We Are All Afflicted: Sunday Reflection

This morning’s Gospel reading is John 3:13–17:

Jesus said to Nicodemus:

“No one has gone up to heaven except the one who has come down from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.

It’s been a rough week, and really, a rough era in general. We seem very far from the Lord’s love of late, a deliberate choice for some but more of a situational feel for many of us. How did we end up where we are? And more importantly, where do we go from here?

For me, the answer is simple: We go to the Cross. 

Today’s readings seem — as they often do — providential to the moment. That may be especially true for our first reading from Moses, which not just foreshadows the Cross but which Jesus specifically references when talking with Nicodemus. In Numbers 21, the Israelites had begun to rebel again against the Lord and to despair at their predicament. They had no faith in either Moses or God despite their deliverance from the Egyptians at His hands. Even the gift of manna became a target of their ire and cause for their rejection of His authority.

The scripture then tells what happens next:

In punishment the LORD sent among the people saraph serpents, which bit the people so that many of them died. Then the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned in complaining against the LORD and you. Pray the LORD to take the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people, and the LORD said to Moses, “Make a saraph and mount it on a pole, and if any who have been bitten look at it, they will live.” Moses accordingly made a bronze serpent and mounted it on a pole, and whenever anyone who had been bitten by a serpent looked at the bronze serpent, he lived.

Now, the scripture says that the Lord sent the seraph serpents among the people as punishment. That certainly would be what it looked like from the perspective of the Israelites after their latest rebellion. However, consider this in the pattern of human rebellion against God’s authority. In the Garden of Eden, the Lord sheltered Adam and Eve until they defied His authority. Did God smite them? No; the Lord removed His protection from them, leaving them to fend for themselves in the fallen version of the material world He had created for them.

What happens in the Great Flood? The world had entirely rejected the Lord, with the small exception of Noah and his household. Did the Lord send the waters to utterly destroy the world — or did he just remove his protection from them and allow the material world to operate according to the laws of nature that He created?

Let’s consider what follows many ages after this passage from Numbers. The Lord establishes ancient Israel as a land of priests and prophets to allow the world to learn of His Word. The Israelites balk at this and want to control their nation for their own purposes. The Lord allows them to do so, but after the Davidic and Solomonic periods (and to some extent, during those), the kings of Israel fall into idolatry, materiality, and selfish desires rather than trust in the authority and power of the Lord. The kingdom divides, both fall, Judea gets restored, only to stray from the Lord and fall again. 

Did the Lord punish us in those examples? Or did He just remove our protection and allow us to live the consequences of our own choices?

One can see the latter in this passage from Numbers as well. The desert would be full of snakes, some venomous (which is why they are called “seraph serpents” in scripture, a reference to a fiery nature). The Israelites had nearly reached the end of their journey at this point. How did they not get afflicted by snakes in the preceding decades of trekking through these inhospitable lands? 

The reason seems clear: the Lord kept them under His protection while they accepted His authority, and allowed them to realize the consequences of rejecting Him and fending for themselves in a hostile world. To me, this story is about what happens when the Lord lets us grab the wheel and we insist on driving. He who gave us free will allows us to do so, but removes His protection when we do so that we experience the consequences of his actions. 

The story of the prodigal son exemplifies this as well. Jesus talks about a powerful father whose younger son rebels and demands his inheritance in that very moment, in essence treating the father as if he were already dead. The father does as he wishes, handing the son half of his estate. Does he restrain his son? No. Does he protect his son from the consequences of his rebellion? The answer is again no. The son goes out in the world, dissipates his father’s fortune, and ends up enslaved to others and his own appetites. When the son repents, the father welcomes him back with open arms and seeks to heal the damage done (to the dismay and anger of the older son, which is another story entirely). 

That brings us to the seraph staff and the Cross. The Lord still loves us even when we do not love Him. We are His children, even when we assert ownership over His estate and demand that He leave us to do what we will. The Father remains ready to welcome us back to His love and to find ways to heal us as a means to re-enter His protective embrace. 

The Lord had the Israelites look to the seraph staff to be healed, both physically and spiritually, as a symbolic return to Him. The Cross symbolizes much more — an eternal return home by returning to His Word and the love of Christ in our hearts. It is our shelter from a hostile world run by people who believe themselves superior to God or who reject Him entirely.  The Cross shelters us when we finally realize that we have suffered the consequences of our rebellions against God in the form of sin, and we go to repent and ask for healing and the Lord’s grace to return to our hearts and lives. 

It is not easy to truly look to the Cross. It forces us to admit our own unworthiness and our humility. Until we find ourselves enslaved by sin and arrogance, or until the serpents have surrounded us and have begun striking, we’re not inclined to come back to the Father who loves us and to the Son who died to save us. And the shame of that strikes at us like seraph serpents in a way, paralyzing us from seeking reconciliation out of a combination of arrogance and despair, a combination that only the Cross can defeat. 

That’s why our rebellion creates a sense of despair that the Lord has abandoned us, because we are too arrogant to realize it’s the other way around. We have abandoned the Lord and His protection through grace. But that is also why we set the Cross on high, so that all may see it and find healing, even in the midst of sorrow and despair. And that is also why those of us struggling with these afflictions ourselves feel compelled to keep the Cross up and call to others about its power. 

Keep the faith, brothers and sisters. The King is near, as is the Kingdom, and the Father waits to embrace us all.

Previous reflections on these readings:

The front page image is a recreation of Moses’ serpent staff of healing, Mt. Nebo, Jordan. Via Wikimedia Commons.

“Sunday Reflection” is a regular feature that looks at the specific readings used in today’s Mass in Catholic parishes around the world. The reflection represents only my own point of view, intended to help prepare myself for the Lord’s day and perhaps spark a meaningful discussion. Previous Sunday Reflections from the main page can be found here.  

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