The 'True Cross' in Action

	Fr. Roger Vermalen Karban

The readings for Sunday, September 14, 2003, the Twenty-fourth Sunday of the Year, are Numbers 21:4b-9, Philippians 2:6-11, John 3:13-17.

The early Christian community would have regarded today’s focus on the instrument of Jesus’ death as bordering on the bizarre. As far as we know, no one even attempted to search for the actual cross on which Jesus died until Helena, the emperor Constantine’s mother, organized an expedition to the Holy Land in the first half of the 4th century. Knowing this history forces us to listen more carefully to the two 1st century readings proclaimed in today’s liturgy. They were produced by Christians who thought differently about their faith than those who gave us this feast.

For Paul and John, Jesus’ cross never was an object to venerate in itself. Had they been able to peer into the future, they would have been amazed at the many reliquaries placed in prominent places on this occasion displaying minute pieces of the “True Cross.” According to them, and our other Christian sacred authors, the true cross is any action which helps us join Jesus in his dying and rising.

In today’s gospel pericope, for instance, John deliberately uses double (and triple) meaning words in describing Jesus’ death and resurrection because he wants to transform the historical events which saved us into the ongoing events of our everyday lives. He believes that those who follow Jesus will also be “lifted up”: both as a criminal is lifted up on the cross and an honored person is lifted up in people’s esteem. We experience dying and rising simultaneously, in one action. The tricky thing for the Christian is first to surface such two-dimensional actions, then practice them.

In a parallel way, it’s important to know the context in which Paul quotes his early Christian hymn about Jesus’ dying and rising -— a context which has been omitted from our liturgical passage. Listen carefully to the lines which immediately precede the hymn. “...Complete my joy,” Paul writes, “by being of the same mind, with the same love, united in heart, thinking one thing. Do nothing out of selfishness ... rather, humbly regard others as more important than yourselves, each looking out not for his or her own interests, but everyone for those of others. Have among yourselves the same attitude that is also yours in Christ Jesus ...” The only reason Paul mentions Jesus ... “becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross,” is to encourage his community to imitate that death by generously giving themselves to those around them. Once they do, God will exalt them just as God exalted Jesus.

An interesting aspect of our Numbers reading is Yahweh’s command to the Israelites: “Make a saraph and mount it on a pole and if any who have been bitten look at it, they will live.” It runs counter to what one would normally expect.

People trying to overcome an evil in their lives are usually encouraged to do something to distract them from the evil. Rarely are they told to concentrate on the evil. But here, only when the afflicted people look at an image of the serpent will they live.

No wonder John latched on to this concept to help us understand the meaning of Jesus’ death. Only when he freely faces death does he also come face to face with life. A Christian’s dying and rising are simply two aspects of the same action. But it’s the action we most try to avoid that most brings us life.

Our ancestors in the faith believed that those who spend their time concentrating on a religious object from the past will never understand the true meaning of that object. Only someone who discovers that object in his or her everyday life will truly appreciate the significance of that object in Jesus’ life.