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| The Serpentine Cross/The Brazen Serpent sculpture on Mount Nebo, by Giovanni Fantoni |
So this was one of those weeks where I didn't do any of my Old Testament/New Testament Word & Image posts because they all happen to tie I perfectly with the Gospel reading. This week's readings in the liturgical cycle started out with the story of Moses and the bronze (or brazen) serpent. If you do a Google image search for bronze serpent, brazen serpent or Noah's snake sculpture, one image repeatedly comes up. It is a curious sculpture by the Italian artist Giovanni Fantoni on Mount Nebo in Jordan. The sculpture is entitled the "Serpentine Cross" and in an homage to truth in advertising the sculpture is indeed comprised of snakes that make a cruciform. Due to the cross structure the sculpture may not be widely accepted as appropriate Jewish art. Due to the creepy use of snakes it may not be universally palatable to all Christians as representing their faith either. Yet the first century Jewish rabbi that we call Christ would totally cosign on this image. Jesus would agree with this image because in effect created it. No, he didn't twist the metal that constructed the sculpture, but he created the mental and literary image that Giovanni Fantoni's sculpture illustrates. Jesus created this image in John 3:13-17 by unpacking the idea of Moses' original serpent sculpture in Numbers 21:4-9. Jesus not only claims that there is a parallel between Moses' story and his own story but rather that the bronze serpent of Moses' metalworking and the wooden cross of Christ's carpentry have the same source and effect. Jesus, Moses and Giovanni Fantoni all developed the same image. It was the image of one that was lifted up to the heavens so that many would receive Heaven's healing. It was a loaded image, one with a cultural history and power. Using loaded imagery is a powerful tool. They are pictures that already possess widely understood meaning and significance. Jesus' Jewish listeners (like the Pharisee Nicodemus) would have understood the story and symbolism behind the image of the bronze serpent as much as a Christians would understand the image of the cross and an American would understand the logo of McDonald's golden arches. When one uses a loaded image, he takes upon the historical meaning of that image and uses it to support his further conclusions. Jesus was using this powerful means to a powerful end. What was the end of the use of this means? Maybe a little more background story will help.
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| The Serpentine Cross/The Brazen Serpent sculpture, by Giovanni Fantoni |
Lifting Up
Numbers 21:4-9Then they journeyed from Mount Hor by the Way of the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom; and the soul of the people became very discouraged on the way. And the people spoke against God and against Moses: “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and our soul loathes this worthless bread.” So the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and many of the people of Israel died.
Therefore the people came to Moses, and said, “We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord and against you; pray to the Lord that He take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people.
Then the Lord said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a pole; and it shall be that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, shall live.” So Moses made a bronze serpent, and put it on a pole; and so it was, if a serpent had bitten anyone, when he looked at the bronze serpent, he lived.
The story of Moses' bronze serpent sculpture is a peculiar one. It induces all types of theological quandaries. The greatest of these is: when Moses created the bronze serpent, wasn't he (the great lawgiver) breaking the 2nd Commandment? If it was breaking the second commandment, then why did God ask him to do it? Since different denominations measure the enumeration of the 10 Commandments differently I should clarify what I mean by 2nd Commandment:
“You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; 5 you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me."
-Exodus 20:4-5Lutherans and Roman Catholics consider an extension of the first commandment, that told the Israelites "You shall have no other gods before Me.." I believe that all sides in this debate can agree that all of the Commandments work together, so their proper enumeration is only a nominal issue. The point of the commandments surrounding idolatry was not to outlaw sculpture but rather prohibit the worship of sculpture as a god, or as the God of Israel. After all, God opens the discussion up by stating "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before Me." As if to say, that He is God and He is not a statue. To prove this point God would later use a statue, not as a representation but as a tool. The fiery serpents that bit the Israelites were a judgment and when they cried out in repentance He had Moses sculpt a bronze serpent statue as the agent of their healing. The fiery serpents were God's tools of judgment and the bronze serpent was God's tools for restoration/healing. The point of this story was that judgment and mercy both came from the hand of God. Moses' bronze serpent was a means to the end, not the end. The end was God. The bronze serpent was not to be worshipped but rather lead the Israelites to repentance and worship of the true and invisible God. The lifting up of the brass serpent was the means by which God would send His Mercy and save the repentant from death
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| The Brazen Serpent sculpture, Giovanni Fantoni |
Breaking Down
2 Kings 18:1-6Now it came to pass in the third year of Hoshea the son of Elah, king of Israel, that Hezekiah the son of Ahaz, king of Judah, began to reign. He was twenty-five years old when he became king, and he reigned twenty-nine years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Abi the daughter of Zechariah. And he did what was right in the sight of the Lord, according to all that his father David had done.
He removed the high places and broke the sacred pillars, cut down the wooden image and broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made; for until those days the children of Israel burned incense to it, and called it Nehushtan. He trusted in the Lord God of Israel, so that after him was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor who were before him. For he held fast to the Lord; he did not depart from following Him, but kept His commandments, which the Lord had commanded Moses.
So here's the curveball: the story of the bronze serpent in the Old Testament does not end here. It appears that the Children of Israel kept the statue through the ages. Nothing wrong with that, as long as it served as a reminder of God's historic acts of grace. The problem lies in the fact that it became more than this to some Israelites. By the time of the Kings, the Israelites had not only housed the bronze serpent in God's temple.(lacking a good self storage facility) but they had given it a name, "Nehushtan." By all intents and purposes they seem to have started to worship this statue. as an idol god. When King Hezekiah came to power he embarked on a campaign to root out all forms of idolatry that had crept into Israelite worship. This included ones, like the bronze serpent, that had started as honest attempts to exercise legitimate faith (as seen in the Torah). So he destroyed the bronze serpent statue to eradicate Nehushtan centered idolatry. King Hezekiah can be seen as an i
conoclast. Iconoclasm is the destruction and advocacy of destruction of religious imagery in religious worship. Most religions have a period or faction of iconoclasm. Certain factions of the Protestant Reformation were famous for educing violent fervors of iconoclastic revolts.You may have observed that the older Christian denominations, such as the Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox churches, utilize imagery in their worship. However long before the Protestant Reformation and even before the schism of the Eastern and Western churches, Christianity had to come to terms with its understanding of the prohibition against idolatrous images and sculpture. The Eastern church (the predecessor of the Orthodox Church) became increasingly uncomfortable with what it perceived as the misuse of images in worship. Even today the Orthodox churches abstain from the use of sculptural imagery in worship (to avoid the carved/graven image prohibition). It uses two dimensional icons extensively in worship, but it does so with a certain understanding. In the ancient churches (Catholic and Orthodox) when one venerates an icon (as opposed to worship), one is not looking to the image, but rather through the image, to what the image represents. The power and significance of the image is the power of God that it (should) testify to. As I mentioned earlier, many of the Protestant Reformers (like John Calvin) objected to this, and even some Catholics and Orthodox can be wary that some Christians don't appreciate the subtle difference between honoring/remembering the agents that God used for his purposes and worshiping them. But I'd hate to miss the bigger picture here. I'd hate for any of us to feel like we are better than our Hindu or Buddhist neighbors because we do not worship a statue. There are many things that are not carved from wood or stone that we can treat as an idol. Often times they can be good things that God has used to bless us but we take them out of their proper context and focus our lives around them. These idols can be our jobs, our possessions, our relationships our nationalistic or racial identity... to steal a phrase from St. Paul, we "worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator." Just like with Moses' brazen serpent, the image can become the end, not a means to the end. So we are called to be like Hezekiah and destroy all of our idols. We are called to be like the Orthodox and not look to the image, but rather through the image, to what the image represents. The power and significance of the image is the power of God that it reminds us of.
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| The Brazen Serpent/ Serpentine Cross, Giovanni Fantoni |
Ascending
John 3:13-17...that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.
That is the background that Jesus builds upon in John 3:13-17. He takes the visual image of the story of Moses' bronze serpent being lifted up and combines it with the visual image of himself being lifted up upon the cross. When he compares the two images of "lifting up" he does so to back up their contrast: both were lifted up for the healing of the judged but only he ascended to Heaven. Likewise he, the one who ascended, came down from Heaven. This is where Jesus introduces another type of image. This image is not as much of a visual image (like Moses' bronze serpent) as much as a literary image. Jesus inserts a poetic device. Lately I've been noticing that Jesus may have been inserting poetry into his sermons. Hebrew poetry, like the Psalms, are constructed with various techniques. They don't necessarily rhymes (just like haikus don't). Sometimes the Psalms use alliteration and acrostic poetry, but most often they use couplets and rhyming ideas and images. You can see a clear "AB" structure used to compare and contrast. Also repetition is used fairly often to construct what we recognize as a chorus (or "hook" as the kids say). Couplets, rhyming images and repetition seems to be the type of poetry that Jesus used. You can see it the most in the repetition of the Beatitudes. However Jesus appears to have a similar yet less obvious structure in John 3:13-17. Jesus repeatedly refers to himself as the Son and then tells about his relation to those who follow him in a call and response sing-songy structure.
The "AB" structure in John 3:13-17 goes a little like this
A) Something was done to the Son
B) so that many might live
Here's how it is put into action in the verses:
A) even so must the Son of Man be lifted up
B) that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.
A) For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son
B) that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life
A) For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world
B) but that the world through Him might be saved.
So Jesus gives us three poetic verses explaining how he, the Son, was crucified (lifted up), offered as propitiation (gave) and incarnated (send) so that those who believe in him (whoever believes in Him) might fully live and live forever (have eternal life/have everlasting life) and that creation in general (the world) would be redeemed back to God (be saved). You may have noticed that Jesus pictures things in their reverse chronological order. You may also have noticed that he is also listing them in their level of cosmic significance. Jesus is unraveling the bigger picture for us here. The significance of what Jesus is and does is greater than we are the disciples can appreciate. Jesus didn't just come to die to save you from sin, though his dying does save you from sin. Jesus came to Earth long before he died. In coming (which includes his eventual atoning death) Jesus saves everything. The Incarnation makes way for the Atonement... or to put it another way, Christmas leads to Easter. Jesus death saves mankind from Sin and saves everything that God created (dogs, rabbits, rainbows, rocks) back to God. Images are used as a means to an end. Jesus used this literary image as a means to an end. The cross was Jesus' means to an end. Jesus' birth, life, ministry, miracles, mercy, death, resurrection, ascension and present intercession with God the Father on our behalf is a means to an end. The end is God being glorified in communion with all of His creation. Let's start preaching the whole story of Jesus.
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| The Brazen Serpent, Giovanni Fantoni |
Descending
Philippians 2:6-11who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
So what can we therefore conclude? That is the question that the Epistles of the New Testament ask. The Torah of the Old Testament introduces us to the Creator God, explains the Fall of Mankind and disunion of Creation, all before introducing us to the holiness of God's Law and judgment. The historical books of the Old Testament show the complications of Mankind's sinful state in spite of the grace of the Law, and foreshadows the need for the fullness of Grace in the Messiah. The Gospels testify of the Messiah's ministry of redemption. The Acts of the Apostles walks us through the beginning of the restoration of all things to God through the Holy Spirit's life in the Church. Then we are left with the Epistles that meet us in our point in history. It greets us as students of Salvation History and tutors us in the significance of all the things that we have learned thus far in Scripture. The Epistles instruct us on what Christ's sacrifice means for us in the here and now. In the Epistle to the Philippians, St. Paul concludes that the compelling image of Jesus on the cross wasn't just that he was lifted up like the bronze serpent for our spiritual healing. It wasn't just that he was the only one who has ascended to the Father. It was that though he was equal with God the Father he chose to descend to us. Even more so, the power of his descending was not just that he came down as a Man but rather that he took the form of a humble man. Greater than all of that is that he became the least of all,. He became a humble servant, a slave of God, that was sacrificed in a despicable manner so that we may no longer live in dishonor. Yet his shame became his glory. In his sacrifice God has redeemed the humble and saved the lost. Jesus came down from Heaven and descended to earth so that we might rise to new life. Jesus' descent was a means to God's own ends. So what was the end that justified the means? God is lifted up, or worshiped and glorified, when we worship the Son of Man who was lifted up, crucified. God is glorified by all of Creation when we mimic the humble self sacrificial love of Christ in our everyday, yet eternal, lives.
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| The Serpentine Cross sculpture (the Brazen Serpent Monument), Giovanni Fantoni |
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