Fourth Sunday of Lent
March 30, 2003

It was the summer of ‘81 – about mid July, when it happened. On vacation – a side trip/pilgrimage to Dachau, one of the Nazi death camps. Most of the original buildings were torn down. There was a museum, one reconstructed barracks, a memorial chapel and the original room with the ovens. What I remember most about the place, though, was the silence. When people walked through the gates, there was a solemn hush that came upon one. And it remained with you the entire time you were there. Touring through the museum, seeing the faces of those long dead traced in the pictorial history of the camp, walking in the bright sunshine that seemed to belie the suffering that had occurred at this place, you couldn’t help but notice the silence. Not an oppressive silence, but a holy silence, rooted in the blood the Jewish martyrs shed upon this ground.

But it was the ovens that struck me most. To get to them, you had to cross a little wooden bridge over a small stream that cut through the camp. Walking over the bridge, the silence was even deeper, if that was possible. And as my eyes saw the ovens, saw the place where so many thousands had died, a truth of the spirit was born within me. This sin, this horror, was also my sin, also my horror. Though I was not even born during the operations of these ovens, as often as I had looked down upon another because of race, color, creed, orientation; as often as I had nurtured anger or hatred toward another; as often as I had thought myself superior to another human because of the opportunities that I had been graced with – I participated in the sin which made this place a reality.

The line of scripture which comes to me as I reflect on that experience is from today’s gospel. “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up…”. Did you ever wonder what that was about? And did you ever wonder how Jesus – being lifted up – brings us salvation?

The dynamic at work is what happened to me that summer of 1981 – when I had to confront the horror of the Nazi death camps. To come to salvation, you have to see your sin. You have to confront what you have done wrong, out in the open, up front. In the story of Moses that John refers to, the rebellious Israelites were bitten by poisonous serpents as punishment for their sins – and were dying. The serpents were a symbol of their sin, their idolatry, their obstinate refusal to turn to God. The method of their healing was to look upon a bronzed serpent mounted on a pole. They had to LOOK AT their sin. They had to go through the very humiliating and difficult process of viewing the very thing that had caused their illness – so as to come to health. Unless you see you sin, you will never want to be free from it.

Just as Moses lifted up the serpent, so must the Son of Man be lifted up… Thus, we are brought again to the mystery of the cross, and like that moment before the ovens in Dachau, you and I who gaze upon that cross in faith must confront what it says to us: “We have put our God there. We have crucified the Lord. We have rejected and said no and turned away from love incarnate. It is only when we see what we are capable of doing that we can be saved. Only in the lifting up of our sinfulness, in the gazing upon it – at the place where it takes its fullness, the cross, do we come to know salvation. Only looking at the cross, at Jesus lifted up, do we see the icon of what we are truly capable of. Only here is sin truly exposed in all its horror. In the icon of the crucified God, we see clearly on the level of spirit, what we are able to do. We see our sin.

And, only at the cross, where Jesus is lifted up, do we see what God does to that sinfulness. That deeper than the wound our sin creates, is a love that would heal us and bind us up and set us free. Not because of what we have done, but because of whom God is. And we know, that salvation is not of our own doing. It is only what God can do. “For God so loved the world, John continues, that he sent his only Son, lifted up so that we could know salvation…

The journey that began that summer day in 1981 continues for me, and for us. We are called to look upon the icon of our sins. Perhaps it is why coverage of the war is so attractive/repulsive to me. For in every bomb, in every casualty, in every bit of combat – whether you believe this war is just or not – the broken-ness of our world and its darkness is present. And just like that summer, when I stood before the ovens of Dachau, I have to acknowledge that somehow this experience, this evil, this killing stands in need of the cross of Christ. And I have to go through this pain, this acknowledgement of our sins – to the place where Jesus redeems and sets us free. For just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up – for you, for me, for the life of the World…