Two Truths and Grace upon Grace (Holy Cross Sunday)

Have you ever noticed how so many medical associations around the world, organizations like the World Health Organization and the Canadian Medical Association, they have logos which picture a venomous snake wrapped around a pole. At first glance, it seems odd. Have you ever wondered to yourself, “why the snake?”

I have quite a few friends at the moment, including people right here at Trinity, who are waiting for the results of medical tests. It can be a tough time, it’s frustrating. The waiting is a time of uncertainty which tries your patience. Someone you love isn’t well, but doctors aren’t sure why, and so they initiate a whole series of tests.  And as we wait for the test results, it puts us in a strange, in between kind of place. On the one hand, we don’t really want the tests to reveal a problem; but on the other hand, we do, because it’s only once we have some sort of diagnosis, when we can see the truth of what’s going on, that we can move forward, hopefully, with treatment and healing.

That’s why the snake is on the pole as the symbol of medicine. That venomous snake is the diagnosis of what’s wrong, the difficult truth that we need to see before we can move forward with healing.

In the Old Testament story from the book of Numbers, the people wandering in the wilderness are being bitten by poisonous snakes, and many of them are dying. In their distress, they cry out to God and to Moses. Moses prays for them, and God responds by healing the people so that those bitten by the snakes will not die but live. But the healing is done in a curious way. The Lord tells Moses to make a poisonous serpent, the very thing that is causing the people to perish, and to put it upon a pole. Then, whenever a snake bites someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze, and live.

It's as if they have to see the truth about what is ailing them, and only then can the healing occur. Truth and healing. Truth as part of the healing process.

It’s an ancient story, with deep mythological meaning, which is one reason why it still persists today as a symbol of modern medicine.

Two thousand years after Moses, John, in his gospel, reaches back to this strange story as a way of illuminating the central event of our Christian faith, the cross of Jesus Christ.

“For God loved the world in this way,” writes John. Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that is, lifted on the cross, so that those who look to him, who trust him, who believe in him, may not perish but have life. Eternal life.”

Today is Holy Cross Day in our church calendar, a day when we wrestle with the meaning of the cross, just as generations before us have wrestled with the meaning of the cross, just as the first disciples and the early church wrested with the meaning of the cross, which is indeed the central event of our faith.

To the first disciples, the cross was horrific. It was an instrument of terror, the worst humanity had to offer, the means by which the powerful crushed and humiliated their enemies and struck fear into the people they oppressed. Even in the wake of the resurrection, trying to bring meaning to Jesus’ death on the cross was a formidable task for the disciples. As Paul wrote in his letter to the Corinthians that we just heard, the idea that the Son of God could die on a cross was complete foolishness to the Greeks, and a stumbling block for Jews, for whom it was unthinkable that this crucified man could be the Messiah sent by God.

Nowadays, we put crosses everywhere, in fact we’ll even wear them as jewellery. But for the early church, the cross was so repugnant that it took well over a hundred years for it to be used as a symbol of Christianity.

In today’s gospel John takes up the struggle to understand the cross. In John 3.16, the verse that has become so famous, the verse that Martin Luther called the gospel in miniature, John proclaims that the cross is an act of God’s love for us. “For God so loved the world.”

But in order to flesh out the way it all works, the how of God’s love for us on the cross, John reaches back to the ancient story of the bronze serpent on a pole, the snake which Moses lifts up to give life to a dying people.

It’s as if he’s trying to tell us that, yes, the cross is indeed life-giving, but the first step for us in receiving that life is to see the truth about what’s killing us.

And what is the truth that we see as we look upon the body of a man nailed to a cross?

We see how we humans use power to get our own way, and to oppress and destroy those who are powerless. We see how our will to win causes others to lose. We see lies, injustice and violence. We see the consequences of envy and competition. We see how our desire for wealth, security and status is acted out at the expense of others. We see our cowardice and impotence in the face of injustice. We see the polarization in our world, and our lack of care and respect for the dignity of others. We see how we resort to scapegoating as way of responding to what goes wrong in the world, and resulting cycles of blame and violence.

This is our diagnosis. This is the truth about what is causing us to perish, as individuals and as a society.  The ancients looked up and saw the snake that was biting them. We look up and see the body of a man on a cross. This is our snake.  This is the sin of the world, to use theological language.

But there is also a second truth revealed on the cross. The body that hangs upon the cross is not just a human body. It is the body in which the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, God the Son, the Word which became flesh and dwelt among us. And so on the cross we see not only a diagnosis of the human condition, but we also get to see a truth about God.

We all know, each in our imperfect way, what it means to love.  And that means we all know or can imagine, at least in some measure, how painful it is to be rejected by the ones we love, and how much we suffer when we see the suffering of those that we love.  We can’t love without being hurt, without being open to pain and sorrow.

How much more then must God, who is love, and created us out of love, suffer and endure pain as a result of the sin and oppression of our world.  In the course of human history, past and present, with its war and violence and genocides, in the course of our own personal histories, imagine how much pain and suffering a God who loves has had to endure.

On the cross, we get to see it. The reality of God and human history touch each other.  God’s story and our story become one story in Jesus.  Jesus is the one who reveals God to us, and the cross is the place where that revelation is made in its fullness.  On the cross we see a God who is vulnerable, who is powerless, who suffers.  On the cross, the God who loves experiences the pain of being rejected by those he loves and the sorrow of seeing the suffering of God’s beloved children.  The response of God the Son is to stretch out his arms on the cross and absorb and endure that pain and sorrow.

This is the second truth that we see on the cross. Now, the healing begins. Because the response of God the Son as he stretches out his arms and absorbs our pain and sorrow, is not to turn away, nor to seek revenge, nor to turn to anger. It is rather, to forgive, to have compassion upon us and to love us. And that makes all the difference.

Because if you can trust in this truth, if you can have faith in God the Son’s forgiveness, compassion and love for you, if you will believe in him, then our healing begins, and so we may not perish, but may have life, life in all its abundance, eternal life.

“For God loved the world in this way: He gave his only Son, lifting him up on the cross just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

Truth and healing.

Two truths, and grace upon grace.

Amen.