Sunday, January 20, 2008

Sacramentarians and serpents and sin, OH MY!

I'm currently reading the Marburg Colloquy proceedings. This is a series of transcripts (kind of) from a two day debate between the Swiss Zwinglians and German Lutherans concerning primarily the Eucharist. The Zwinglians could not get past Christ's words "This is My Body", and Luther would not let them. I am reminded while reading this of the bronze serpent in Numbers:

Numbers 21:6-9

6 And the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died.
7 So the people came to Moses and said, "We have sinned, because we have spoken against the Lord and you; intercede with the Lord, that He may remove the serpents from us." And Moses interceded for the people.
8 Then the Lord said to Moses, "Make for yourself a fiery serpent, and set it on a standard; and it shall come about, that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, he shall live."
9 And Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on the standard; and it came about, that if a serpent bit any man, when he looked to the bronze serpent, he lived.

The Lord here promises to rescue His people from certain death by having them look at a bronze serpent.

That's all. Let's take a little while to digest that.

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