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 the dramatic events in the Old Testament, all the triumphs and disasters, the victories and defeats, the events of epic scale down to those most intimate, 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’ve seen already how so many events in the Old Testament, every succeeding covenant, from Noah to Abraham to Moses, have pointed more and more powerfully, more and more directly to Christ as the fulfillment of all that has come before.  And 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 covenant with God, their sacred family bond, alive and well.  Today we see them straying.  Words like “infidelity” and “abomination” and “pollution of the Holy Temple.”  The people don’t even make it past the very First Commandment, let alone any of the other nine.  So what we see today, in our journey through covenant history, is how the Lord fixes that.  Fixes our disobedience.  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 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.”  This is 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 Egyptian slavery.  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 the 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 a serpent, put it on a pole and raise it up, and have 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, in addition to just dripping with beautiful irony, this moment points right 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 wound: a great foreshadowing of the Cross of Christ. 

On Our Lord’s Cross, Life Himself was put to death, raised up high.  Each one of us is wounded by a very particular sting: the sting of death.  But, when we look intently upon that Death of his, when we look at this instrument of death raised up high, we find our healing, and our life.  Looking up at the serpent on the poledidn’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 do especially in this season of Lent, when we look intently and never turn away, even when the Cross is painful and grievous to us, if we keep looking: the sting of death doesn’t magically go away; we still hurt, we still suffer; 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 pass through all suffering and doubt, so that we can one day enjoy the eternal bliss of the Resurrection.