The People Became Impatient on the Way

Numbers 21:4-9
First Reading for the Fourth Sunday of Lent (Year B)

Patience is difficult. If there is something that we do not like or with which we are not comfortable, we don’t usually want to stick with it. I get that. It makes complete sense. Yet just because we want something to be over doesn’t mean that it’s over. Just because it becomes more than we want to deal with or we lose interest that doesn’t mean we’re done with it or it’s done with us.

The people following Moses became impatient on the way. They were witnesses to their misery in Egypt and to the incredible acts of God that rescued them. But the wilderness was difficult. They had what they needed but they were uncomfortable. They had food, but it wasn’t good enough food. “Why did you bring us out here to die?” they asked. They weren’t going to die, but things got tough and it felt like they were.

According to Numbers, God sent poisonous snakes to set the people straight. Did God do this? The reader can judge for themselves. I have a hard time believing God does something like this. Partly because we seem to do a pretty good job inviting the poisonous snakes to the party ourselves. Our impatience clouds our judgment and then it bites us in the butt.

A year ago, our family was in Chicago for spring break and the whole country began to shut down. We landed, checked into our hotel, and then found out that nearly everything was closing down at 5 PM and they didn’t know when it would open back up. It has been a tough year. It has been one of sacrifice. It has been a wilderness experience for many. We are close to seeing a turn, but I wonder if we might have seen a turn if people had not become impatient along the way. If they had not decided that wearing a mask was too difficult or that having their normal life interrupted was not acceptable. Driving through a crowded and often maskless Nashville tonight, I wonder if impatience might come back to bite us in a moment when things seem to be turning a corner.

A year ago, Breonna Taylor was killed in her own home. Her death and the tragic death of other black women and men in the spring led to a summer of hashtags, marches, and reckonings concerning this nation’s history with race. It felt like something might happen, but I think a lot of us in the white community (myself included) got impatient along the way. We’re not quite as focused as we were. And there hasn’t been any justice for Breonna Taylor. There hasn’t been any peace. Just because we’re ready to move on to something else doesn’t mean that the time has come to move on. Truth is, we’ve been trying to move on from incomplete work on equality in this country for decades. People want to do the right thing, but they become impatient along the way.

I don’t know where I’m going with this necessarily. Breonna Taylor and a year of Covid have been on my mind all day. They are not done with us even though I think a lot of us have moved on. We can’t move on. We still have work to do. We still have ways in which we need to love our neighbor in all of this. We need to be healed of these afflictions.

In the Numbers passage, a bronze serpent was made and if people turned their eyes to it, they were healed. In the Gospel passage today, Jesus compares himself to that serpent; saying that those who look to him will be saved. That feels a little too tidy to me right now, but it is also something that I cling to. So let us not grow impatient and lose heart. Let us hold on to doing what is right.

Cause we don't know what to do
So, we turn our eyes to you
We've run out of words to say
But if you come and have your way
You can save us from ourselvеs
Before our wounds hurt someonе else
We need you now
-from “The Medicine” by Common Hymnal (feat. Alex Aiono and Dee Wilson) on the album Praise and Protest