“With their patience worn out by the journey…” This is how our first reading begins, describing the condition of the Israelites as they wander through the desert. The Israelites are actually in the final year of their forty-year journey and are nearing the border of the Promised Land. Often it’s the last stretch of the race that is the hardest. Often it’s in the final miles of a long road trip that the parents get the most complaints from the kids, “Are we there yet? Are we there yet?”
Such are the Israelites in our first reading. They have lived off the same food—manna and quail—for many years. Water has been scarce and the journey has been hard. They have been tried and tested at every turn. It’s easy for us to sympathize with them, and if it had been us instead of them, we probably would have complained too. “Why have you brought us up from Egypt to die in this desert, where there is no food or water? We are disgusted with this wretched food!”
The punishment that God visits upon His people—the seraph serpents, the venomous snakes—should give us a clue that the Israelites are in the same spiritual space that Adam and Eve were when they fell from grace. Both situations involve food and serpents. In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve were tempted disobey God by taking food that was prohibited. They could eat from every other tree in the Garden, but they wanted something else. Instead of being grateful for and content with how God was providing for them, they wanted to provide for themselves. They wanted to be the provider—they wanted to take the place of God.
The Israelites are in a very similar spiritual space. God has miraculously provided bread, quail, and water from the rock. But the Israelites are not just tired of this food on a natural level, they are also spiritually tired—tired of the way God was providing for them. In Egypt they could eat what they wanted; they didn’t need to depend on God. If they wanted something different, they only had to take it. This is what Adam and Eve did in the Garden: they wanted different food, and so they took it, they grasped it. The Israelites want to go back to Egypt. They want to live like gods, taking what they want when they want it.
Because they are in exactly the same spiritual space as Adam and Eve were, it’s no surprise that the serpent shows up again. God, in some sense, didn’t have to send the serpents as a punishment; the serpent, the evil one, was already there. The serpent is always there when ingratitude and disobedience toward God is present. Whenever we try to take the place of God, whenever we attempt to usurp His role as ultimate Lawgiver, Savior, and Provider, we end up joining teams with the serpent.
St. Paul reminds us, though, there is a third story in the bible involving food and a serpent. In our second reading, St. Paul speaks of Jesus “not regarding equality with God something to be grasped.” This language of grasping harkens back to the grasping of Adam and Eve for the forbidden fruit. But when Jesus was tempted by the devil to turn stones into bread, when He was tempted to usurp the role of his Heavenly Father as the ultimate Provider, Jesus passed the test. He did not take, He did not grasp, He did not usurp. Although He was fully divine, Jesus did not grasp at divinity; He accepted the limitations of His humanity. He did not take the side of the serpent, but let His Heavenly Father provide for Him.
This is why when the serpent bit Jesus, when Jesus died on the Cross, the wound was not finally fatal. The venom of Satan, the sting of death, had no lasting effect. In His obedience unto death, even death on a cross, Jesus procured the antidote. And not only that, but the serpent had to drink his own poison.
What does this mean for us? The temptation that we are faced with today is the same—the same as it was for Adam and Eve, the same as it was for the Israelites. It’s the same as it ever was. We want to take control. We want to provide for ourselves. We want to have what we want when we want it. We want to take the place of God, to usurp His role as the ultimate Lawgiver, Savior, and Provider. And when we do this—and we do this in so many ways—the serpents always show up.
When we fill our lives with constant activity and distractions, we are trying to provide for ourselves in a way that only God can. There is no substitute for the peace that comes from God. When we grasp at it, when we try to make our own separate peace, the serpents of restlessness and loneliness crop up. When we seek justice through vengeance, we are trying to provide for something that God says should be left up to Him. And when we pursue our vendettas, the serpents of resentment, hatred, and violence emerge. When we seek in technology the solution to all our problems, we grasp at divinity in a truly dangerous way. It’s no surprise, then, that the more technologically advanced we become, the more the serpents seem to multiply—serpents of ingratitude, selfishness, gluttony, greed, envy, vanity, and pride.
On this Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, let us be reminded that Jesus did not grasp, but allowed his hands to be nailed to a tree. What is something that I am grasping at in my life that I need to let God provide for? Maybe instead of grasping at peace through entertainment, I can sit with God in silence. Maybe instead of grasping at justice through vengeance, I can choose to forgive. Maybe instead of grasping at the latest technology, I can choose to live more simply. This might feel at times like having our hands nailed to a cross—like our freedom or potential is being restricted—but it’s the only way to keep the serpents at bay. Let God be the ultimate Provider. He’s much better at it than we are anyway. Amen.
