“So must the Son of Man be lifted up,” Jesus says. There is a double meaning to this. Just as God told Moses to raise a bronze serpent on a pole to effect healing for the Israelites (Numbers 21:4-9), Jesus will be lifted on the pole of the cross. It is a horror to consider this happening to anyone, but so much more when the victim is the perfect Holy One, God in the flesh. It confronts us with our rejection of God, in how we treat other human beings, and in how we dehumanize ourselves by following our sinful impulses—what Ephesians calls “the passions of our flesh” (2:3).
    This is not the only meaning of Jesus being “lifted up,” for “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” The cross is more than the humiliation of Jesus; it is also his glorious exaltation. The crucifixion of Jesus is his coronation as Lord of all, who rules by grace and mercy. By defeating death in the resurrection, he will indeed disrupt the status quo of shame, violence, and greed through the power of love, truth, and peace.
    This was prefigured in the story of poisonous serpents. When the people looked at the emblem of their sin, a bronze model of the snakes that poisoned them after they grumbled against the Lord, they were healed.
    So, when we turn to the Crucified One, we do not find condemnation but salvation. Beholding the Savior lifted up on the cross by our sins, we receive mercy and healing. In the death of Jesus, God forgives and embraces us with eternal life. In the proclamation, prayer, song, and sacraments, we remember and affirm that the crucified yet exalted Christ extends saving love to us and the world.

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