September sees the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, and as the newly elected Prior (much to my astonishment) and new Parish Priest of Holy Cross, Leicester, I feel it only right that I should say something about what has always been a favourite feast of mine.
The Gospel is taken from John 3, and includes the first of the three “lifted up” sayings of Christ in that Gospel. While in the other three Gospels, Christ three times speaks of his forthcoming passion and death and his subsequent resurrection, in John we find three occasions on which Christ speaks of being “lifted up” – a reference to his crucifixion, undoubtedly, but at the same time to his resurrection and exaltation to the right hand of the Father. This reflects the insight that in some sense the crucifixion of Christ is his exaltation, his glorification.
The first of these sayings refers to the events of Numbers 21, an option for this feast’s first reading, in which the people of Israel’s wilderness grumblings have led them to be afflicted by poisonous serpents. When they repent, the Lord instructs Moses to raise a bronze serpent on a pole, which the people must look at to be cured of their venomous bites.
Now this plague of serpents is the consequence of the sin of the people, specifically in this case, their sin of lacking faith in God. Like the sin instigated by that earlier serpent in the garden of Eden, it is a rejection of God that poisons human society, kills our humanity. At every level, sin kills, and creates a vicious circle of hatred and death.
So God commanded Moses to raise up an image of sin – or rather, an image of the consequence of disobedience. All the Israelites have to do is look at it and be healed. When we celebrate the Holy Cross, we celebrate it as the fulfilment of that prefigurement: Christ crucified is the true image of the consequence of our sins. Jesus must be lifted up on the cross to show us what humanity’s rejection of God looks like. In the alternative first reading, from Philippians 2, St Paul tells us that, although Jesus is the only human being truly able to claim equality with God, instead he made himself vulnerable to the effects of sin, of evil, of hatred, out of love for us. That is what we see when we look at a crucifix. Unless the people looked at the serpent, they could not be cured of the venom. Unless we gaze unflinchingly at the most terrible and pitiful spectacle of the shameful death of a perfectly good man, a death which is the consequence of our sinfulness, we cannot escape the vicious circle of sin.
This is why Christ goes on in the next few verses of John 3 to speak of himself as the light. Christ exalted on the cross makes clear what was hidden: the true nature of evil. You cannot see the shadows when it is dark. Jesus says, “And this is judgement: that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil… But he who does what is true comes to the light” (John 3:19-21). When light shines in the darkness we are presented with a choice: come to light or scurry into the shadows.
St John’s Gospel is all about this choice, this judgement, that Jesus presents us with on the cross: this is what evil looks like, this is darkness – do we want to hide in it, or shall we come into the light? But, as I suggested earlier, the “lifting up” refers also to Christ’s resurrection and exaltation, the proof that love is stronger than death. Our religion is not a morbid idolatry of death and pain, but a celebration of love, a wholehearted worship of the God who is perfect, life-giving love. The cross shows sin up for what it is, but it also shows us God’s response to that sin, the wondrous love of the God who died for us on the cross. Jesus’s vulnerability, gentleness, humility and dignity on the cross show us the face of God.
This God of love and life became human to rescue us from sin and death, and he invites us to share in his fate: at times we may share in his cross, but we can also share in his risen life, because in the face of Christ, light of the world, hanging on the cross, we have seen perfect love.
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