BAD FOOD DAYS . . . 9/14/03, Exaltation (or Triumph) of the Holy Cross readings (taking precedence over the Ordinary Sunday, as some feasts do):

In Numbers 21 (4b-9), God's people in the desert are worn out from the traveling. They complain to Moses about the lack of decent food and water. They are fed up, "disgusted with this wretched food!"

In response God gets fed up with them and sends serpents to bite them. They apologize, and Moses, on divine instructions, has a bronze serpent cast and puts it on a pole. If they look on it, though bitten, they will live. They do so, and live.

GOING COSMIC . . . Fast forward to the inimitable Paul, co-founder with Peter of the Christian Church, writing to the Philippians (2:6-11) about Jesus, who "emptied himself," became "obedient to death," and died on a cross, with lasting results including "the glory of God the Father."

He made himself vulnerable to the Nth degree and got cosmic results, which is the big idea today. Brief reference is in order to what we can learn on the everyday level, that willingness to be vulnerable is quite necessary to human contact, about which there is nothing risk-free.

SAVING GRACE . . . On to John's gospel, written decades after Paul pushed the bending-low and being-exalted idea. In 3:13-17 Jesus says he, the Son of Man, must be "lifted up" like that serpent in the desert. "Son of Man" is a major title, by the way, more so than "Son of God," there being many sons of God in the day's usage but only one Son of Man, as in the Book of Daniel, where he is given "dominion, and glory, and a kingdom," as King James version illustriously has it.

As Moses lifted up the serpent, Jesus must be lifted, so that now there is eternal life for believers. How so? Because "God so loved the world" as to give him up to suffering and death. God did it not to condemn the ever-complaining and serpent-deserving world, but to save it. Up went the bronze serpent in the desert, up went Jesus on the cross. Look on the serpent and be cured of serpent bite, look on Jesus with loving fidelity and be saved.

There is little here precisely to take home and act on, except maybe the vulnerability business, but a lot to think about. These readings are for the meditating and praying Christian, to make of it what he can. This is devotional material.