Lifted Up

The readings this week made me think of movement both upwards and downwards.  In the first reading from the Book of Numbers, after Moses has prayed for the sins of the people, God instructs him to get the people to make a bronze serpent and set it on a pole.  The pole would have been raised up for the people to see the serpent and live.

This is an obvious foreshadowing of what Jesus talks to Nicodemus about in the Gospel reading.  “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”  Jesus is predicting his own death on a cross.

To many who later saw him lifted up on the cross, it would have appeared to be shame and defeat and yet it was actually triumph and glory.  Sunday’s feast is “The Exaltation of the Holy Cross” in which an instrument of torture is the made the means of the salvation offered to the human race.

This was achieved by God becoming one of us.  So as well as being lifted up on the cross, Jesus first came down from heaven.  As St Paul says, “And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”  So this was God the Son being lowered.  And then we hear, “Therefore God has highly exalted him…”

In our life of faith, we too can experience all sorts of ways in which we feel “lowered”, especially by our sins.  Our problems and difficulties often make us feel “low” and we feel in need of a lift.  The Cross offers us the ultimate lifting up, if we embrace it.  Through the Cross, Jesus offers us forgiveness of our sins and more than this, offers us eternal life.  This is good reason for us to exalt the Cross.  

God bless, Fr Kevin.