Love one another as I have loved you - Sunday before Holy Cross

Brethren, see with what large letters I am writing to you with my own hand.  It is those who want to make a good showing in the flesh that would compel you to be circumcised and only in order that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ.  For even those who receive circumcision do not themselves keep the Law, but they desire to have you circumcised that they may glory in your flesh.  But far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world.  For, neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.  Peace and mercy be upon all, who walk by this rule, upon the Israel of God.  Henceforth let no man trouble me; for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus.  The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brethren.  Amen.

The Lord said, “No one has ascended into heaven but He who descended from heaven, the Son of man.  And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.  For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.  For, God sent His Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.”

Galatians 6:11-18

John 3:13-17

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God, Amen.

Then they departed from Mount Hor by the Way of the Red Sea; and they went around the land of Edom; and the people became discouraged on the way.  So the people spoke against God and against Moses, “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to kill us in the desert? For there is no bread nor water, and our soul is weary of this worthless bread.”  So the Lord sent venomous serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and many of the children of Israel died. 

Then the people came to Moses, and were saying, “We sinned, for we spoke against the Lord and against you; therefore, pray to the Lord, and let Him take away the serpent from us.”  So Moses prayed for the people.

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Make a serpent for yourself and put it on a signal pole; and it shall be, if a serpent should bite someone, when the one bitten looks at it, he shall live.”  So Moses made a copper serpent, and put it on a signal pole; and it happened, when a serpent bit anyone, and he looked at the copper serpent, he lived.¹

The view of serpents – snakes – within Christianity is multi-faceted.  It was through a serpent that death became introduced to humanity: we were created to live yet through our disobedience, and through the treachery of the snake, we have brought in death to our existence.  We Christians accept we will die, unless the Lord returns first, but we do not accept death.

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ: do you accept death?  Do I?  The Church’s teaching on this is clear, death is not an acceptable route; that’s why we are against euthanasia, that’s why we are against abortion, that’s why we are against anything which accepts death as a medicine.  We can accept dying – in nearly every service the deacon or priest will lead us to pray, “for a Christian ending to our lives, painless, blameless [and] peaceful.”  We can accept dying – we can support, for example, the hospice movement which has helped so many – but we do not accept death.

We return then, to the image of a snake.  We are fortunate in this country that snakes are not an everyday problem, yet for much of the world they are something to be feared.  For the Children of Israel, as they were journeying through the desert from Sinai to the Promised Land, they were a problem.  In the quotation I gave a few moments ago, from the twenty-first chapter of the Book of Numbers, snakes came into the camp.  The Book of Numbers, the fourth book of the Bible, is fascinating; despite God himself leading his people out of slavery in Egypt, despite protecting his people from the tribes they encountered, despite giving them manna to eat in the wilderness, despite giving them the leadership of Moses, the people were continually grumbling and complaining.

Do you, my brothers and sisters, grumble and complain like they did?  Do I?  Despite the leadership of bishops, despite our spiritual armour to fight demons and foes, despite being led to new life through baptism, despite not manna from heaven but the very body and blood of Christ in our mouths, do we grumble and complain about God and his Church?

In the wilderness, after their complaints, God allowed, sent even, serpents to venture into the camp.  And if I were there, if you were there, would we have complained against God even more so?  Not the Children of Israel who were able to take this as a sign of repentance, of changing their mind.  My brothers and sisters in Christ, we must learn to do likewise.  We come to Church and we pray to God not simply to ward off wickedness and evil in this life but to unite ourselves to God.  We can learn to accept misfortunes in our lives as an opportunity to learn from God to reorientate ourselves – to change our priorities – towards God: in other words, to repent.

Serpents are not seen in the Bible as necessarily evil, the Lord himself calls us to be “as wise as serpents.”²  Yes, it was a serpent who tricked us in the Garden, yet it was by Moses’ rod turning into a snake, and then back again, that God showed him His power.³  Yes, the magicians of Pharaoh were able to do the same with their rods, evil snakes versus the good, yet the good annihilated the evil through it eating them.⁴  “Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Make a serpent for yourself and put it on a signal pole; and it shall be, if a serpent should bite someone, when the one bitten looks at it, he shall live.’”  As the cure for a venomous bite can itself be made from the venom, so too the cure for the serpents’ bites was itself found in a serpent.  By serpents death had come into the camp, by another serpent the Children of Israel were given the means for life.

The Lord draws us to this account in today’s Gospel.  The reading is taken from the teaching of the Lord to Nicodemus who came by night for fear of the Jews, who spoke for Christ before the Pharisees and who buried Christ with Joseph of Arimathea.⁵  He was, therefore, a disciple and a believer, despite the weakness of his faith: St Nicodemus is, perhaps, one to whom we can pray when we have a difficulty with our faith and when we struggle.  I strongly encourage you to read and reread the entire discourse, in the third chapter of the Gospel of John,⁶ to deepen your knowledge of baptism, faith and new life in Christ.

“And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up,” the Lord teaches Nicodemus and teaches us, “that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”  For as by one Serpent are the effects of all serpents’ bites undone, so also by the death of One has the death of all been destroyed: “trampling down death by death,” as we sing in the Apolytikion of Pascha.

How is this death accomplished, my brothers and sisters?  The Lord uses a phrase with dual meaning, “lifted up.”  This can mean both being raised to heaven and being raised on the Cross.  “And I,” says the Lord elsewhere in John’s Gospel, “if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to Myself.”⁷  The Lord was lifted up on the Cross, and it is to the Cross that the Church draws our attention to at this time.  The Cross which is the glory of the Church, the footstool of God. 

We honour the Cross, we give thanks.  We decorate our churches and homes with it, we wear it around our neck, we sign it upon ourselves.  What was a method of torture of the cruellest kind has become for us, through Christ, a great blessing for the whole world.  On the Feast of the Cross we are able to sing,

The Cross is the guardian of the whole world; the Cross is the support and staff of the faithful; the Cross is the beauty of the Church of Christ; the Cross is the mighty strength of kings; the Cross is the glory of Angels; it is the wounding of demons.⁸

Yet crucifixion was the most savage punishment devised by the Roman Empire.  We must not make light of its fierceness; in the position with arms outstretched the victim finds it increasingly hard to breathe: in order to take a breath he must push his whole body up as high as he can, then he drops down again.  Ultimately most victims die of asphyxia, suffocation, rather than blood loss.  The victim would usually be left hanging after death as a sign to anyone else who contemplated causing trouble for the Roman authorities.  Crucifixion is not an easy death but rather a gruesome and barbaric torture with only one outcome.

This is the context that the Lord teaches Nicodemus, “as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”  Having then this understanding of what Christ must go through, he goes on, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son,” that is, gave Him to be crucified, “that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”

We have then, dear brothers and sisters in Christ, in today’s Gospel reading, the means by which we are brought to new life through Christ.  By using the image of the Serpent being lifted up by Moses in the camp, the Lord teaches how he too will be lifted up: saving not only those within the camp but the whole world, that as many as believe in him should have eternal life.  He will tell us his love for us not through words but by his action, by freely ascending the Cross for us.  “For, God sent His Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.”  From the Cross, Christ does not condemn but says, “I love you.  I, who am love made flesh, love each and every one of you.”

My dear brothers and sisters, allow the love of God to enter within you, may the Cross be a reminder that no matter who you are you are loved by God, whomever you meet is also loved by God and that, to be a Christian and a follower of Christ, you – all of us! – are commanded by the Lord to love as he has loved us.  Put aside, brothers and sisters, grumbling and complaining about God and his Church, about family or neighbour, about friend or foe, and love.

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another.  By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.⁹

To our crucified and risen Lord be the glory, honour and worship, together with His Unoriginate Father and the All-holy Spirit.  Amen.

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¹ Num. 21:4-9.

² Matt. 10:16.

³ Exod. 4:2-5.

⁴ Exod. 7:10-12.

⁵ John 3:1, 7:50, 19:39.

⁶ John 3:1-21.

⁷ John 12:32.

⁸ First Exaposteilarion, Matins of the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (14th September).

⁹ John 13:35-36.