14 September 2015 - lift high the cross

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.

He is lifted high upon the cross so that we might look at him.

Make a saraph and mount it on a pole,
and if any who have been bitten look at it, they will live.

This might sound obvious, but let's think about it. He is lifted up because we are supposed to look at him here and now as he is lifted. We aren't supposed to look away in shame or sorrow. We have to look at Jesus on the cross.

I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn (cf. Zec. 12:10).

So is it obvious? Maybe not. The cross is not an easy sight if we truly understand it. It is the profound summary of our guilt. It is the final word on the severity of sin. Yet it is precisely here that we begin to understand the depths of the love of God for us.

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.

That is why it is precisely here, on the cross, that Jesus draws all people to himself (cf. Joh. 12:32).

Christ Jesus, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God something to be grasped.
Rather, he emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
coming in human likeness;
and found human in appearance,
he humbled himself,
becoming obedient to death,
even death on a cross.

At Christmas we celebrate this same humility. It is humility which is willing to step down out of heaven and to lay aside the divine prerogatives of glory and honor in order to be with us. It is here on the cross that we see the culmination of his humility. Christmas is easy to sentimentalize. But not the cross. Not if we're honest. Yet it is precisely the depths of love that are on display that resist our attempts to sanitize or sentimentalize them. The temptation is to look away. We might prefer to skip right past the cross to Easter Sunday and to the resurrection. Yet we mustn't.

We need to be more like Paul who says, "far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world" (cf. Gal. 6:14). It is because of this cross that God greatly exalts Jesus and bestows on him the name above every name. The glory is not simply Easter Sunday. It is also the cross itself. When we acknowledge victory in the cross itself we acknowledge that death his finally been, not just escapes, but defeated.

Do not forget the works of the Lord!

Looking at the crucifix we might say that Jesus is nailed to the cross. But it is more true that death itself is nailed to Jesus who pulls it from its place on dominion and opens the way to life.