Sunday Homily, 14 September 2025 - Fr Paul Rowse, OP

Jesus’ words to Nicodemus are crucial because they show us how to read his earthly life and death.  They’re like lenses which we put on as we watch Jesus go about his public ministry and meet his end.  What we see on Good Friday isn’t just an execution; it’s not just a death of another human being, but a sacrifice which gives life to all of us who believe.

Of all the people we meet in the Gospels, these crucial words are addressed to Nicodemus.  We don’t know a great deal about him, but what we know is important too.  He’s a leading Jew, a member of the Sanhedrin.  He was there at Jesus’ trial on Holy Thursday night.  We meet him twice more after these words in John 3: we hear him ask a challenging question to his own countrymen about Jesus in John 7, and in John 19 we see him bring 100 pounds of aromatics to bury with Jesus’ body.

If Nicodemus is going to believe, he needs a precedent in the Hebrew Bible.  Every innovation needed a precedent to support it, to show how it is faithful to the God of Israel.  This isn’t necessarily the way we think about religious matters.  To this, we would add recognition of what the Holy Spirit of Jesus is saying as a way forward.  We can accept a new direction in life if it comes from Jesus.

So, to demonstrate to Nicodemus how he is faithful to the God of Israel, Jesus draws the parallel between how he will die and what Moses did with the bronze serpent.  I wonder if these words of Jesus returned to Nicodemus on Good Friday night: as Moses held up the bronze serpent, so must the Son of Man be exalted; as people were healed through Moses’ action, so will people be saved for the eternal life through Jesus’ action.

Certainly, that bronze serpent Moses made was just a sculpture.  It had as much power in it as any lump of metal would.  But God endowed that image with his own healing power for his people’s welfare.

And it may seem to many that Christ’s death has no further meaning.  It signals a failed mission, a fraudulent teacher gotten rid of.  But on the cross, we find not just a man, but God’s only Son.  Paul says he is divine, that he is co-equal with God the Father.

But for us who believe, we see the Son of God depicted on the crosses we display and wear.  The One whom we show to others with love and peaceful invitation is the divine priest, the Father’s own sacrifice, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.  We approach the cross differently from other people because we believe.

To refresh our faith and so continue on the way of salvation two things are needed.

Firstly, we need to recognise our weakness.  There’s something not right with us, and this thing we cannot put right by ourselves.  However much we try to do things right, well, perfectly every time, we also get things wrong.  That wrongdoing is the kind of innovation which has no good precedent.  We need saving from ourselves.  So, faith begins again where our self-righteousness ends.  Righteousness is found in God, not in us, and he bestows his righteousness on those who confess their need of him.  Faith starts with accepting our weakness.

Secondly, we need to recognise Jesus’ weakness on the cross.  There’s something not right about that scene too.  It’s not right that the Son of God should be on the cross.  He belongs in heaven, but chose to die our death so that we may live his life.  But he prophesied that the manner of his death would be in imitation of, continuity with, and fulfilment of what Moses did.  Lifted up on the cross, Jesus sees all humanity, every story and sin, and bestows forgiveness.  Exalted by us now in gratitude and worship, Jesus replenishes our goodness from the weakness he once incurred, from the cross.

So, we know how to read the cross.  We know it isn’t just an instrument of execution, but also an altar.  We know it’s not just wood, but the Tree of Life.  Approaching the cross in our littleness, thanks be to God, we find our greatness.

Fr Paul Rowse, OP Parish Priest