Happy 2025: The Year of the Snake
God’s blessings in the New Year. Culturally, it’s the year of the snake (2025). I’m going to begin this New Year’s reflection with something closer to home, a cultural thought, then, move to the Old and conclude with the New Testament.
Culturally, some Koreans (and Chinese) ask: What Asian Korean/Chinese Zodiac are you? Born in ’72, I was born in the year of the “rat” (symbolizing among other traits: hard working, optimistic, good communicator, adaptable, and so on – let’s focus just on the positives). It’s traditionally the first of animals in the twelve year cycle. In my family, my oldest is the same as me (1972 and 1996), we’re both rats. My second, he is the same as his grandfather, both dragons. And my youngest, she’s a sheep (2003). My wife, though I don’t have her permission, she’s a …. (need to keep a woman’s age her own- right?).
Now, 2025 is the year of the wooden snake (the sixth animal), marking: fascinations in learning with curiosity, wisdom, healing, goal-centered, sympathetic, protective, and “financially fortunate.” My maternal grandmother was born in the year of the snake. She was the most gracious, graceful, and beautiful spirit. She is the best of my mom and dad. She literally raised me when mom was at work and dad in the States studying (until we were reunited after three-and-a-half years, when I was five). My grandmother escaped North Korea (caught three times trying to escape) with my mom who was three years old and my uncle who was seven at the time. In the end, all her family made it safely to the South. And in gratitude for life, all the men became ministers/pastors. Then, my grandmother attended and graduated from a seminary, the very first cohort of pre-Methodist Theological Seminary in Korea. Remarkable for her generation. She read and memorized scripture till the very end of her life.
Returning to that year of the snake, interestingly, in the Bible, the very first encounter of that snake or serpent appears in Genesis 3. Technically, we’re not suppose to read “satan” back into the narrative. The serpent was simply, at the apex of God’s creation. It was a wise, intellectual, and a very curious creature. It really did know God (after all, it did say “you will not die,” and Adam and Eve did not die. But do recall that God said to Adam: the day that you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall surely die). In simple words, the snake knew that God was full of grace and mercy. Also, it’s the serpent that strikes up the very first conversation on God, with Eve, seasoning that prompt with “good and evil.” Now, Eve is the highest and ultimate masterpiece of God’s creation! Sorry, guys, men, you were the rough draft to God’s masterpiece. Gen 3’s story is an account of humanity’s fall but also of expulsion from the land/homeland (exile as forced migrations). For Christians, Adam takes that fall – scapegoat for failure – not taking on that given responsibility of upholding: “Do not eat.” (He was equally curious).
The serpent/snake does not remain a terrible or negative symbol in the Old Testament. In the Wilderness, after the Israelites sin, venomous snakes bite the Israelites, only to have God command Moses to make a bronze snake, the Nehushtan, and place it on a pole, and whoever looked at that bronze snake, that person was healed (Numbers 21). This symbol and mythopoetic imagery have “some” common themes with the medical snakes on a staff (caduceus or staff of Asclepius).
Jesus used the imagery of the snake in two ways: In Matthew 7:10 he says, who among you, if your son asks for fish would give him a snake? And more positively, in Matt 10:16, to his disciples, he says, I’m sending you out like sheep among wolves, be as smart as snakes and gentle as doves. Then in Matt 23:33, against all the religiously upright and highly self-righteous Pharisees and select scribes, Jesus calls them – you snakes. This last point does take away from the central point of what snakes symbolically or metaphorically present in our Christian tradition, but notice his true thought on the snake, that the son of man must be lifted up on a tree: “The Son of Man must be lifted upon on a tree, just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness…” (John 3:14). From the snake, I want to turn to the lamb, the lamb of God who takes the sins of this world away.
John the Baptist first proclaimed, Behold, the lamb of God, Jesus Christ, who takes the sins of the world away. In the Book of Revelation, we have various (shades of) horses, along with the very slain lamb who is worthy of opening the seals. The lamb of God is depicted with humility and majesty.
In 2025, the words found in the Book of Isaiah (11:6-9) “The wolf and the lamb shall dwell together, the leopard and the kid (baby goat), and the calf and the young lion” but it is a “little child,” who will usher in peace, tranquility, and harmony – that foreshadowing of the birth child in Jesus Christ. May 2025, the year of the snake, usher in wisdom, growth, and true spiritual prosperity in the Lord.
PJA