The Word Of Peace
Homiletic Reflections On Peacemaking

Deacon Robert M. Pallotti, D. Min.

4th Sunday in Lent, Cycle B

April 2000

So Must the Son of Man be Lifted Up

Some of the most memorable words uttered at any national convention were these by Jesse Jackson in 1988. These are words that lift up before the eyes of the nation and the world a vision of hope. It was and is a vision of peace and belief that we are not fated to what is and can be co-creators with each other and to create things, as they ought to be. These are words that challenge and weaken the night so that the promise and of a new day will hold sway in our hearts and in the world. They are words that shatter the illusion that we are doomed to the worst. They are words that remind us that we are loved and we are worth that love!

The Son of Man will be lifted up. This image of the crucified and exalted Jesus that John lifts up for us to day is the sign and reality of God’s saving power that is the bedrock of our hope. It is the ensign of the unlimited love of God for human beings and the creation. The raising of Jesus tells us that God is with us in all things. It tells us that despite the hardships, and seemingly senseless suffering in the world and our lives, God chooses to stay with us to suffer with and to lead us out into a new land.

This we see in the liberation of exiled Judah coming is the person of the Persian King Cyrus—a gentile, a pagan. God is a God whose saving action can employ any number of surprising solutions to the predicaments of humanity. God is a God of surprises that often confounds our ways of seeing and understanding. Such surprises are a gift from our God.

These actions by God are meant to bring healing and reconciliation to humanity. The serpent that Moses holds up in the desert was a sign of God’s nourishing and healing presence. In fact the serpent is used today as a sign of the healing profession in the form of the caduceus. These are easy words to preach but the day to day world seems to overwhelm many and us at times. It was only a year ago that hundreds of thousands refugees were fleeing from the war ravaged region of Kosovo. Such an international crisis is all too often acted out on the stage of history. Too many exiles, too many broken bodies and broken hearts! Too many dreams crushed by the onslaught of tyranny. Yet, the Son of Man has been lifted up. The night, the darkness, the fear and terror of history have been defeated. Such things are not our future and were not meant to be our future. Our future is the unlimited and surprising love of God.

Sometimes this is a hard thing to believe! We look at the world and we can easily believe that God has condemned the world. But Jesus comes not as God’s condemnation but as God’s salvation. The loving Father wants to lose none of us and none of the creation. If the world appears condemned at times maybe it is human beings that have made it appear so. God did not invent nuclear weapons or germ warfare—the human race did. God did not build the ovens at Auschwitz—normal human beings did. One Jewish rabbi who survived Auschwitz was asked by a reporter, "Didn’t many of you ask where was God, was there a God?" The rabbi answered, "Some did yes, but many more asked, "Where was humanity, was there a humanity?"

Yes the love of God has come embodied and lifted up for us to dream and to act on creating a world that ought to be. The Son of Man has been lifted up to tell us that love is the answer. It overcomes our fears, anger, unforgiveness and all those things that prevent us and our world from becoming whole.

Our God has enfleshed the dream and we are theliving embodiment of that dream to be brought to a war-weary and sometimes night-filled world. So that all you come to this truth will see and rejoice in the light for they will see our works and know that the Son of man has been lifted up!

Deacon Robert M. Pallotti, D. Min.
Uploaded April 1, 2000