Beware of Snakes in Desert----and the Family Car Trip
The Reverend Elizabeth C Knowlton
The Cathedral of St. Philip, Atlanta , GA
March 26, 2006 : 8:45 and 11:15 a.m.
Our Lenten journey continues. As I have thought about journey, I realize traveling from one place to another is always a transition. Whether we are starting a new job, going on vacation, or beginning a new friendship, we are in transition. The best and worse in us are usually present.
While many people say they enjoy traveling, often what we are saying is that we enjoy the destination. The process of arriving there can be quite a different thing. There are certainly exceptions to this. But, one only has to spend a few minutes in an airport to see that the journey to destination is not always smooth. We see tempers flaring between family members, exhaustion lined around the eyes of weary business travelers, overpriced greasy airport fare, and hurried purchases in newsstands. Where else would we pay close to three dollars for breath mints and not bat an eyelid?
Yes, getting from one place to another with grace and joy intact may be rather difficult for most of us.
More than even the strains of air travel, I would submit there is a modern crucible of journey that challenges us even more profoundly. Worthy perhaps of the same level of challenge as the Israelites wandering in the desert. What, you ask, could possibly result in that level of tension, griping, impatience, and out and out disobedience as that? I submit to you---- the family car trip.
Now some of you may actually have pleasant memories of long car trips with your family. If you do, I might have to question their frequency in your life. But, even if they were good trips, my guess is that at some point tempers would flare and doubts arise.
In my family, it never took long. Often it didn’t even take getting into the car. The mere act of loading the car could begin the process of sin and separation. Now I had a good childhood for the most part. My family was certainly a good family. We were trustworthy, responsible, serious, organized, and educated---but not fun.
Now when you look at going to college, these are all qualities that represent an inherent advantage. However, when you look at going on a long car trip, we were immediately at a disadvantage.
We would rise at an agreed upon time and all take our places. My Dad or Mom would assume the wheel, I’d be behind the driver, and my sister would be on the passenger side. At precise two-hour intervals my parents would switch driving roles. If it was a regular trip to the grandparents, we knew with one hundred percent certainty that we would be lunching at the Dutch Pantry in Breezewood , Pennsylvania before getting on the toll road.
My sister and I had agreed upon zones of presence with a narrow band of no-man’s land between us. We were expected to be quiet. There was a huge premium placed on not distracting the driver. Were our voices to rise above a very low murmur, we would hear the proverbial “Girls, stop being silly!”
This was never truer than when we drove through a large city. Between Maryland and my grandparents farm in Ohio there was an interval that we knew represented a critical transition between life and death. It would let us know whether we were going to arrive at the farm unscathed and relatively intact, or shaking and in need of a long run outside, regardless of the weather. We would know this transition was close when we would hear, “Ok girls, we are approaching Cleveland .”
Now when we were younger we didn’t always fully appreciate what this meant. Approaching Cleveland might seem relatively harmless to those of you who do not know the code. But, after many years, we knew this was not a time to say we were hungry, needed a bathroom break, complain about how bored we were, or start jousting in the back seat. It was a time of quiet prayer and intuitively gauging whether we were going to make it in one piece. Most of the time we did.
Given this description of car travel in the Clemmer clan, you would imagine that strict limits were placed on how often we would take such a challenge. I would certainly have argued we had a one-day limit. But somehow in my late elementary years, we decided to go and visit my uncle’s family in El Paso , Texas .
Now I can’t tell you how many days it actually took us to drive between Bethesda , Maryland and El Paso , Texas . What I can tell you, is that in my memory it was a journey in the wilderness of mythic proportions. It certainly felt like forty days if not forty years. We got up early, day after day. At night, we fell into our hotel beds in stony silence, exhausted and crabby.
Any affection I had for my sister had completely disappeared by the time we hit Dodge City . She had a tendency to get car sick, and as her seat-mate, I was tired of manning the aluminum turkey roaster on hand in case of emergencies. We endured picnics with yellow jackets and an endless series of stops at the Stuckey’s. While I appreciated their clean restrooms and the availability of a good pecan roll, after this trip if I had never seen a blue roof again, I would have been happy.
I started to think that my worst day in Bethesda couldn’t come anywhere near the best day in this station wagon. Any sense of promise from time with my favorite cousins faded, as I watched tumble weeds rolling along the highway with us.
El Paso , why were we going to El Paso ? As a family, any sense of togetherness had broken down and we began to turn on one another like the Lord of the Flies. I had no sense of gratitude toward my parents for this trip. They were the responsible parties and we all lashed out at one another. The journey that started out with expectation had fallen short. We were hopelessly separated from a vision of hope and joy.
Not unlike the Israelites in our passage from Numbers today. They have just secured an impressive victory over the Canaanites; and you can imagine they started out the day full of hope and promise. The end of their time in the wilderness was near. They were struggling with leadership transitions, but one can imagine an increase in their step as they ride the wave of victory. They rest assured of God’s provision. While the food hasn’t been great, it has sustained them and water has issued forth in the wilderness.
But as they march along, that hope and joyous expectation begins to fade. The heat is beating down on them and they are tired of looking at the same people. As their feet tire, they start rubbing each other the wrong way. The toddlers are overdue for their naps and the parents have just about had it. So, their impatience flares. They start to wonder why they are going where they are going. Why should they be grateful for this dreadful gritty food? Can you even call it food when it falls out of the sky every morning and you gather it up in a basket?
Their sense of community as they continue to walk gradually becomes poisoned. Memories of God’s provision fade. Things do not get better. As they murmur and complain, they start to dream of Egypt . Was it really so bad? At least there were melons. Why are they following this God anyway? And who is Moses? Surely they could have done better. As this state of separation continues, they are beset by poisonous snakes.
But they were poisoned before the actual biting occurs. The physical wounding raises the crisis level, but the problems were there long before they saw the first snake. They are wounded, some of them die. And the only grace in the midst of this tragedy is they begin to recall who they are. In their crisis and pain, they remember they are God’s people--- that need God and Moses.
They look back and realize that in the simple, but human, act of losing patience and griping, they have become separated from God and their community. So they say “We have sinned… [Moses], pray to the Lord to take away the serpents from us.”
That moment of recognition, is why this is such a great Lenten text. We are now entering the last phase of this year’s Lenten journey. We have tried to remind ourselves of where we find our Christian identity. And in this process we may have become aware of our areas of separation and disconnection. This is what we call sin.
If we think about sin in that way, we look beyond our individual mistakes. We also look to the structures of our relationships and the community. Am I in a relationship of joy and gratitude with God and those who make up the communities of my life? Or have I succumbed to the poison of biting sarcasm, isolation, and self-centeredness? It is this kind of reflection that can create a holy Lent.
This level of reflection also contains a subtle danger. As we become aware of our sin, our separation, we can zealously decide to excise all signs of it from ourselves. We beg God to take away the serpents in ourselves, in our relationships, and in our community. If we can just find all of them and exterminate them, then we will have perfection. Maybe the Garden of Eden will be ours again.
But will it? The other thing I love about this text is God’s response to the Israelites. They have begged to have the serpents removed. So the response they get must have seemed odd. Moses makes a serpent of bronze and hoists it up on a stick. Tells them and all of us to look at it, and be healed.
What? Since when did idolatry come back in vogue? Isn’t that prohibited somewhere in the Ten Commandments? Has Moses been out in the sun too long? We don’t want to look at a snake ever again. We just want them gone. If we survive this journey we’re never going to walk in the desert or get in a car again. We just want out.
But, the problem is we can only escape for a while. If we refuse to name our separation and look it right in the face, the snakes will just find new venues. They will adapt. They won’t even look like snakes and we’ll fall into the same plight again. Gradually our sense of connection fades. We think we’ll remember how we’ve been sustained in the past, how the snakes were removed or the Red Sea parted. But, before you know it we’re complaining about the manna again. We’re back in the car, griping and crabby.
Which is how it goes---our humanity is always with us. However, our chances for reconciliation and healing are always better when we name the snakes. When we take the time to acknowledge our pain and apologize for our own contribution to the separation. When we look honestly at what we need to hoist up on a pole and look at. Because even when we’re off course and griping, God remains faithful. We might forget who we are, but God has the better memory. God’s side of the relationship is intact and when we name the distance, we’ve taken the first step back towards God. The same God we trust to answer our prayers. As we need them answered, rather than only giving us what we think we need.
By naming our snakes, we have a chance for healing. We might rather they go away or never have been around in the first place. But they are there and will remain in our lives. We can however be grateful and throw our trust upon the God that will give us the grace to look at them and find healing.
Amen
Comments? Contact Beth Knowlton at: BKnowlton@stphilipscathedral.org