On the fourth Sunday in Lent in year two of the Lectionary we encounter the very curious incident recorded in the book of Numbers  21:4-9. There’s a crisis unfolding among the Israelites. It seems that in response to their endless grumbling, God – whose patience seems to have been wearing thin -expresses his anger by sending an infestation of venomous snakes into their camp – resulting in many deaths from snakebite.

Seeing the distress and devastation, God relents – even possibly repents –  and instructs Moses to cast a serpent image in bronze and raise it up at the heart of the camp. Anyone with a snakebite has only to look up at the image to be healed and live. This story raises a key awkward question – it seems to be an infringement of the second commandment against casting graven images. But maybe it’s ok – it seems that God is allowed to contradict godself.

More helpfully however, we might call Numbers 21:4-9 a story of spiritual homeopathy which sheds light on the processes underlying the human experience of healing.

Western, allopathic medicine effects a cure by introducing a substance that has been found to combat the condition. We are all immensely grateful for antibiotics.

Homeopathy treats conditions by introducing small amounts of the element, which in larger amounts is the cause of the condition – thus triggering the body’s defenses. Many Western medical practitioners remain skeptical of the homeopathic philosophy, yet aren’t we all deeply grateful for vaccines. Do not vaccines in contrast to antibiotics operate according to the homeopathic principle?

The toxin that kills is transformed into the agent that heals.

Numbers 21 is a story of totem power which triggers change through the power of a spiritual perception. A totem is a human-made or naturally occurring object – imbued with a spiritual significance capable of transforming perception.

The mention of a totem brings back memories for me. Christchurch, the N.Z. city in which I grew up is the logistics and personnel hub serving the US Antarctic Expedition Program. At the entrance to the base situated next to Christchurch airport stands a tall wooden totem pole – a gift from the Native American tribes of the Pacific Northwest to another Pacific people on the opposite side of a common Ocean. The American First Nations peoples of the Northwest perceive in the totem pole the spiritual power of their history and identity. In the perception of the Israelites, the bronze serpent – a symbol of death – became imbued with the spiritual perception of their healing.

There’s an old saying – perception is nine-tenths of reality. Healing is a mysterious process because it’s impossible to trace the linkages between cause and effect – which seems an anathema for the scientific mind. Yet, despite the inability to map the links of cause and effect – the effect produced in homeopathic healing is nevertheless real.

The bronze serpent is imbued with a totem spiritual significance. It is no mere coincidence that the caduceus – the double or sometimes single-headed serpent coiled around the Rod of Asclepius – a totem in Greek mythology – has become the symbol of the healing profession. Healing profession – a name that reveals the older homeopathic foundations for what today has become Western Medicine’s thorough allopathic discipline.

In the third chapter of the gospel according to John – Jesus in his conversation with a prominent Pharisee called Nicodemus evokes Numbers 21:

Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

Jesus’ mission will require him likewise to be lifted up over the world so that anyone who looks at him upon the cross will experience a transformation of death into life.

As Christians, whether we are consciously aware of it or not – we stand in the shadow of the cross. We imbue the cross with a spiritual significance – a perception that directly shapes our experience of reality. For us, the cross carries totem power.

To use a slightly different metaphor the cross becomes the lens through which our perception of the world comes into focus. Gazing on the cross means to stand in its shadow. Within its shadow, we perceive our worldview, which then dictates actions that shape and reshape the nature of our experience of reality. Remember, perception is nine-tenths of reality.

The shadow cast by the cross – brings into sharper focus the contours of our own shadow side – our hatreds, prejudices, and fears; our sorrows and loves – esp. the loves of a disordered, narcissistic, and selfish variety – all our afflictions that we try to conceal from scrutiny. Here, with greater clarity, we note the aspects of self we long to change, the aspects of self we tenaciously resist changing, and those aspects of personality we are powerless on our own to change.

Yet, none of this matters in an ultimate sense for to stand in the shadow of the cross is to be healed despite ourselves. For on the cross, God so loved the world. In other words, God changed the world through the power of self-sacrificial love.

The totem power of the cross is love. The love demonstrated on the cross is not a love that condemns but a love that challenges and confronts, confirms and strengthens. Love heals.

Standing in the shadow of the cross the late Irish poet John O’Donohue in his poem A Morning Offering – wrote of: minds come alive to the invisible geography that invites us to new frontiers, to break the dead shell of yesterdays, to risk being disturbed and changed.

Standing in the shadow of the cross the toxins of shame, guilt, pain, and failure become transformed through love’s action – shaping our perceptions and guiding our actions in the world.

God said to Moses, make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live. Standing in the shadow of the cross death we are challenged to change by an experience of the source of new life – or as O’Donohue so eloquently puts it: to do at last what we came here for and waste our heart on fear no more.