5th April
Numbers 21.4-9; Psalm 101; John 8.21-30
To lift up the One sent to the world by the Father is to crucify him, to impale him as Moses put the bronze serpent on a standard during Israel’s years of wilderness wandering as an antidote to the bite of the fiery, venomous serpents God had unleashed because of the people’s impatience and faithlessness. “We have sinned”, the people acknowledged to Moses. “Intercede with the Lord to save us.” Their cry seems insincere, opportunistic: religion turned to when every other remedy has proved impotent. And yet the crucified One hangs, arms outstretched, in a posture of patient, perpetual intercession, even and especially for those whose faith is wavering and undependable, whose relationship to the Maker of the Universe is mechanistic and impersonal. Triumphant over death and sin, he lives now eternally to make intercession, even for us. [Romans 8.34]