As a Japanese major in college, I was often asked what studying Japanese was like. The best description I could come up with was that it was like someone grabbed hold of my brain and turned it around backwards inside of my head. Everything was different: verbs were at the end of a sentence instead of in the middle; “yes” can often mean “no”; and a simple grunt can mean “yes,” “no,” “maybe” and a dozen other things. Japanese was very strange, and studying Japanese required that I accept a whole new way of thinking. But once I did, I was introduced to a new and wonderful world. Today’s readings are very strange as well. They also convey a message that requires us to accept a whole new way of thinking – a message that leads us to a new and wonderful world. Today’s readings present a series of contradictions. In our first reading, God heals the Israelites from poisonous snake bites through an image of a snake mounted on a pole. The instrument of their suffering, becomes the symbol of their healing. In our second reading, Saint Paul tells how God highly exalted Christ because he humbled himself to the point of accepting death on a cross. Humility leads to exaltation. And in our Gospel passage, Jesus explains that he will be “lifted up” to give us the gift of eternal life. Crucifixion and death bring salvation and life. These readings present a strange reality that is so different from what we expect in this world.
But the Christian message is filled with seeming contradictions. It’s very strange. That’s because our God is mysterious and incomprehensible. As Blessed John Henry Newman said, “Unless thou wert incomprehensible, Thou wouldst not be God. For how can the Infinite be other than incomprehensible to me?”[1] God is beyond our understanding. And so, with an incomprehensible God, we’re faced with a strange reality: a strange reality where God repeatedly offers salvation from the yoke of slavery, notwithstanding our repeated disobedience to his commandments; a strange reality where God humbles himself to take human form, turns water into wine, heals the sick, raises the dead and transforms bread and wine into his most precious body and blood to prove that he is with us always; a strange reality where “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.” (John 3:16) And that brings us to the strangest reality of all: the Cross.
What would you think of a religion that turned to a hangman’s noose or an electric chair as its symbol of faith? What would you think if the followers of that religion wore miniature nooses or electric chairs around their necks, hung them on their walls, or traced them on their bodies? You’d probably think that it was very strange. Well, that’s what we do. The cross is an instrument of humiliation, torture and execution. Crucifixion was the most horrible and the most feared form of execution of Jesus’ time. And yet, we wear a cross around our necks, we hang it on our walls, we trace it on our bodies and we even dedicate a day, today, to exalt it and declare it holy. We must be very strange.
The mystery of the cross presents a difficult challenge to the believer. How can we imagine an all-powerful God by looking at the Cross of Christ? We want a God who “vanquishes our adversaries, who changes the course of events, and who takes away our pain. . . . Faced with evil and suffering, it is difficult for many of us to believe in God the Father and to believe that He is all-powerful.”[2] But faith in our God requires that we accept a whole new way of thinking. Our God’s omnipotence
isn't expressed in violence or destruction but rather through love, mercy and forgiveness; through his tireless call to a change of heart, through an attitude that is only weak in appearance, and which is made of patience, clemency and love. Only the truly powerful can endure evil and show compassion. Only the truly powerful can fully exercise the power of love.[3]Divine power responds to evil not with evil but with love. Suffering and death are conquered because they are lovingly transformed into the gift of eternal life through Christ’s suffering, death and resurrection. This is the strange reality of the cross: through humble, obedient love, Jesus Christ transformed an instrument of torture, humiliation and death into the symbol of his exaltation and our salvation.
So what does this mean for us? Well, it means that we have to accept a whole new way of thinking. We have to accept that “the path to exaltation runs through the Cross because God’s Kingdom is a place of reversals where emptying leads to filling and humility to glorification.”[4] Bulging résumés, high-powered jobs, big houses and gadgets galore will not lead us to our life purpose, to true happiness, to success or to salvation. We “cannot know the meaning of human life without grounding it in the reality of Jesus’ life,”[5] which includes the Cross. We have to conform ourselves to Christ so that “every time we cross ourselves . . . we profess our willingness to take Jesus seriously, to live the radical Gospel fully, and to die for . . . our commitment to God, to Jesus and to one another.”[6] I’ll bet you’ll think twice now before dipping your finger in the holy water font. It’s a strange reality, but one that brings with it the promise of a wonderful new way of living now and for all eternity.
I have to confess that when I started studying theology in diaconate formation, it was a lot like studying Japanese. It felt like God grabbed hold of my brain and turned it around backwards inside of my head. I was catechized as a child, but I had never heard God presented to me in this way. I learned of a strange reality that was hard to grasp, and even harder to accept. Studying theology required that I accept a whole new way of thinking. But with the help of great professors who introduced me to the writings of brilliant theologians, and with a lot of prayer, I finally accepted a fundamental principle that opened my mind and my heart to the strange reality of the Christian message: “The God who comes to us in Jesus Christ, who lifts us up beyond ourselves and moves us to salvation, the God of ecstatic self-offering, the God whose outreach of love is greater than we can think or imagine – is very strange.”[7]
[1]
John Henry Newman, “Meditations for Eight Days,” The Works of Cardinal Newman, vol. 37 (New York, Longmans, Green
and Company, 1900) at 218.
[2]
Pope Benedict XVI, Weekly Catechesis, January 29, 2013.
[3] Id.
[4]
Graziano Marcheschi and Nancy Seitz Marcheschi, Workbook for Lectors. Gospel Readers, and Proclaimers of the Word, 2014
(Chicago, Liturgy Training Publications, 2014) at 253.
[5]
Gail R. O’Day, “The Gospel of John,” The
New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. IX (Nashville, Abingdon Press 1995) at 555.
[6]
Patricia Datchuck Sánchez, “Sign of Our Salvation,” National Catholic Reporter,
vol. 50, no. 23 (August 29 - September 11, 2014) at 23.
[7]
Robert Barron, Thomas Aquinas: Spiritual Master (New York, Crossroad
Publishing, 2008) at 61.
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