The Sánchez Archives TRIUMPH OF THE CROSS Year B

By
Patricia Datchuck Sánchez

Triumph of the Cross

Numbers 21:4-9
Philippians 2:6-11
John 3:14-21

Strange as it may seem, the cross, i.e., the Roman implement for executing its basest criminals, is the foremost identifying symbol of Christianity. In its crossbars, the cross holds in tension both the ignominy of the manner of Jesus’ death and the triumph over sin which Jesus’ dying accomplished. Because of this tension and the seemingly irreconcilable contradiction that a crucified man could also be God, the earliest generations of Christians generally avoided depicting the body of Christ on the cross. Ironically, the oldest representation of the crucified Christ has been identified as a graffito found on a wall in Rome in the second century C.E. In this blasphemous caricature, a pagan artist carved an outline of a man with an ass’s head hanging on a cross. Another figure is paying homage and the caption reads, “Alexamenos worships his God.”

Because of the opprobrium associated with crucifixion, even among some Christians, and due in part to the intensity of the Christological controversies (which occasioned the Councils of Ephesus 431 C.E. and Chalcedon 451 C.E.), the symbol of the cross was rarely seen in public until the fourth century C.E.

Indeed, during the age of persecution, Christians were fearful of being identified by their oppressors because of this symbol and of its profanation at the hands of nonbelievers. In private, however, the cross and even the crucifix were cherished and accepted articles of devotion. When peace came to the church, during the reign of Constantine (306-337 C.E.), crosses were no longer hidden. The Christian emperor, who made Christianity a licit religion, claimed to have had a vision of the cross; he subsequently had it inscribed on the shields of his soldiers and abolished crucifixion as a means of execution. Soon, the cross was featured prominently in all public places.

Beginning in the fifth and sixth centuries C.E. and continuing through the Middle Ages, the ambivalence associated with the cross dissipated. In an effort to portray the glory and victory which resulted from Jesus’ death, crosses were made of precious metals (gold, silver) and heavily studded with jewels. To underscore its salvific character, the cross was represented as the tree of life (as per Genesis 1:9), entwined with vine-like branches bearing leaves and fruit. There is a mosaic in the apse of the Basilica of St. Clement in Rome (ca. 1125 C.E.) featuring the cross as a living tree extending its tendrils in all directions to all people.

In the early Middle Ages, huge geometrical crosses were carved out of stone, some as high as 20 feet. Crosses sculpted with scenes of Jesus’ passion were predominant by the late Middle Ages. Eventually, the body of Jesus as the triumphant redeemer was featured on the cross, but not until the thirteenth century was Jesus’ suffering body realistically represented. Images of the crucified Christ replaced the jewels and believers were confronted with a dual message regarding: (1) the travesty of human sin; and (2) the profundity of God’s love, even for sinners.

As Karl Rahner (The Content of Faith, Crossroad Publishing Co., New York: 1992) has explained, it was on the cross that Jesus attained the high point of his mission. On the cross, Jesus’ statement that he “must” suffer was realized (Luke 24:26). This is the remarkable and incomprehensible dei or “must” aspect of the divine plan by means of which the seemingly insoluble connection between God’s sovereign direction and human freedom, between God’s love and human guilt, is proclaimed to all. In its own way, the cross also announces that contingent human history has taken on a certain quality of absoluteness. That Jesus died on the cross was a “must”; it had to be and because of that, everything else, his life and work, all of his words --and even the totality of human history-- can only be properly interpreted from that starting point.

In keeping with, and as an expression of this fundamental tenet of Christian faith, every believer is called to embrace the cross and to be signed with it. As early as the second century C.E., Tertullian advised: “At every forward step and movement, at every going in and coming out, when we put on our clothes and shoes... in all the ordinary actions of every day life, we trace the sign of the cross” (de Cor. Mil. 3). The newborn and the dying, the young and the old, the sick and the sound, the good and the evil are blessed by this sign. Baptized into Christ and the community under the sign of the cross, believers are called to live their lives as witnesses to its message of salvation.

When the good news is proclaimed in the assembly, those who hear it signify their receptivity to it by signing themselves with the cross; on their forehead, that its power may illuminate their minds, on their lips, that they might proclaim its truth, on their heart, that they might better understand and realize its challenges. Today the gathered assembly celebrates the cross of Christ, sign of ignominy turned to triumph. By this sign we are being saved.

Numbers 21:4-9

Alabama’s state flag once featured a cotton plant in flower with a rattlesnake coiled at its roots, poised to strike. Underneath this illustration were the Latin words: “Noli Me Tangere!” (“Don’t touch me!”). Years later the snake was replaced by the cross. So also in today’s liturgical readings; the symbol of the snake (first reading) will be supplanted by the saving sign of the cross (gospel).

Represented in a variety of ways in the myths and legends of the ancient world, the serpent was regarded as a positive as well as a negative symbol, portraying both the powers of life and death. As a malevolent totem, the serpent was associated with the chaos-monster who was vanquished by the creator-deity (Myths of Mesopotamia, Babylonia, Ugarit, etc). As a beneficent symbol, the serpent was closely identified with the fertility deities who were thought to be responsible for health and well-being. Many, who observed that the snake shed its skin and emerged from it larger and more vital, associated the reptile with the power of healing and renewal. In Greek mythology, Aesclepius, the god of healing, was said to have received his power from the serpent. As a result of this association, the caduceus or the emblem of those in the medical field features a serpent entwined on a staff.

Influenced by their surrounding peoples and cultures, both the Hebrew and Christian scriptures treat the serpent as an ambivalent symbol. In some instances, it signified evil and death; in others, healing and life. Both aspects, positive and negative, are included in this pericope from Numbers. However, in this context, the serpent was not an independent mythical figure with powers of its own but a sign of God’s power over humankind. The God who could chastise the complaining ingrate with the sting of the seraph serpent (sarap= fiery) also has the power to heal and restore with the same sign (bronze image of seraph mounted on a pole).

Conrad E. L’Heureux (“Numbers”, The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs: 1990) believes that this story provides an etiology (explanation of the origin of a thing) for the bronze serpent in the Jerusalem Temple to which believers offered incense. Some scholars have suggested that there is also an apologetic motif in this narrative. 2 Kings 18:4 recounts the fact that King Hezekiah smashed the bronze serpent in the temple because the Israelites had begun to worship it under the name of Nehushtan. Roland DeVaux believed that the serpent was a Canaanite cultic object which Israel had borrowed and which became incompatible with Yahwistic religion. The incident, as recorded in Numbers, defended the existence of the serpent by tracing it to Moses and the period of Israel’s wandering in the wilderness.

Overriding its etiological and apologetic significance, the primary importance of the serpent story for Christians, is that it functioned as a type of the cross of Jesus. Taking their cue from the first century B.C.E. author of Wisdom, who called the bronze serpent, a symbolon soterias or symbol of salvation (Wisdom 16:6-7), early believers in Jesus recognized the serpent story from Israel’s wilderness period as a preparation for and prelude to the saving mission of Jesus. Just as the serpent’s stings were attributed to the people’s obstinacy, so also, the cross, which Jesus bore and upon which he died, screamed aloud the stark reality of human sin. And just as those who looked upon the bronze serpent held aloft on a pole were healed, so also those who, in faith, looked upon Jesus lifted up on the cross would be saved. This sign of our salvation continues to confront us with the fact of human sin and the wonder of God’s love; its crossbars enunciate the contradiction of a suffering that brings healing and a death that gives life.

Philippians 2:6-11

Just as the vertical and horizontal beams of the cross hold in tension both the ignominy and triumph of the cross, so also does this early Christian hymn celebrate both the absolute debasement and absolute exaltation of Jesus Christ.

A pre-Pauline composition, this hymn was referenced by Paul in his Philippian correspondence as an ideal toward which every member of the community should strive. In the example of Jesus, Christians agree to find a model for that selfless love and giving which fosters holy and wholesome spiritual growth.

John L. McKenzie (Dictionary of the Bible, Macmillan Pub. Co. Inc., New York: 1965) aptly described this hymn as a monument of early Christian faith. The six strophes (stanzas) include the following theological elements: (1) the divinity and preexistence of Christ; (2) the incarnation; (3) the death of Jesus on the cross; (4) the exaltation of Christ in glory; (5) the cosmic celebration of praise in honor of Jesus; (6) the new name of the risen, glorified Lord.

In addition to its theological significance, this ancient hymn illustrates its soteriology by the very arrangement of its strophes. The hymn’s downward thrust is perfectly balanced by its upward elan. In a movement, typically characterized as descent, the divine preexistent Lord who shared the same morphe (substantive form) as God, emptied himself. He willingly surrendered his divine rights and dignity and took on human flesh. Kenosis or self-emptying is an act of positive, purposeful and voluntary renunciation. Jesus’ kenosis found its fullest expression on the cross.

Having willingly endured the ignominy of the cross, Jesus was then exalted in triumph. The upward movement of Jesus’ victory and his glorification by the entire cosmos resulted in his being given a name above all other names, viz., Lord! In Greek, Lord, or Kyrios (v.9), is the name substituted for the sacred tetragrammeton (YHWH), in Christian copies of the Septuagint. In other words, Jesus is exalted and named or identified as God! If the downward and upward movements of the magnificent hymn were to be graphed geometrically, the resulting figure would be a perfect parabola; the point of convergence of the two movements is the cross.

The dynamics of this Christological hymn offer two additional points that warrant some consideration. First, readers of this text may be reminded of the prophecy of Deutero-Isaiah: “So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; it shall not return to me void but shall do my will, achieving the end for which I sent it” (Isaiah 55:1). Christ is the word that went forth from the mouth of God, achieved the saving purpose for which he was sent, and then returned to take his place with God in glory. Second, when Jesus, as Christ, and as the living word of God plumbed the depths of the human experience in order to affect the work of salvation, he did not return to God alone. By virtue of Jesus’ saving death and resurrection, the entire community of the redeemed has been privileged to accompany him; in Jesus’ glorious exaltation we, also, have been raised up from death and are brought home with him to God.

John 3:14-21

At the heart of today’s gospel pericope is the motivation for the downward-upward, debasement-exaltation dynamic which characterizes God’s plan of salvation; this motivation is love, God’s love for the world as expressed in John 3:16. Reformer Martin Luther once called John 3:16 “the heart of the Bible, the gospel in miniature. It is so simple that even a child can understand it, yet it condenses the deep and marvelous thoughts of redemption into these few pungent words.”

In describing God’s giving of the Son, the fourth evangelist, as was his literary bent, used a word that had dual significance. That God “gave” (didonai) his only Son referred, not only to the incarnation, but also to the sacrifice on the cross. With echoes of the Isaac narrative (Genesis 22:2,16), the evangelist underscored the depths of God’s love. It was the only Son of God that was given over for our redemption. Parallel to the act of giving is the fact that God sent (v.17) Jesus into the world; by virtue of Jesus’ being sent into the world, humankind is confronted with a decision. Those who choose to believe in Jesus as given and sent by God are saved and have eternal life; those who opt for the way of nonbelief are condemned by their own choice.

An excerpt from the lengthy discourse prompted by the nighttime visit of Nicodemus, today’s gospel is concerned with the necessity of being born again in water and the Spirit. The Johannine Jesus explains that this rebirth and all the joys of eternal life are afforded to humankind by virtue of the lifting up of Jesus. Hyposothenai (lifted up) is another word with a double meaning. Besides describing the lifting up of Jesus on the cross (John 8:28; 12:32), the term also referred to the lifting up of Jesus in glory. No doubt, Nicodemus, and others like him who were well-versed in their sacred scriptures, recalled the suffering servant prophecy of Deutero-Isaiah: “See, my servant shall prosper, he shall be raised high (hypsoun= lifted up) and greatly exalted” (Isaiah 52:13)

The Johannine gospel reflects the faith of the Christian community who, at the end of the first Christian century, looked upon (Numbers 21:8-9) the cross of Jesus as their symbolon soterias or sign of salvation. Today, we the descendants of our ancestral brothers and sisters in the faith continue to look upon, i.e. to believe in the cross and all that it has revealed to use of God’s love. Because we have been privileged to participate in the whole dynamic of salvation, viz., in the downward thrust as well as the upward elan, we are thereby responsible for those whose lives continue to be mired in sin and burdened by suffering. By our loving care, support and compassionate service, we can extend to those in need an experience of what it means to be lifted up in joy and in glory. Through the witness of our lived faith, we can invite others to look upon the cross as the sign of salvation, to believe and, by virtue of that faith, to know eternal life.

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