Exaltation Of The Holy Cross
JOHN 3:13-17 (Numbers 21:4b-9; Philippians 2:6-11)
When September 14 falls on a Sunday, the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross replaces the Ordinary Sunday. The gospel reading for this feast is part of a dialogue between Jesus and Nicodemus. The latter was a member of the Sanhedrin, the supreme council of the Jews. Even under occupation by Imperial Rome the Sanhedrin had governing powers in religious matters and in some civil (secular) matters. Nicodemus came to consult Jesus at night because he was afraid of his powerful colleagues on the Sanhedrin.
By the time the dialogue between Jesus and Nicodemus reached today’s gospel reading, the dialogue turned into a monologue attributed to Jesus. The monologue is John’s meditation on the role of Jesus in the salvation of the world.
John begins, “No one has ascended into heaven but the One who descended from heav-ven.” This statement introduces a Moses theme which will be more explicit in the follow-ing verse. Throughout the first nine chapters of his gospel, John introduces Moses themes with the goal of demonstrating the superiority of Jesus over Moses. This statement about ascending to and descending from heaven is an example. At least in some circles it was thought that Moses had been taken up into heaven, since no one knew his burial place.
John here assures readers and hearers that only Jesus had the power and authority to ascend into heaven just as he came from heaven.
John echoes here what he had already stated in 1:17-18, that the Torah (God’s Law or Teaching) was given through Moses, but “grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” That was John’s first demotion of Moses. He immediately adds another, “No one has ever seen God. The only Son, who is in the heart of the Father, he has made him known.” Behind this statement are two passages in Exodus 33:11 and 33:20. They come from different sources. The first affirms that God spoke with Moses face to face. The second affirms that Moses never saw God except “from the rear.” John does this demoting of Moses because his major opponents, the great scribes who founded and developed Judaism from the end of the first century onward, defended Moses as the ultimate revealer, while John defended Jesus as ultimate revealer.
The second statement in this gospel reading is the reason why this gospel was chosen for the Feast of the Holy Cross. “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.” John refers to a story in Numbers 21:5-9, the first reading for the Feast of the Holy Cross. The Israelites murmur against Moses for leading them out of Egypt “to die in this wilderness” without food, without water, but nourished by the manna, of which they said, “We loathe this worthless food.” The Lord’s patience was wearing thin with their grumbling. He sent fiery serpents among them. They bit the people and many died. A quick change of atti-tude! The people approached Moses to appeal for them to the Lord. The Lord orders Moses to cast a bronze serpent, and put it up on a pole. If those who were bitten looked up at the bronze serpent, “…when they see it, they shall live.” (The healing bronze serpent became the caduceus of the medical profession – a snake entwined on a pole.)
The movement of an Old Testament text to a later use in a later Old Testament text to a still later use in the New Testament is called a trajectory. The story of the stinging serpents was reused in the Old Testament Book of Wisdom, written about 100 B.C.
The author of Wisdom writes, “When… they were dying of the bites of writhing serpents, your anger did not continue forever…, for they had a saving sign (symbol) to remind them of …. your Torah (Law). Those who turned to it were saved, not by what they look-ed at, but by you the universal Savior.” Thus in the Book of Wisdom the serpent on the pole was interpreted as a symbol of the Torah, God’s revelation. Those who accepted the Torah and lived it were saved.
In the Prologue to his gospel, John revealed Jesus as God’s final Word, final Teaching, final Torah. As salvation or healing first came to the Israelites when they looked at the bronze serpent on the pole, then came to the Israelites/Jews when they accepted the Torah symbolized by the serpent on the pole, thus when the final Torah is lifted up on the Cross, those who see him, that is, put their faith/trust in him for healing with God, these will be saved. Relying on interpretation of Numbers 21 and Wisdom 16:5-7, John next proclaims Jesus as “universal Savior,” when he writes, “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
In the final statement of today’s gospel reading John repeats and emphasizes the univer-sality of the Son’s mission, “For God sent the son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.” A final word about the cross and how it touches every human being, “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself,” John 12:32, first through faith in the cross lifted high like the healing bronze serpent, then through return to the glory “which I had with thee before the world was made,” 17:5. That glory for Jesus’ human nature was gained by the Cross.
