Sermon preached at St Nicholas Chislehurst: 1st March 2026: Second Sunday of Lent: Evensong Numbers 21:4-9; Luke 14:27-33
“And the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died.”
Has anyone here ever had a snakebite?
(By which I mean, the bite of a snake, not the alcoholic drink that forms the basis of many a University Fresher’s Week hazing ritual)
…I just want to check what the background experience of the room is… Because I’ve never had that happen to me (being bitten by a snake), so what I’m about to say follows from trusted, peer reviewed sources that are accessible in the public domain (ie, the internet).
Modern antivenoms are created by using small amounts of toxin to build up immunity in a host animal (horses, sheep, rabbits, or even llamas or camels) and then producing a hyperimmunised serum that can be given to humans.
It’s a well-established immunisation method (remember Edward Jenner?): You give a small dose that the body can cope with, and this in turn lets you develop immunity against the larger doses: Like those people who used to consume little bits of arsenic in order to build up a defence against poisoning.
Snakes themselves are naturally immune to their own venom (which makes evolutionary sense), and there have been recorded historical cases where snake-catchers have been observed inoculating themselves with small amounts of their snake’s venom, in order to provide some protection (maybe don’t try that one at home).
The snakebite itself, becomes the cure for snakebite.
The brass serpent on the pole is presented to the people of Israel as the antidote to the bite of the fiery serpents.
And they just have to look at it: They don’t need to inject or ingest or imbibe… Just looketh upon it to live.
In folklore, that’s called apotropaic magic: A charm or totem, that will turn away evil, protecting the people from forces ordinarily beyond their control: Witchmarks scratched on walls, amulets against the evil eye, horseshoes over doorways, that sort of thing…
For us cynical citizens of contemporary civilisation, that sort of thing might seem bizarre; superstitious; unscientific; quackery and snake-oil – and we’ll be no stranger to voices within the Church who will condemn such charms and amulets as occult and unchristian -even though we find such practices in Christian cultures throughout history: In the Middle Ages, lighting the candles blessed at Candlemas were believed to protect against storms – In the time of King James the 1st, placing small copy of the Lord’s Prayer inside your shoe was supposed to keep witches at bay.
How does it sit with us then to hear about the Nehushtan? The bronze image of a serpent raised as a totem raised to grant miraculous healing not only for the people of God, but instituted by God?
The image of the snake healing the snakebite: Homeopathic faith healing… but divinely prescribed…
What fiery serpents have come among us? What is biting us in the Wilderness? When we find ourselves made vulnerable, in our exiles and in our hungers – whatever forms they may take – what sinks its teeth into us, and what is killing us with its poison?
…The answers will be difference for all of us… There are a lot of “fiery serpents” in our World and they come in all sorts of shapes and sizes…
So what cure do we seek? What charms or amulets? What snake-oil are we taken in by?
“Take up your cross”, we are told – “as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life…”
Where do we even take that? Do we wear the image of Christ’s cross as a protective charm around our necks or hang it in our homes like a witchmark (as many do)? Do we talk, ad nauseum about the need to “come to the cross” without thought to what that means (as many do)? Do we expect that an intellectual belief in Christ’s Lordship will magically take away our problems (as many do – and they still have their problems…)?
As those serpents were a source of fear for the Israelites, so too the image of the cross once inflicted fear on those who beheld it: As sign of execution, imposed on an oppressed people by a dominating power.
The event of the Crucifixion, lifting Christ onto that Cross like the serpent lifted in the Wilderness, would take that image of death and make it an image of life: As the Serpent’s image heals the serpent’s bite, the device of death would give life to the whole Universe.
“Whosoever doth not bear his cross and come after me,” says that same man who died on it, “cannot be my disciple…” – Like a martial artist using their opponent’s wait against them, we take whatever the World is throwing at us, and we find ways of making it into an instrument of hope:
How often, when we look at our problems head on do we overcome, rise above, or even being reconciled with them?
How often when we refuse to look at them do we find ourselves despairing…?
In the grand cosmic picture, if the brass serpent may heal the snakebite, and the Cross may bring life to the Universe, then we have the hope to strengthen us into looking at our afflictions and overcoming them.
Fr. Edward 