Numbers 21:4-9, Philippians2:6-11 and John 3:13-17 for the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ, 14 September.
How odd to speak of the Exaltation of the Cross that is a tool of humiliation,
torture and execution!
How odd all the Word of
the Lord is today!
In all three readings
things are upside down and backwards.
Moses lifted up the
lifeless image of a serpent on a pole to heal the people of deadly snakebite
that came as a punishment for their sin.
Then, God’s beloved Son
is to be lifted up in death on the beams of a cross, so that whoever believes
in him may be healed of sin and death, and gain eternal life.
For
God so loved the world that he gave his only Son ... that the world might be
saved through him.
To ransom a slave and
rebel, God gave up his Son.
All-Holy God pays for
our sins by his own death on the Cross.
However, our benefit is
the smaller part of what took place on the Cross— the smaller part of what the
Gospel reveals.
Today in his Gospel the
Lord speaks of himself as the Son who has received himself from the Father, has
come down from the Father to the earth, and goes up back to the Father.
Today his Gospel also
tells us of the Father who in love gives his Word, overflowing himself in his
Son that the world might
be saved through him.
Today’s Gospel unfolds
the meaning of earlier words about how the Father’s Spirit is at work in us
through the Son.
By Baptismal Water and
the Holy Spirit, our lives misshapen by sin and death are turned upside down
and backwards, and we are reborn into the Son of God, reborn into his human
life, reborn into his death, reborn into his resurrection, ascension and
exaltation, reborn in him as royal sons and daughters of the heavenly Father.
The invincibly living
mystery of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit is present and powerful in
the Crucified Death of Christ.
That is why we always
name the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit as we make the sign of the Cross.
God, who is Love lifted
up on the Cross, draws us all to himself, to his fulfillment of love on the
Cross.
That is the lure, the
beauty, the triumph and Exaltation of the Cross, though by nature it be a tool of defeat and shame.
God in Christ in his
love on the cross freely chose to undergo, undertake and underlie all that is
human even unto death.
This truth, this
historical event has the power to draw all that is in our hearts, minds,
strength and will.
We need to know, have,
and return this love emptying itself on the Cross— love absolutely present and
absolutely fulfilled in history, flesh and blood.
Here in the humble and
exalted Eucharistic Flesh and Blood of Christ:
the power of the Spirit gives us birth and life in God;
the Father reveals and gives his love;
and the Son offers himself and our own humanity,
through the power of the Spirit,
to the Father with obedience and gratitude.
On his Cross, in his
Resurrection, Ascension and Eucharist, Christ our God and Savior gives us triumph
and exaltation.
Turn.
Love. Repeat.
