This is another one of those passages that could take you in several different directions.

After reading the Scriptures through a few times, I usually read some commentaries – to discover what other people see in a passage. This time, they ran the gamut. Some were disturbed by the harshness of God’s response to the Israelites. Others believed that raising an image of a snake on a staff above the people smacked of idolatry and questioned why Moses would be instructed to do so. Still others spoke of the matter of trust. While all of these seemed interesting to pursue, especially the last one, I found myself thinking about relationships - our relationship with God, our relationship with one another.

After all, I reasoned, the Lenten season is about relationships. That other intense time in the church year – Advent/Christmas season – is a time of remembering relationship but then, it is a joyous, celebratory time. Lent urges us to ponder another side of relationship – the darker side of betrayal, forgetting, turning away and rejection.

Lent is the one time of the year that encourages sober reflection on the power of relationship and our actions and obligations as a party to relationship.

Now you may think that poisonous snakes and a miraculous cure in the desert require more than a bit of a stretch to connect to relationship, but, for the next few moments, let’s try to make that connection.

The Israelites were in relationship with God. Indeed, they were known as God’s chosen people. But that designation did not guarantee them special privilege in life. Indeed, much was expected of them – and time and time again, the failed in their duty.

As we enter our story, God has just given them a great victory over the Canaanites. We meet them once more on their way to the Promised Land, traveling in the wilderness of Sinai. Having been refused passage through the land of the Edomites, they are making their way around it by the Red Sea.

It’s not long before the complaints start. Why has Moses brought them into the desert to die? There is no water. They "detest" their food. They have become a bunch on ungrateful whiners. As my grandmother would have said, "They’re never satisfied, no matter what you do!"

While a certain amount of complaining might be expected, they seem to have forgotten god’s faithfulness to them in the past. They have trouble remembering that God has rescued them from slavery in Egypt and that they are indeed on their way to the Promised Land.

This is one place where we relate easily to those Israelites. Many of us have acted in a similar way at times. At the first sign of difficulty or trouble, we forget all the good things that have happened to us. We often forget to turn to God, except to question or to blame. We forget that God has seen us through tough times before.

Why is that? Is our faith too weak? Is it just a natural human foible? Do we suffer from collective long-term memory loss? Do we, perhaps, deep down believe we deserve suffering?

Have we developed unrealistic expectations of God?

I wonder…………..

Consider of those Israelites. They believed in an omnipotent God – a God who either causes or allows to happen all the tragedy and suffering in the world.

The Lord had created and still controlled the natural forces – that had been clearly demonstrated to them many times -- the Plagues in Egypt, the parting of the Red Sea, Lot’s wife and the pillar of salt. So, when they were overrun by poisonous snakes and people started dying, the Israelites immediately blamed God for their plight. The snakes must be God’s doing. And, if God was sending this kind of punishment against them, they must be guilty of some crime worthy of punishment.

A teenager falls in with the wrong crowd and runs afoul of the Police or school authorities and the parent asks: "What did I do wrong in raising this child?"

Dana Reeve, a non-smoker, famous for her dedication and support of her disabled husband, Christopher Reeve, dies of lung cancer leaving their young son orphaned and people ask, "Why her? When has she ever done anything but good? Why did God allow this to happen?"

Over and over again, when tragedy strikes, when disaster threatens or when lives fall apart, the questions are often the same:

Why me?

What did I do wrong?

Why is God doing this to me?

And each time we ask these questions, we place a barrier between ourselves and God.

In all the thousands of years that have passed since Moses led the Israelites out of Egyptian captivity into the wilderness in search of the Promised Land, we have not learned as much as we might think we have.

Since the day Adam and Eve first walked this earth, God has desired a relationship with us. God has, time and time again, rescued people from the brink of disaster. God has given victory over the enemy to the Israelites. God has sent prophets to call them back, to remind them of their covenant from which they have strayed. It is not for lack of trying on God’s part that the Israelites find themselves once more estranged from God.

And their complaints and bitterness turn to blame.

The Bible says "The Lord sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died."

Is this true? I don’t know. Maybe God did get angry and send the snakes. Maybe God felt much as Jesus did when he saw the merchants and moneychangers in the Temple. OR maybe, the Israelites had stumbled into a part of the desert where the snakes naturally lived. It is known that poisonous snakes lived in the Negeb, so perhaps they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Was God punishing them? I don’t know. What I do know is that the God I worship is the God Jesus told us about – a God so filled with love for us that he gave us a Son, a Son who gave up his earthly life for us. The God I worship is a God seeking relationship with each one of us. The God I worship is a God of Love, not a God of punishment and revenge.

Several years ago, Rabbi Harold Kushner wrote a wonderful book entitled, "When Bad Things Happen to Good People" I’m sure many of you are familiar with this book. It encourages a theology that sees God, not as the cause of tragedy but as a loving presence and source of support in the face of pain and tragedy.

That’s my God. That’s the God who gave Moses a means to save his people once more – who instructed him to make an image of a snake and set it on a pole raised high so that all who looked upon it would be cured of the snakes’ poisonous venom.

That doesn’t sound like a punishing God. That sounds more to me like a God of love and compassion who once more reached out to help God’s people, despite their complaint and their waywardness.

Twenty years ago, Robert Munsch wrote a children’s book about love and relationships. I’m sure you’ve all red "Love You Forever" to your children and/or grandchildren many, many times. It’s a story no one ever seems to tire of hearing.

This little book is about evolving relationships. It begins with a young mother crooning to her new baby:

I’ll love you forever,

I’ll like you for always.

As long as I’m living

my baby you’ll be.

We follow that baby through infancy, childhood, the teen years, and into adulthood. And no matter what that boy does, not matter how difficult he becomes at times, the love never ends. Time and time again, the mother repeats her love chant. But just and the boy grew and aged, so did the mother and, as inevitably happens, the roles reverse and it is the grown man who cradles his aged mother and sings to her the song he’s heard all his life. And then he goes home, cradles his infant daughter and sings it to her.

Through all the ages, through all the rebellious turning away, through all the rejection and anger, God continue to guide and comfort us. And we must do the same for one another.

Read this Scripture again and as the snake is raised on the staff to save God’s people from destruction, imagine that from the heavens you can hear these gentle and soft words:

I’ll love you forever,

I’ll like you for always.

As long as I’m living

my baby you’ll be.

Amen