Snake Oil

If you were in church on Sunday, you would have heard me talk about snakes.  As I did.  And Snakes, well, we don't care for them normally.  Again, as I mentioned on Sunday, the official scientific term for fear of snakes is Ophidophobia, and it makes a lot of sense.  There's a good chance that none of you reading this today are herpetologists, and so you don't know much about snakes.  All you know about snakes is that they're all pointy at one end, and some of them can kill you with a bite.  And that's all you need to know.

But the other thing about them is that they are solidly unnerving.  Snakes, having no arms or legs, are amazingly unnerving to see moving around.  Whether swimming, sidewinding, or just sliding around, snakes are completely and wonderfully off-putting.  They're a terrifying thing to see moving around.

Now, no matter who you are, and how herpetologically inclined you may be, the movement of snakes is, well, it's a thing.  We don't like it.  It's not nice to see, and unlike almost everything else we know,with no legs, feet or limbs of any kind, we can't relate.

This is part of the general feeling of malaise with snakes, that there is something just sort of off with them.  They're just sort of off.  Almost alien.

From their forked tongues, to their lack of ears, to their cobra hoods, to their venom, to their swallowing food whole, it's as close as you can possibly imagine to something completely alien in this world.  And the serpent in the scriptures is no different, not really.

The thing about the arrival of the serpent in the Old Testament is that, well, it is something we need to consider, is that it's an encounter with something wholly alien.  The presence of the serpent in the Old Testament has been something of a bugbear for us Christians, as people have a bit of a larff at the notion of a talking snake.  'How silly,' they all say, 'to think of a talking animal.  Such nonsense!'  And yes, if we were talking about a snake, it would be rather silly.  But we aren't talking about just a snake here.

Honestly, this story turns around a couple of issues, and they're both things that we Christians get in trouble for these days - Talking animals and the devil.  The devil, he's fallen out of vogue these days.  He used to be the big boss with the hot sauce for quite a while.  For quite a period of human history, the devil has been an ever present issue, hovering in the background
of what we've been doing.  And it's worth noting that for a creature who isn't described in great detail in the Bible, we sure all know what he looks like, don't we?  Horns, pointy tail, beard, cloven hooves, all that.  And that figure has become largely a figure of fun, as kind of silly, and kind of forgettable.  And because that figure has overtaken the authentic Satan from the scriptures, well, it's been great for Satan.  He's been so thoroughly emasculated, that it is difficult to even talk about him.  We can't even have the chat, because by the time we bring him up, he's been laughed out of the room.  And that's perfect for him.  He's happy for you to laugh yourself all the way into his clutches.  In fact, for the devil, this is a way better strategy than his strategy of possession, of causing fear, of instilling paranoia, or anything else like that.  His current strategy of laying low, of letting us feel as though he either never existed, or if he did, was a bumbling goofball, that strategy works great, because then we're way less likely to recognize him when he shows up.

If you want to know what happened, and not that this is the only thing that happened, but it's part of it, our Biblical literacy dropped.  It dropped way down.  We knew far far less about the contents of the scriptures than we otherwise wanted to.  And we replaced that, by and large, with shorthand for everything.  We figured that Jesus looks like this, and Satan looks like this.

This is how we view the devil and Jesus.  All horns and red flesh on one side, and nice trimmed beard and white skin on the other side.  But there's a point behind our faith being essentially entirely verbal.  There's a point behind the injunction against the making of graven images to be worshiped.  There's a point behind the essence and core of the Scriptures being a verbal, written experience, and it goes back to the point that was made in the Transfiguration, which strangely enough, was last Sunday.

"This is my son, in whom I am well pleased" said the voice from the cloud "listen to him."

This point is so small, and yet is so frequently lost.  In our world in which we like looking at things, in this world of on demand video on a constant basis, in a world of perpetual youtube on our smartphones, it's no wonder that we're not much good at listening, and we're better at looking.  And our desire to look as a shorthand for things is hurting our spiritual growth.  We do waaaaaaay more looking than we do listening, and in doing so, we miss a lot.  The scriptures talk about this, about our words fairly significantly, partially in Matthew 7.

Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but 

inwardly are ravenous wolves.  You will recognize

them by their fruits.  Are grapes gathered from thornbushes,

or figs from thistles?  So every healthy tree bears good fruit,

but the diseased tree bears bad fruit.  A healthy tree cannot 

bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every

tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 

Thus you will recognize them by their fruits.

Matthew 7:15-20.

What's the deal?  You'll be able to recognize them, and everyone else, by their words, by their fruits. There is an awful lot of listening that has to go on if you're to recognize the devil at work in the world.  He's not going to show up in front of you in red jammies, he's not going to have cloven hooves, he's not going to have a literal forked tongue, he's not going to be so completely obvious.  Except if you listen to him.   

Satan is here to obstruct, to oppose, to confound, to accuse.  And if he is going to tempt you, as he attempted to do with Jesus, it's not going to be by showing up in front of you stamping his cloven hooves and muttering past his beard.  It's going to be by whispering into your ear what you want to do, and what you know you ought not to do.

So, yes, ultimately, as usual, it comes down to listening, as so much does. The Lord of Hosts probably wasn't a good looking white guy with a trimmed beard.  But guess what?  You'll know who he is by listening to him too.  The whole Bible is predicated on the notion that God speaks, and we listen.  We identify the good and the bad, the right and the wrong, by listening, by reading, by waiting and by hearing.

Lent, as I've said like ten hundred times, is a matter of slowing down.  All our sacrifices we make, all our change in lifestyle, in diet, in attitude, ought to come with a heightened sense of hearing.  Once you remove the clutter and detritus, you can listen all the more closely to what God has to say to you, and you can know him through his words.  Lent is a time to slow down, to hear, to appreciate the God you worship.  Be still, and know that he is God.  Find him in the quiet, contemplative stillness.  Don't look for him in a beard and halo, look for him in the words of his scriptures, in the Lord's Supper, and where two or three of you are gathered together.  Listen to him, especially in this time.  As you slow down and listen to the voices, think twice about everything you hear. Be quick to listen and slow to speak.  Muse through each and every single one of the voices that comes up, and know that you will know them by their fruits.  

PJ