Readings:
Numbers 21:4-9; Psalm 102; John 8:21-30

The Israelites spoke against God and against Moses, ‘Why did you bring us out of Egypt to die in this wilderness? For there is neither bread nor water here; we are sick of this unsatisfying food.’ At this God sent fiery serpents among the people; their bite brought death to many in Israel… Moses interceded for the people, and the Lord answered him, ‘Make a fiery serpent and put it on a standard. If anyone is bitten and looks at it, he shall live.‘
Numbers 21:5-8

Jesus said, ‘When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He and that I do nothing of myself: what the Father has taught me is what I preach; he who sent me is with me, and has not left me to myself, for I always do what pleases him.‘
John 8:28, 29

The story of the fiery serpent is strange, presenting an unpleasant God who answers his children’s complaints of hunger and thirst by sending fiery serpents with lethal bites. Jesus must have found it an odd story, for in Luke’s Gospel he asks, ‘What father among you would hand his son a snake instead of a fish?’ Yet it is the image of the fiery serpent, raised on a standard, which saves the bitten who look on it. Whatever the origins of the story, the bronze serpent raised on a standard is seen to prefigure Jesus raised up on the cross and drawing all creation to himself. ‘God wanted all perfection to be found in him and all things to be reconciled through him and for him, everything in heaven and everything on earth, when he made peace by his death on the cross’ (Colossians 1:19-20).

There is a magical element in the original story, because there is no causal connection between looking at a bronze serpent and being healed of snake bite. Is the cross a saving sign in the same magical way? In many churches on Good Friday there is a ceremony called ‘Veneration of the Cross’, when the congregation are invited to make some gesture of reverence to the cross bowing, kneeling, genuflecting, or kissing it. The cross can be treated magically, as though a mere bow, genuflection, or kiss can heal all the damage we have done to others and to ourselves, assuring us of an eternity of bliss into the bargain!

The salvation which Jesus offers is not magic. As we have seen in so many of the Lent readings, the Old Testament prophets are forever railing against empty religious gestures ‘Rend your hearts; not your garments’, ‘let justice flow like water, integrity like an unfailing stream’.

A cross is a sign. In itself it can effect nothing. Its value is in pointing to a reality, the reality of God becoming one of us in Jesus. Jesus died two thousand years ago, a once-for-all historic happening which cannot be repeated, but the Spirit which lived in Jesus and raised him from the dead now lives in us. We look on the cross to remind us of who we are, of our origins from God who, ‘before the world was, had us in mind’, and of our destination, returning to God, not alone, but in Christ, through whom we are in relationship with every other human being and with all creation. The vertical part of the cross represents our relationship with God, whom we can only find through the horizontal part, representing our relationship with one another.

Salvation is letting the Spirit of Christ be the Spirit of Christ in us and through us. We cannot be saved no matter how often we look at the cross, venerate it, even receive the sacraments, unless we are letting the Spirit of Jesus reign in us and through us, the Spirit of forgiveness, of non-violent resistance, the Spirit which enables us to love our enemies and bless those who persecute us.

It is good just to gaze at Jesus on the Cross, as though we were there at the moment of his dying, and then to ask ourselves, ‘What response have I made? What response am I now making? How do I want to respond in the future?’

Prayer
Help us so to gaze at you on the cross, that we may recognize your Spirit living in our hearts, the Spirit of peace and reconciliation, the Spirit of forgiveness and love for our enemies. We ask you this through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Amen.