a thought for the day (a reflection on the lifting up of the Son of Man)
It was my turn to do the reflection for today in chapel again this morning. I actually drafted this last Sunday, before the week went the way it went, and then revised it again yesterday — but the image I’m reflecting on has been something that I’ve had in my mind all week, the tiniest sliver of solace at times.
(The readings for today were John 3:14-21 and Numbers 21:4-9, and the image is from Mount Nebo)
So the Son of Man must be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
This image appears again, later in John, after Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem, as he says, ‘When I am lifted up, I will draw all people to myself.’
This is our last Sunday morning reflection here before Easter, so forgive me for running ahead a little bit and focusing our reflection today on this image of Jesus Christ, the Son of Man, lifted up on the cross.
Jesus, lifted up, bringing life and drawing all people to him.
We know what is going on here: this is a foreshadowing of Jesus’ crucifixion — the event that we are moving towards at present. But let’s take the time to reflect on an aspect of it.
One of the (many) things I’m fascinated by is time: what it is, how we experience it, talk about it, make meaning in it. I think it goes along with being a historian, because history is the practice of making sense of the things that happen in time.
John’s gospel is also fascinated by time. There is a timelessness in that famous in the beginning — the eternity of God existing outside chronological time, that Jesus descends from into the world. We get this sense that time as God knows it is different to time as we know it. And Jesus talks about time in the gospel; my hour has not yet come, he says at the Wedding of Cana; my hour has come, on his triumphal entry to Jerusalem. This hour, time, in John, points towards the moment when Jesus will be lifted up. To the crucifixion.
This moment — this event — of lifting up is the moment where God’s time and human time meet and mingle. And in some inexplicable way we are able to see and sense what God is doing and are drawn towards God.
But it isn’t just us as people who are drawn towards this event. Augustine said all of time participates in the eternity of God’s life because of the event of the cross. The whole of time, all of history is drawn towards it.
It’s easy, as humans, to think history as a series of linked events happening over time through the past as we move towards an end of some kind. We see it through a teleology of progress: things can only get better. But if we put Jesus’ lifting up at the centre of time and of history, we will understand the things that happen in the world in a different way — through a teleology of redemption.
When Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, the Israelites who had been bitten by snakes were healed. When Jesus is lifted up, this healing becomes all-encompassing: all people, all places, all ills, for all time.
It’s an image and an idea that I’ve found helpful this week, which has been a rough one for me, as well as for many people — the hard end of the Lent term, the pandemic, the news of Sarah Everard’s death. Without trying to say, ‘It will all be alright in the end, because…’ meditating on the image of the cross at the centre of time and history has provided some solace.
I want to close by reading a poem by Seamus Heaney from The Cure of Troy, which I think express the power of this idea beautifully, and which was the first thing that came to my mind as I began to prepare this reflection. As you listen, hold in your mind the image of Jesus Christ, the Son of Man, lifted up, drawing all things to him.
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History says, ‘Don’t hope
On this side of the grave,’
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.So hope for a great sea- change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that a further shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles.
And cures and healing wells.Call miracle self-healing,
The utter self revealing
Double-take of feeling.
If there’s fire on the mountain
And lightening and storm
And a god speaks from the sky…