SNAKES ON A POLE
Southeast of the ancient Greek city of Corinth is a large archeological site at Epidaurus: The great Temple of Asclepius, the god of healing. As early as the 4th century BCE, Greeks travelled to this temple to find a cure for sick bodies and souls. The sprawling temple complex was a combination of health spa, hospital, and worship center for the cult of Asclepius. A species of non-venomous snakes played a significant role in these healing practices. These snakes were believed to have special healing powers and were allowed to slither around the temple precincts, even into the dormitories as patients slept. Visitors believed that they could be healed when a snake brushing against them or slithering over them.
Why would ancient Greeks have believed that snakes possessed special healing powers? First, snakes shed their skins. So ancient peoples saw them as bearers of immortality, capable of regenerating and renewing themselves as they shed one skin after another. Second, snakes live underground and were therefore seen as guardians and messengers of the underworld. Third, because snake bites could kill, they were presumed also to be able to heal. If you think that’s far-fetched, then remember that vaccines operate on exactly the same principle – introduce a small amount of something toxic into our bodies to protect us from the same bacteria or virus’ deadly toxicity.
The ancient Greek “graphic logo” for Asclepius’ healing powers looked like this:
Today this image is the logo of the World Health Organization as well as the American Medical Association.
If Asclepius spoke to the ancient human yearning for healing and wholeness, another Greek and Roman god spoke to the snake’s boundary-keeping role as guardian of the portal between this world and the next. Hermes was the Greek god of boundaries and transitions. His graphic logo is the Caduceus, which alluded to the myth of Hermes, who saw two snakes fighting and touched them with his rod so that they would stop quarreling and live in peace. It looks like this:
Hermes’ Caduceus was originally adopted by early American publishers of medical books. During the Civil War, this connection to medical manuals led the Caduceus to become associated with those who went out onto the battlefield to care for the wounded and dying. The association was so enduring that in 1902 the US Surgeon General adopted the Caduceus as the medical corps symbol. It’s also used by more than half of all US hospitals at part of their graphic logos.
It’s hard not to read this Sunday’s reading from Numbers 21 against the backdrop of these widespread ancient symbols of snakes on a pole. In Chapter 21 of the Book of Numbers the children of Israel are being bitten by fiery snakes. So God tells Moses to make a bronze image of a snake and lift it up on a pole so that people can look upon it and be healed. What Moses lifts up looks precisely like the healing symbol of the Temple of Asclepius.
We’ll also be reading from John 3:14-17 where Jesus sees Moses’ snake-on-a-pole as prefiguring how he will be lifted up on the cross for people to look upon and be healed. “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness” Jesus says, “so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” Behind Jesus’ invocation of Moses’ snake-on-a-pole is the lingering memory of a much older reference to the healing practices of Asclepius and Hermes.
We probably see with some regularity one of these ancient symbols of healing and never realize how they point beyond themselves to Jesus Christ who was lifted up on a death-dealing cross in order to become the remedy for all the toxicity that poisons our lives and world. It is no longer a snake that stands at the portal between this world and the next. The One lifted high on the cross who has destroyed death and opened the gates to everlasting life as our Easter hymns so boldly proclaim.
We have sung these hymns about the Cross so long that their deeper meanings have been rubbed smooth, just as Hermes’ Caduceus and Asclepius’ snake-on-a-pole have lost their original meanings even though we still see them on ambulances and in hospital walkways. For Christians, the Cross stands as the token of Jesus’ promise that when he is lifted up, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, he will be the fulfillment of very ancient yearnings among our forebearers for healing and wholeness, for rebirth and renewal. These yearnings stretch back into human history far beyond Moses and the wandering tribes of Israel. They arise as part of our earliest human consciousness of how we are divided both within and against ourselves.
In these closing weeks of Lent, may we look to the Cross and see how our longings for wholeness and renewal were felt by individuals not so unlike us who lived long, long before our time and place in human history. And what they long ago dimly perceived in their images of snakes-on-a-pole have become visible in the mystery of the Cross of Jesus Christ. As the author of Colossians writes, “the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations… is now disclosed to the Lord’s people. To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” (1:26-27).
On the Lenten journey with you,
Pastor Thomas