Sermon 3.1.26 Violent Games: What if We're the Army of Snakes?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9GCFGO0Hqo

Good Morning St. Andrew’s,

I have to say that I am a little disturbed this morning.

And even more so when I hear, “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.”

I’m disturbed because I realize how often we fall short of being a great nation.

The show Westworld has a tagline that comes to mind this morning, which says, “these violent games have violent ends.”

The premise of the show is that humans have created sentient AI-like robots of synthetic flesh and blood, who are controlled by a computer program that will not let them harm humans.

For a hefty fee, you can enter into an old western world populated by these machines and do whatever your violent heart desires with no consequences.

That is, until there are consequences, because there are always consequences for violence.

The human characters move from being the protagonists of their own western hero narratives to those hunted by the demons they have unleashed through the violence that they brought.

Like snakes who pollute the land with their venom, rather than bringing healing balm from their anti-venom, they infect what is meant to be a utopia with human sin.

And, “these violent games have violent ends.”

We wake this morning on the day after our government, along with the government of Israel, bombed a sovereign nation and performed an extrajudicial killing of its leaders.

Eight weeks after a military incursion into the sovereign territory of Venezuela to illegally capture its disputed president, Nicolas Maduro.

In both cases, it appears that there have been people who have celebrated a release from captivity under the oppressive rule of dictators, who target their own people and silence their voices.

But also, there are people who are devastated this morning by the shattering of peace in their communities and uncertain of what comes next.

Whereas a few decades ago – the last time the United States decided to enter into a series of wars for regime changes on the basis of lies told to the American people – this time, it appears that our government doesn’t even have the decency to lie to us before putting our military in danger.

Whereas a few decades ago, it appeared that we were going to war for oil, it appears that now we are going to war for ego, one man’s sense that he can shape the world the way he wants without any constitutional or international guardrails.

Whereas a few decades ago, there was a coalition of dozens of countries who got into the quagmire of regime change with us, yesterday there were two.

Now, before I get political from the pulpit, let me dial it back and say:

As Christians, we should be very uncomfortable any time someone says that a targeted act of murder is necessary in order to achieve stability or safety.

While we do not yet know what the consequences of this weekend’s military actions will be,

Whether they are good or bad from the perspective of the flesh cannot take away the overwhelming truth that they will be bad for the spirit.

And this is where I want to direct my spirit this morning: toward the gospel’s principle that what is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the spirit is spirit.

Queen Lili’uokalani, the last reigning monarch of the Hawaiian islands, a leader who was also deposed by the U.S. military all the way back in 1893, the year before this church was founded, said this shortly before she passed away in 1917:

“To gain the Kingdom of Heaven is to hear what is not said, to see what cannot be seen, and to know the unknowable – that is Aloha. All things in this world are two; in heaven there is but One.”

“All things in this world are two; in heaven there is but One.”

I can’t say whether the Queen had this teaching from Jesus to Nicodemus in mind when she wrote these words, but clearly she understood what Nicodemus could not;

What many of us often cannot.

We get so wrapped up in the flesh of things, that the spirit escapes us.

And if you get wrapped up in the flesh of things, there is a danger that you may become the snake that you fear.

In ancient cultures, snakes were both revered and feared.

In the gospel today, Jesus tells us that he will be like the snake that Moses lifted up in the desert, so that “whoever believes in Him will have eternal life.”

There was an ancient motif that was used in many cultures about an army or group of people being attacked by snakes in a land of privation.

Usually, it was an army.

This may be seen in the Mahabharata, the ancient epic poem from India, in which one of the heroes Takshaka, the snake king, gets into an almost endless battle of reprisals and revenge against a human king Arjuna.

In ancient Greece there were at least two versions of the story of an army being attacked by venomous snakes after escaping a battle against human foes.

Diodorus Siculus, the Greek historian tells the story.

The Roman poet, Lucan, picked up this motif and uses it to tell of the escape of the Roman Senator Cato from the civil war defeat against Caesar.

For 100 horrific lines of poetry, almost all of Cato’s army that had survived the earlier battle against human enemies was wiped out by the serpentine host.

In all of these stories, the end of the story is one of escape, but only into another problem.

The Indian tale leads to almost endless war.

The Greek tale leads to the general of the snake-bitten army being double crossed and killed by his own allies.

The Roman tale ends with Cato taking his own life as a type of Roman Stoic hero.

Only in the case of Moses do things turn out differently.

Starting from a similar place, Moses and his host of Hebrew pilgrims have just come from a battle against the Canaanites in Numbers 21, when they begin to complain that God isn’t giving them food and water.

The snakes attack as a divine punishment.

Moses asks for a miracle, to which God replies and tells him to hold up his staff (very similar to what he did at the Red Sea), only this time there is bronze serpent on his staff.

This image of serpent and staff, you know, it is one of the symbols we still use for medicine today: the Rod of Asclepius.

The healing rather than the hurting snake.

Snake as provider of anti-venom rather than poisonous killer.

Through this symbol, immediately, all who look on the staff are healed from the injuries to their flesh.

The Wilderness story ends with the people eventually making it to the promised land; no endless war, no defeated general.

The author of the story must have known these other motifs, and cleverly, that author uses that ancient story to show how our God is different, a saving God rather than one who lets his people die in the Wilderness:

A God who can save us from calamities of the flesh, through the power of His magical healing.

This is the image that Jesus is using, when he tells us that he will be like the snake lifted up.

Only, Jesus also has a twist on the tale.

Whereas Moses seems to have healed the flesh through a type of ancient magic:

Jesus’ healing is equated to the spirit.

Jesus doesn’t just heal the snake bites of an army in peril, so that they can keep marching,

He heals us from the original snake bite, the temptation and ego that led Adam and Eve to eat from the tree in our scriptural lore.

Jesus offers us eternal life, if we are able to tell the difference between what is of the flesh and what is of the spirit.

In this world, we are faced with the fact that, “all things in the world are two.”

We experience the world primarily through our flesh and blood, but we know that we also have a spiritual nature.

Too often in this world, as we have seen this weekend, all calculations are made as if there is only this world, only the flesh.

We think that it is the mountain top that brings us wholeness, rather than the experience of God in liminal spaces.

We think that it is bread and wine shared with friends, so that we may eat drink and be merry, which sustains us, rather than the indwelling spirit of our savior healing our brokenness.

We think that safety can only be achieved by military might and destruction of enemies, rather than working for a peace that passes all understanding.

To focus on the flesh is death.

To focus on the spirit is to remember that in the Kingdom of Heaven, “all things are but One,” and that one thing is the Spirit of God, who is begging you to know which way the wind blows,

From which direction the Spirit comes.

The story of snakes attacking armies is ultimately a story about how the beginning of violence does not end when the first battle is over.

There is a cascading effect that violence has.

We see it every day in our streets.

We saw it again just 9 hours ago, when 9 people were sent to the hospital when gunfire erupted in a nightclub in Cincinnati’s East End.

Lord, have mercy, and thank you for the true miracle that none of those shot have died.

When we live according the flesh and the wisdom of this world, violence always comes as the easiest and cheapest answer,

But the true costs of violence are not measured by tonnage of explosive charges on missile heads,

It is measured by the amount of venom that enters into our blood, where the blood of Christ ought to reside.

Dear People of God, in a land, where fellow citizens revel to wave a flag with a snake on it that says, “Don’t tread on me,”

I ask you, how do we know that we are not the army of snakes?

When we follow the wisdom that says that removing one person from power will save us,

How do we know that we are not Pontius Pilate and the authorities of the Sanhedrin who said the same thing about Jesus?

“These violent games have violent ends.”

While many may celebrate today the removal of tyrants from thrones of earthly power,

I mourn and bewail in the ashes of Lent the senseless violence and venom of the curse that brings more curse.

“These violent games have violent ends.”

Today, in the midst of the turmoil, is the time to acclaim that we were not meant to be the venomous snake army, but those who look to Jesus as the healer of our snake-bitten souls.

Therefore, I renew my commitment to turn to Jesus, to gaze upon his saving grace, his promise of redemption and everlasting life.

I turn toward the peace of the Spirit, when the violence of the flesh seems like a reasonable option.

I turn to Jesus, the healing snake lifted up for my spiritual healing, so that I may not become a venomous snake in this world, wedded to contaminated ground, to parched soil with no water, where nothing can grow.

I bid you also to turn your face toward that cross of victory that overcomes the sin that clings so close.

I turn to Jesus in daily prayer to interrupt my agenda with his own, so that I can be reborn through the Spirit and through faith.

I bid you also to re-commit yourself to daily prayer, that principal act of spiritual life that brings living water to the surface of dry and arid wilderness places.

After church today, I will be sending out a prayer resource that can help you, if you don’t have a prayer resource already.

And I turn to Jesus at the communion table, whose victory was not a victory of flesh, but a victory of spirt that saved the flesh from itself.

I bid you also to come to the table today, not trusting in the substance of bread and wine alone, but in the essence of Spirit that is Christ’ body and blood.

We live in a world that continually proves to us that “violent games have violent ends.”

At times like these, it is our duty as Christians - and our only hope - to believe that the Spirit has the final say;

That the world may be two, but that in the Kingdom of Heaven there is but One:

A place where violence will no more be heard in your lands,

A place where not one sheep will be lost.

A place where we will see God face to face.

Seek that Oneness with the Spirit.

Seek that peace that passes all understanding.

Seek and you shall find.

Remember that Lent always ends with Easter Joy, even when it seems so far away.

Let the peace that we pray for the world to have, be found in your heart today.

And may that peace be always with you.

Amen.