4th Sunday of Lent, Year B, 2021

My Dear People, 

Jesus employs a biblical figure to explain how he will reveal the Father and bring us eternal healing: 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.  This is the first of three occasions in the Gospel where Jesus refers to his death on the cross as being “lifted up” (also 8:28; 12:32). The verb “lifted up(hypsoo) has a twofold meaning. It can mean lift up in a literal sense, as in Jesus being physically lifted up from the ground on the cross. It can also mean lift up in the sense of exalt. Jesus uses the word in both senses. Jesus’ being lifted up in anonymity from the ground while on the cross will also be the moment of his exaltation when he preeminently reveals God’s love. Like the little “Lamb of God” (1:29), the mention of “lift up” is an allusion to the Suffering Servant in Isaiah 53. In the Septuagint text (LXX) of Isa 52:13, the Lord says that his servant will be “lifted high”—using the same Greek verb—“and be exceedingly glorified.” The same Servant, “like a lamb led to slaughter. . . took away the sins of many” (Isa. 53:7, 12 LXX). The Son of Man, who will be lifted up, is also “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). Jesus unfolds the mystery of his cross by referring to the bronze serpent raised up by Moses in the wilderness (Num 21:4-9). In that incident, the Lord afflicted the Israelites with fiery serpents as a punishment for their rebellious complaining, and the Israelites then appealed to Moses to intercede for them. God instructed Moses to make a bronze serpent and affix it to a pole. When an Israelite gazed at the symbolic portrayal of the effects of his sin, the bronze serpent, he was granted healing and life (21:9). Similarly, whoever gazes in faith at the ultimate effect of human sin, the crucifixion of the Son of God, is changed and given life eternal. This vision of faith looks through the sign to the spiritual reality. Thus, a living faith experience of heavenly realities becomes the means of entry into eternal, divine life. With this biblical example for Nicodemus, Jesus opens up the possibility of a spiritual understanding of his own tradition, inviting Nicodemus to genuine faith in him. 

Having set forth Jesus’ teaching about eternal life, which his cross makes available and into which believers are born by the Spirit’s action, the Evangelist now penetrates to the heart of this Gospel message: 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. The Father’s love for the world leads him to give his only son, his all, for the world’s salvation. The world is under condemnation and in spiritual darkness on account of sin, but the Father does not want any to perish (see 2 Peter 3:9). Hence, he gives his Son so that the world might be saved through him.  The gift of salvation, which the Father offers us all through Jesus, is eternal life, a participation in the divine life of the Trinity. We accept this gift through faith in Jesus. Faith is yielding to the action of the Spirit, who first moves a person to assent to what God has revealed and to commit one’s whole life to God. As Jesus will later tell a crowd, faith is our consenting to and cooperating with God’s work in us; “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him” (6:44).

The human response to this transaction has the most serious of consequences, for the decision for belief or unbelief in the Son is directly linked to eternal life or condemnation: Whoever believes in him will not be condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.  One either accepts this witness of God and believes in “the name,” meaning the reality, of the Son of God, or one refuses the witness and remains under condemnation and in the darkness of sin. The Evangelist explores the inner dynamics of belief or unbelief through a contrast between coming to the light or staying in the darkness. In doing so, he summarizes an important theological theme in the gospel: judgment. 

And it is the verdict, that the light came into the world. The Father sent his Son into the world out of love. As the spiritual light, The Son comes into the fallen world, which is enshrouded in the darkness of sin(1:5; 8:12; 9:5).As the light shining in the darkness, the presence and the work of the Son in the world necessarily provokes a response: people respond to the light with either faith or unbelief. Thus, the Son’s appearance is a situation of judgment. It is a crisis in the deepest sense: krisis is the Greek word translated as “verdict.” Ultimately there are only two options: either people receive the light, or they reject him. 

John makes clear the dynamics of the faith in ways that are both honest and familiar: but people preferred darkness to light, because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come toward the light, so that his works might not be exposed.  The decision for faith or unbelief is not simply an intellectual matter: it also has moral dimensions. John unmasks our reluctance to break off from our evil ways and comes into the light of truth as a consequence of our attachment to our evil acts. We hesitate to embrace the truth because it means having to give up all those sinful behaviors. Pointing to the same dynamic, St. Paul speaks of the willful refusal of God’s revelation by those who “in their wickedness suppress the truth” (Rom. 1:18). As St. Augustine comments, people “love the truth for the light it sheds but hate it when it shows them up as being wrong.” 

But whoever lives the truth comes to the light. Coming to Christ in faith requires that people turn away from sin and embrace a way of life marked by love, in imitation of Jesus (13:34-35). If we are animated and empowered by God’s own action, the divine light ultimately reveals the true character of our lives: so that our works may be clearly seen as done in God. 

Yours in Christ, 

Fr. Vincent Clemente

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