’s Smoke

8…IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL…PART 2
(Based on GEN 3...For more, read there.)

In the cool of that evening, when YHWH comes walking in the garden looking for His friends Adam & Eve they're feeling so guilty about what they've done that instead of rushing out as usual to take God's hand & walk with Him, they actually hide from Him. Behind a tree. Maybe behind That Tree! YHWH calls out to them, "Adam, where are you? Eve, where are you?" Adam & Eve know deep down the game's up! They are found out! Shamefacedly they come out from behind their cover. Then they begin to make excuses. Their first excuse is they've suddenly realised they were naked & are ashamed to meet God looking like that. But YHWH pounces on what they say. "Mmm..." God says. "Who's been telling you you're naked?" Oh, I know! You've been eating fruit from That Tree I warned you not to touch, haven't you? From the Tree of the Knowledge of Good & Evil? That's why you're seeing yourselves so differently, isn't it? Seeing Me differently, too, no doubt! What on earth made you do it?" Now as well as leading them to tell whoppers, one of the other things the fruit from That Tree has done is make Adam & Eve cunning! Not very nice to each other any more. So Adam tries to pass the buck to Eve. He says to God, "She made me do it!" Now Adam would never have said that kind of thing about Eve before, but now things are different. When God turns to Eve, she blushes & doesn't know what to say, but just then she happens to catch sight of a snake slithering through the grass. If Adam can pass the buck, so can she. Quick as a flash she says to God, "That snake tricked me into doing it." Well! YHWH is flabbergasted! He knows things will be bad once they eat that fruit, but this bad? Just in case, God says some pretty harsh words to the snake that make it slither away as fast as it can, but God is so hurt by what Adam & Eve have done, so hurt He can't trust them now, He tells Adam & Eve they can't live in Eden any more. Life won't be so good & enjoyable, all fun & games any more. Because they've chosen to do what they want instead of what God wants, God knows they won't enjoy living there any more anyhow. So He sends them off to find somewhere else to live, though He knows they won't find things so easy. You know, God is really more upset than Adam & Eve are! Then, to try to stop others from making the same mistake & picking & eating forbidden fruit that makes people too big for their boots, God sets angels to guard the tree & protect others from coming to harm from it. It's been a sad day for Adam & Eve, & for God too. One of the consequences of their disobedience, so the story goes, is that human beings can't live for ever. Not in their earthly bodies, anyway. That, according to our oldest story-tellers is the answer to someone asking questions round the fire like, "Why do we always have to work so hard?" or "How is it people die?" Things will never be the same again! But that's another story... Next time: Snakes in the Grass…..

7...IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL..PART 1
[An imaginative reading based on GEN 3. For more, read there.]

By now we know human beings like stories. And keep telling them. Just as God does. That's no wonder, is it, seeing we're made in YHWH's image? (Reminder: YHWH is short for Yahweh, & means 'I AM WHO I AM', or, 'I AM BEING ITSELF'. [EX 3:14] It's God's 'name', just as Adam means 'from the earth', & Eve means 'living'.  Names & their meaning are important. Right from the beginning. We may sacrifice meaning for fashion today, but in the days we’re story-telling about, names mean something. But let's go on a bit further. People go on to tell more of what happens after YHWH tells Creation into being. Their earliest stories, still being told down the years in sheltering caves, round desert campfires, & then in more permanent houses, go on to tell what happens to these first representative & symbolic ancestors of ours. Up to now Adam & Eve haven't given much thought to wearing clothes. Of course we're imaginatively harking back to a time so soon after the first recognizably human beings have emerged on earth that they don't actually have any clothes! In the beginning they probably begin wear them for protection from weather, not for reasons of modesty - yet. So our ancient storytellers tell of God planting a Garden between the great rivers of the Middle East in the area of today’s Iran & Iraq & calling it 'Eden', which means 'a really nice place to enjoy'. God gives Eden to Adam & Eve to live in.

Imagine if we can God walking in these beautiful gardens with them in the cool of the evenings after a very hot day till one day something really bad happens to stop all that. You see, YHWH has set just one condition on Adam & Eve enjoying that garden with Him. He has planted a particular tree in it called the Tree of the Knowledge of Good & Evil. This tree represents things too much for Adam & Eve to understand yet. To bear yet. It represents, too, the difference between God & humans, or, if you like, the line drawn between God’s divinity & our humanity. This tree stands for things that could endanger Adam & Eve’s life with God & each other. Our lives, too! Still! YHWH says to them, "You can eat any other fruit in the garden except this one". God is so serious about this He says to them, "If you eat from this tree, it will lead to your death!" Death, they wonder. What’s this ‘death’? They soon find out! God knows blurring the line between humanity & divinity is very dangerous, & this tree represents that peril! But Adam & Eve still have some learning to do – the hard way!

One day, Adam & Eve are bored. So, as the story tells, when they don't think God is looking, & despite God warning them against it, they pick & eat fruit from this Tree of the Knowledge of Good & Evil. In the blink of an eye everything changes! They look at each other differently. They see each other for what they really are: people who break trust with God & one another. People who disobey God. They look at each other & don't like what they see any more. In fact, they can't bear the sight of each other anymore, so they pick some leaves, maybe from this very same tree, & stitch them together to make lap laps for themselves. To cover up their nakedness, &, symbolically, what they have done. But is that enough? Will it work? To be continued…

6…ANSWERS BEGIN TO TAKE SHAPE

(Continuing our imaginative reading of GEN 1& 2…Read more there.)

 "In the beginning..there is Someone called God. Somewhere beyond that vastness out there. Beyond our understanding, too. God decides to create a world. Actually, God decides to create a whole universe of worlds out of all that darkness up there. (Now we know enough to understand that darkness up there a lot better than people did long ago. We know that 'up there, out there' is what we call Space. A really good name for such Vastness with its gases swirling all around, its 'black holes' & so on & so forth. Space is really anything but empty!) So, God sets to work. And because God is God, God only has to say, "Let there be.." & whatever God wants to happen happens. Light happens. Then day, night, sky, our earth itself with its oceans & seas & rivers. God tells them, calls them all into being. It takes a long, long while the way we tell time. Billions & billions of years. Though quick as a wink in God's time. (PS 90:4 puts it: A thousand years in your sight are like yesterday….’) Plants & trees of every kind begin to appear all over the earth. Everything we can think of. And a whole lot more. Scientists tell us that, go back far enough, they all originate in the great waters. Still YHWH keeps telling things to happen, & they do. Sun & moon, galaxies, more & more planets & stars. One of those planets is this earth we live on. The people who first tell & hear this story say God makes everything there is out of that Chaos God finds 'up there'. Out even beyond that darkness we see when we look up at the night sky. And so God does in a way. One of the first things God does is bring some order out of all that chaos. He does this by making things happen according to certain rules. Makes everything work according to Laws He sets in place by telling them into the unfolding Great Story, just as He tells everything into being. And people from of old pass this on in their imaginative stories. In God's good time He calls into being life of every kind. In the waters, the skies, on the earth. Some things we still have trouble imagining!

Last but not least, God creates us. Human beings. The story-tellers call the first ones they can think of 'Adam' & 'Eve'. Adam means 'made from earth, dust, clay'. His very name tells us he's a representative figure. He stands for the earliest human being our ancestors can imagine back to. Adam's wife they name 'Eve', meaning 'life', for the same reason. Eve represents the earliest woman ancestor they can imagine. Some people have even gone so far as to imagine God creates us because He is lonely, & needs someone a bit like Himself to talk to, relate to, play with. That's a nice idea, but it is only an imagining. Mind you, the fact that Christians have come to believe God is Three Persons in One, has three ‘personae’ as it were, represents God having a life of God's own within Godself. Whoever tells this early part of the story says God created us in His Own Image. We are so like God people should be able to see through us to God. See God in us! That's a big responsibility to live up to! Sometimes we don't live up to being created in God's own image, as we'll find out when we hear what happens next! So, perhaps this is a good place to stop, like those early story tellers say God stops here too. As they take a break from all they must do it makes sense to them that God needs a break too. From all that telling things & us into being. A break for God & us to enjoy each other! Our story-tellers tell us God creates everything in Six Days. Six of God's days, maybe, but we know now it took more years than we can either count or dream of. But then, what’s a day or a billion years, to God? Next time we'll hear about a garden, & what happens there. But that's another story.....