Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross
It probably felt a little frustrating when God made Moses raise a bronze serpent for the people of Israel to look at. Anyone who has ever gotten food poisoning might be able to imagine why. Our brains are smart – they are known to draw implicit connections between two events, like eating at our favorite restaurant and then getting food poisoning, without our planning to do so. This is a defense mechanism designed to keep us safe – our bodies tell us to reject the food that once made us sick, to avoid getting sick again. This is easy to do when it happens from something we can’t have often, (take that, street food in DC!) but much more difficult when it’s from our favorite chain restaurant (I miss you, Qdoba).
This is why it’s frustrating that the people of Israel have to look upon a bronze serpent to heal them from their illness. It was the serpents that made them sick in the first place! How humiliating it must have felt to look upon the thing that caused them the greatest harm in order to be healed.
So what are we to make of the fact that in today’s Gospel, Jesus compares himself to the very same bronze serpent? As our second reading reminds us, Jesus emptied himself, took the form of a slave, came in human likeness, and was found human in appearance. Jesus was not only fully God, but also fully man. When we look upon the cross, we see before us a human being who has been raised up for us to behold, that somehow we might be healed.
The parish theme this year is Discipleship – Renewing, Restoring, Healing. Through this theme, we are called to remind ourselves of the common humanity that exists between us and every person we feel somehow divided against. This is no easy task. Like the people of Israel, it will feel humiliating to look upon the thing that we believe causes us the greatest harm in order to be healed. But also like the people of Israel, it is only by doing this looking, and really seeing what’s there, that we will be able to work towards the healing we need.
– Marty Bagatti