Snakes often like sunlight. Rattlesnakes across North America, though less active in winter, will come out on sunny days to bask in sunshine. Studies of timber rattlers in the east show that they need open space in wooded areas where their bodies can find enough sunlight to reach a temperature suitable for gestation.
Maybe that affinity for light was part of the reason Jesus compared Himself to a snake in our text for this week, John 3:14-21. Of course the snake to which He referred was the bronze image of a snake made by Moses as a vehicle for God to heal rebellious Israelites of snake bites. In that case the culprits were probably saw scale vipers, also called carpet vipers, which are reddish in color.
In any case, the more than familiar words of John 3:16 are introduced by Jesus with the allusion to and comparison with Moses lifting up the bronze viper on a pole. That same familiar verse is followed by a discussion of God’s salvation versus His condemnation using the metaphor of people who love light versus those who prefer darkness.
It’s fascinating that the snake already portrayed as a sign of healing and salvation comes out well in the light-darkness imaging. In the wild, sunlight can be a necessity for snakes to maintain body temperature. Their “basking” is not just for comfort but for survival.
Likewise in verses 19-21, people need to come into the light to avoid judgment. Those who wish to keep their deeds hidden in the dark are judged as evil and will be condemned.
The recent minor media furor over the Harry and Meghan interview with Opra is a case in point. It seems fairly clear that the couple dared to name in public some behavior and comments that the British royal family would have preferred to keep out of the public eye. It’s fascinating how even some Americans, without anything really at stake, have either praised or condemned Harry and Meghan for their candor, with some even questioning the veracity of what they said.
Harry and Meghan’s experience is of course just a particularly noticeable example of debates over the MeToo movement and “cancel culture.” Without weighing in on whether those whose wrong words and deeds are exposed should be “canceled,” I will say that what Jesus says here seems to be on the side of evil being brought to light rather than hidden. To take up another story recently in the media, it tells against the Ravi Zacharias ministry organization which until recently had functioned to ignore and keep hidden various complaints and warnings which might have exposed his sexual wrongdoing before he died.
Verse 19 says, “And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world…” And we already know from John’s first chapter that Jesus is that light. Put together with verse 14, “so must the Son of Man be lifted up,” and we get the implication that Jesus coming into the world and dying on the Cross is the ultimate light which exposes the deeds of darkness, exposes our sin.
One of the ways in which the Cross exposes sin is by its sheer horror. That the remedy for sin had to be that speaks volumes about its pervasiveness and seriousness. We also see sin exposed in the fact that the One who died on the Cross was innocent of sin.
I’m not talking just about the fact that the vast majority of humanity fails abjectly in any moral comparison with Jesus. It’s certainly true that if you hold any of us up to the light of His perfect goodness and love and we naturally want to crawl for some dark hole in which to hide. But I’m also thinking about the Atonement theology of Rene Girard. Girard suggests that at the root of human sin and violence toward each other is the aim to create a scapegoat for all the resentment and envy we feel toward one another. Such scapegoating is certainly at the heart of at least some of our racism and enmity toward those from other countries.
According to Girard, Jesus came into our human system of justifying our violent sin by identifying scapegoats and dies as a victim who is obviously and clearly innocent. His death on the Cross thus revealed human violence for the injustice that it is, evil toward those who do not deserve it. His innocence is the light which exposes the darkness of violence.
Fortunately the exposure of sin is not the end of the story. When Jesus is raised from the dead, the light of His risen life becomes the illumination in which we are to go on living. By the power of His death and resurrection, we become people who learn to love the light, who want to live in it, so that as verse 21 says, “it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.”
Perhaps one lesson is that rather than maligning and decrying “cancel culture,” we ought to strive more to live our salvation symbolized by a snake lifted out into the sunlight. Let us be the kind of people who in Christ need not fear exposure to light, need not worry about our deeds being found out. Come holy light and shine on us snakes.