The Snake Crusher
Hello! I hope you’re doing well as fall feels like it is fast approaching with this cooler weather. And speaking of weather, before we get into this week’s reflection, I know a storm seems to be approaching this weekend. Stay tuned as we get closer, but as it looks now, we’ll probably have to delay our Fall (Not-so-Kick-Off) Picnic again. If we do, it looks like we’ll move it to Sunday, Oct. 18 – but like I said – stay tuned for more.
Also, quick reminder: our Wednesday evening bible study is starting back up tonight at 7PM in the Kraft Room! Now on to the reflection…
This past Sunday, we opened our new series of series on the Stories that Gave Us Jesus, called “Beginnings” – looking at stories from the beginning of the bible (Genesis). We looked at Genesis 1 – how humans are made “in the image of God”. We explored how that is not so much a ‘property’ or ‘characteristic’ we have, as much as it is a calling, a job – a vocation.
The human vocation is, essentially, to ‘image’ God towards the world: to reflect and represent God as we implement God’s life-giving purposes.
As God did in creation, it’s to cultivate life.
This is what the human vocation is and, it’s what we’ve all failed to do: from Adam and Eve, to Cain, to Noah, to Abraham, to Jacob, to Moses, to David, to Solomon, to you and me, and everyone in between (well, almost everyone). In the broadest brush stroke available, it is why the world is as broken as it is. Rather than reflecting and implementing God’s life-giving purposes, we’ve reflected and implemented the serpent’s life-taking/death-dealing purposes instead. That’s the story of Adam (Human) and Eve (Being). It’s the story of human life.
But one BIG detail was left out of Sunday’s message (hey, you can’t say it all!). In the aftermath of the serpent’s deception of Adam and Eve, God curses the serpent for what he’s done. Here’s part of that curse:
“I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will strike your head,
and you will strike his heel.”
Genesis 3:15
God curses the serpent, saying that he’ll put enmity (strife, conflict, confrontation) between the serpent and the woman, and more specifically, between the offspring (seed) of the serpent and her seed. What the seed of the serpent points to is a little bit mysterious (as much biblical spiritual/evil talk tends to be), but it seems like the curse is on the serpent and the evil force that comes out of the serpent (but is still identifiable with the serpent since it is “your head” and “you” who will be struck).
But what the seed of the woman is seems clear: a future human being (who happens to be a man, hence the “he” and “his”). This story sets up an ongoing battle between the force of evil (the serpent) and the offspring of the woman (a man) who will eventually step on and crush the head of the serpent. What the beginning of the bible (well, from chapter 3 and onward) puts in motion then, is the expectation, longing for, and waiting for a human being who can actually do battle with the serpent – and prevail.
On Sunday, I said that the beginning of the bible causes us to wait for a human being who actually takes hold of the human vocation, and this is another way of saying the same thing. The Old Testament scriptures look forward to a day when one would come, born of a woman, and crush the head of the snake.
The New Testament understands Jesus as that one.
Jesus, the snake crusher.
May we, as his people, live under the confidence that the power the serpent has over us is never as real as the power Jesus has over it.
May we, as his people, live to follow Jesus in fulfilling our human vocation and crushing the head of the serpent when we have opportunity.
May we, as his people, be about God’s life-giving purposes rather than the serpent’s life-denying efforts.
May we, as his people, reflect and represent Jesus in this way.