A Reflection for the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross
Find today’s readings here.
Jesus said to Nicodemus: “No one has gone up to heaven except the one who has come down from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. (Jn 3:13-17)
One of my favorite “moldy oldies” in the church hymnal is one regularly sung today, on the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross: “Lift High The Cross.” If you get enough people singing, it’s a stirring liturgical experience. (I also discovered recently it’s not a moldy oldy at all, at least on this side of the pond; written in Great Britain in the 19th century, it didn’t make its way into American hymnals until 1974.) But the song’s lyrics can be a bit equivocal. Is the cross an instrument of torture, a terrible sacrifice? Or is it a “triumphant sign,” a “glorious tree”? A little from column A, a little from column B.
So too with today’s readings: Jesus reminds Nicodemus that God sent serpents among the people of Israel, but then God also gave Moses instructions to construct a bronze serpent upon a pole that could bring healing to those afflicted. The poison is thus transformed into the antidote, the terrifying sign is forged into the image of hope.
Similarly, in a Gospel where elsewhere Jesus tells his followers that “if the world hates you, just remember it hated me first,” we nevertheless also are told today that “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.” Here again is that equivocal sense, this time applied to the material world: A poison in many ways, deadly to the believer, and yet saved through Jesus rather than condemned. The poison is transformed into the antidote by the cross of Jesus; the terrifying sign is forged into the image of hope by his death and resurrection.
Lift high the cross!
