"When You Lift Up the Son of Man"

In the first reading today from Numbers 21:4-9 there is the story of the Israelites complaining in the desert about their lack of food and water and accusing God that He brought them into the desert to kill them. God was taking care of them but not in the way that they wanted; their patience was worn out, and they called God a murderer, essentially. They accused God of being Satan. God responds by sending them seraph serpents to bite and kill them.

Since they called God Satan, He showed them what Satan would do to them. In the Garden of Eden, Satan came as a serpent and as the murderer of the human race; God sends images of the evil one to do what he does, and so they are bit and many die. The antidote to these venomous snakes is to look on a bronze serpent mounted on a pole. When they look at an image of what they called God and so repent of what they had done, they are healed.

In the gospel from John 8:21-30, Jesus is talking to the Pharisees and says to them, “When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I AM, and that I do nothing on my own, but I say only what the Father taught me. The one who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone, because I always to what is pleasing to him” (8:28-29). The communion antiphon comes from John 12:32: “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men to myself, says the Lord.”

Jesus is the fulfillment of the bronze serpent mounted on a pole that brought healing. Jesus’ skin was most likely bronze in color, and He was mounted on a tree for the healing of the nations. How does the bronze serpent help us to understand what Jesus did? The Israelites were hungry, thirsty, tired, bored and fed-up with all the ceaseless wandering in the desert. They accused God of seeking their destruction, and in so doing, they were essentially calling Him Satan.

In John 8:25 when the Pharisees asked Jesus who He was, He responded saying, “What I told you from the beginning.” The words “serpent” and “beginning” bring us back to the beginning of the Bible to Genesis 1-3. According to my theory, the man and the woman were hungry and thirsty for a child, the child God implicitly promised when He said to be fruitful and multiply. Since He commanded them not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, i.e. not have sexual relations, they were in a metaphorical lifeless desert. They got fed up waiting for the promised child, much like Abraham and Sarah did with Isaac, and they listened and obeyed the voice of the serpent who promised them life. He promised them that they would be like God; they primarily knew God to be the Creator and giver of life, and so they, too, wanted to be like Him and give life by making a man.

By looking at the bronze serpent the Israelites could see what they had called God. What can you and I see when we look upon our crucified Lord? On the one hand, we can see that the man and the woman and you and I rely upon our own strength for our life instead of trusting in God. The man and the woman were tested to trust in God for their life and fruitfulness, but they chose to utilize the strength of their bodies, contrary to God’s singular command, in order to give life and have a baby. They were saying that it was by their bodies that they would have and give life. Looking at Jesus on the crucifix, we know that they who loose their life are given life, and they who let their bodies die who will rise again.

The man and the woman did not trust God’s command and did not believe that He would take care of them in their desert. They did not believe that He had their best interest at heart. It made no sense to them that they should be fruitful and multiply and yet not have sexual relations, so God must be playing a cruel trick on them and He was not to be trusted. The serpent was trustworthy, they thought, and by clinging to life and utilizing the generative powers of their bodies they would have life.

Jesus’ crucified body on the tree signals that it is in trusting God to the point of death that one has life. He gave birth to the Church when His heart was pierced and blood and water flowed out just like at a birth, and so He shows that life and birth come primarily through a circumcised and trusting heart. The heart, i.e. the tree of life, is that through which we trust in God and so have life.

In the passage quoted above Jesus said, “When you lift up the Son of Man.” He does not say the Son of God but the Son of Man. Jesus is the Son of Man, i.e. the Son of Adam. Because of the man’s faithless, uncircumcised heart of stone, all humanity fell, and the actual result of the act which was the Fall was Cain. We are all sons of man, but we are made to be sons of God; that is why the Son of God became a Son of Man. On the crucifix we also see the Son of Man; we see the humanity that was the result of Adam’s sin (not that Jesus had original sin).

Gazing on the crucifix and meditating on the Passion of Our Lord, we learn to what extent God goes to redeem us. We see His boundless love. We learn that it is not by our strength that we have life but by obedience to every word which comes from God. We learn that it is the loving, trusting and obedient heart that is the tree of life. We learn that we need to get rid of our old faithless heart given to us by Adam, and that we need the new heart of Jesus which we receive when we are baptized into Jesus’ death and every time we receive Him in Holy Communion. We learn that God provides to the one who puts his trust in Him as we wander throughout this desert. The crucifix and the Passion are the antidote to everything, to every sin which ails us; the crucified and risen heart of Jesus which we receive in the Eucharist is the tree of life, our new trusting heart, and the healing for the nations from the bite of the serpent. With Jesus' heart within us, we can say with Him: "I always do what is pleasing to Him."

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
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