One of the most surprising things that Our Lord says in all of Scripture is when he explains to his apostles “everything in the Scriptures that referred to him, starting with Moses and the Prophets.”  He makes this astonishing claim that all of the dramatic events in the Old Testament, all the triumphs and disasters, the victories and defeats, the events of the epic scale down to the most intimate moments, and everything in between: in hindsight and in the final analysis, in their deepest meaning, they’re really all about him, all about Jesus Christ.  We see that in an especially powerful way today.  Last Sunday the First Reading presented us with the Ten Commandments which were the fundamental tools for the Chosen People to keep their relationship with God alive and well.  Today we see the people straying.  We get words like “infidelity” and “abomination” and “pollution of the Holy Temple.”  The people don’t even make it past the First Commandment, let alone any of the other nine.  What we see today is how the Lord fixes that.  How he fixes our disobedience.  How he repairs the consequences.  In the First Reading, we see God using the foreign king Cyrus to get things back on track: the really important lesson here is that God works it out.  The people don’t get themselves back on track; God has to do it for them.  And he does. 

And then in the Gospel we see how the Lord fixes the greatest consequence of them all, the greatest problem of them all: we see how God fixes the problem of death.  Christ says to Nicodemus, “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’s referring to a very intriguing incident recorded in the Book of Numbers, that took place while the Chosen People were on their way towards the Promised Land after their departure from slavery in Egypt.  They were complaining and disobedient, and the punishment was deadly “seraph serpents” which went around biting the people.  This deadly menace did snap the people out of their ingratitude, but what happens next is the really incredible thing: the stunning thing is God’s medicine, his prescription to heal those who had been bitten by these venomous snakes and who faced death as a result.  God told Moses, that the people needed to look their death squarely in the face.  God instructed Moses to take one of these serpents, put it on a pole and raise it up, and have the people stare at it.  And anyone who did, anyone who had been bitten, who looked, who looked up at the cause of their own impending death, was cured.  Now, this moment, which is just dripping with irony, points directly to the Holy Cross.  Seen in hindsight through the lens of the Cross, this incident in the desert is one of the most important and meaningful things that ever happened.  Because it’s all about the Cross.  Moses had those who had been bitten by the poisonous serpents look intently at the very instrument of their death raised up high, and in doing so they found healing from their deadly wounds.  On the Cross, our Lord is raised up high on a pole, as it were, like the serpent had been.  And for each one of us, wounded by a very particular sting, the sting of death: when we look up, when we look intently upon that Death of his, when we look at this instrument of death raised up high, we find our healing; we find our life.  Now, back with Moses, looking up at the serpent on the pole didn’t cause the people’s snakebites magically to disappear; it allowed them to survive the experience.  And that’s what the Cross does for us.  When we fix our glance on Christ’s Holy Cross, which we do especially in this season of Lent, when we look intently and never turn away, even when the Cross is painful to us, even when we feel the cross in our own lives, if we keep looking: the sting of death doesn’t magically go away; we still hurt, we still suffer; we still die.  But we can survive the experience. 

Staying firmly situated facing the Cross as the center of our entire life, we can survive anything; we can even survive death.  What joyful news.  What joyful news for us on this particular day in Lent called Laetare Sunday, the “Sunday to be Joyful,” when the deep penitential purple of this season is tempered by joy into a slightly lighter shade.  All because we have the courage to look, to keep looking, never to stop looking at Our Lord, who lifts himself up high so that we can survive every sting, so that we can pass through all suffering and doubt, so that we can one day enjoy the eternal bliss of Heaven.  God so loved the world, that he was willing to do this, that he wanted to do this.  You might ask yourself, why?  Why ever would Almighty God subject himself to this.  The answer is simple.  Because you are worth it.  He wants you to see.  And he wants you to know.  That you are worth it.