Exaltation of the Holy Cross
They traveled from Mount Hor by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom. The soul of the people was very discouraged because of the journey. The people spoke against God and against Moses: "Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no bread, there is no water, and our soul loathes this disgusting food!"
The Lord sent venomous snakes among the people, and they bit the people. Many people of Israel died. The people came to Moses, and said, "We have sinned, because we have spoken against the Lord and against you. Pray to the Lord, that he take away the serpents from us." Moses prayed for the people.
The Lord said to Moses, "Make a venomous snake, and set it on a pole. It shall happen that everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live." Moses made a serpent of bronze, and set it on the pole. If a serpent had bitten any man, when he looked at the serpent of bronze, he lived.
Hear my teaching, my people. Turn your ears to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in a parable. I will utter dark sayings of old,
When he killed them, then they inquired after him. They returned and sought God earnestly. They remembered that God was their rock, The Most High God, their redeemer.
But they flattered him with their mouth, And lied to him with their tongue. For their heart was not right with him, Neither were they faithful in his covenant.
But he, being merciful, forgave iniquity, and didn't destroy them. Yes, many times he turned his anger away, And didn't stir up all his wrath.
Who, existing in the form of God, didn't consider equality with God a thing to be grasped, But emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, yes, the death of the cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him, and gave to him the name which is above every name, That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, those on earth, and those under the earth, And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
No one has ascended into heaven but he who descended out of heaven, the Son of Man, who is in heaven. As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, That whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only born Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God didn't send his Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world should be saved through him.
There's something almost uncomfortable about the cross becoming a feast day. We celebrate birthdays, anniversaries, harvests — but an instrument of execution? And yet here we are, and the readings help us understand why.
Start with the wilderness. The Israelites are exhausted, complaining, and honestly — who can blame them? Wandering for years, eating the same food, watching the horizon never seem to change. Their grumbling is the grumbling of anyone who has ever felt like faithfulness isn't paying off. And then the snakes come. What's easy to miss is what happens next: God doesn't simply remove the danger. Instead, he instructs Moses to lift up the very thing that is killing them — a bronze serpent on a pole — and make it the source of healing. The poison and the remedy share the same shape.
Notice how Jesus picks up exactly this image in his conversation with Nicodemus. The Son of Man must be *lifted up* — the same verb, the same gesture. The cross is not a detour from God's plan. It *is* the plan. The thing that looks like defeat becomes the axis around which everything turns.
Philippians gives us the interior logic of all this: self-emptying leads to exaltation. Not because suffering is good in itself, but because love that holds nothing back transforms everything it touches. Consider how this plays out in ordinary life — in the parent who gives up sleep, the friend who stays through the hard conversation, the worker who does the unglamorous task no one notices. These small empyings carry the shape of the cross.
The exaltation of the cross isn't asking us to seek out pain. It's inviting us to stop being afraid of it.
Some questions to sit with today: Where in your life are you waiting for God to simply remove the difficulty — and what might it mean if the healing is coming *through* it instead? What does it look like to exalt the cross not as a symbol on a wall, but as a posture in your relationships? And if love that empties itself is what God looks like — what does that change about how we understand strength?