Lifting up from the earth

‘… And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself’ (John 12:32)

John 3:20-35 (Year A: Exaltation of the Holy Cross)

Here there is a focus on the Cross as the central mystery and saving grace of people in the world. We are said to stand under ‘condemnation’. However, Christ by giving himself up to death on the cross ‘took the hit’ for us. By faith in his dying and rising we are said to be ‘justified’. Through faith and good works (here it can get a little contentious) we are said to be ‘sanctified’ or made whole. 

-  Faith works

-  God reigns
-  People matter

A famous French theologian and anthropologist, René Girard, once wrote in relation to the role of victimhood and rivalry between different groups:

[the victim] ‘is a substitute for all the members of the community, offered up by the members themselves. The sacrifice serves to protect the entire community from its own violence; it prompts the entire community to choose victims outside itself'.

Violence lurks in many parts of the ancient scriptures of various peoples. The Bible is no exception. It reflects the state of development and historical understanding of people. Violence is the means to assert control over a territory and its fruits. The ‘chosen’ ones believe themselves called to vanquish the others who are standing in the way of one’s own people. The quest to conquer and control is also bound up with a sense of moral mission to restore what is right, to uphold what is good and to suppress what is evil – all defined and understood from the point of view of those who contend. Tragically, history is written on tablets of violence and control. Open the newspaper any day or review the history of our own part of the world to see this.

The positive news is that the in the mystery of the cross we are lifted up and brought together. The Greek expression for this feast day is ‘Raising Aloft of the Precious and Life-Giving Cross’

Enmity has been broken down a new way has opened up. A sign of such potential is in the ‘Peace Process’ in Northern Ireland. Never finished, never perfect, always fragile and sometimes seriously set back, the Process goes forward in this land of complex social, religious and ethnic identity and memory.  The scandal of the cross is just that – innocence crucified, defenceless but ultimately victorious in overcoming division.

[A cross by the 'Peace Line' in Belfast, Northern Ireland]