Those Good Old Snakes [Lent 4B]
The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson Numbers 21:4-9 Those Good Old Snakes They watched with eyes wide open and mouths agape. It was like watching a man possessed, a wild man. He started with their shrines and their sacred pillars – those monuments to outside influences, built for foreign gods that had migrated into YHWH's country. He shattered them, smashed them, broke them into a thousand pieces; he was merciless. Eyes still glued to this royal deity hunter, they watched as their king, Hezekiah, entered now the Temple. But for what could he possibly be looking? This was the Temple; this was no local shrine, no seat of idolatry. Here was the earthly throne of YHWH. But he continued to stalk and so they continued to watch, to see what might happen next. And then he found it; the predator king found his prey. There in the Temple it stood: an image their infidelity and disrespect had made graven. Silently it stared back at him, frozen, eyes ever open. It had a nam...