Some believed ...

Tuesday 5 of Lent

Readings: Numbers 21:4-9; Psalm 102; John 8:21-30

At the centre of our faith is the conviction that the cross of the Lord is become the tree of life for us. In today's gospel reading Jesus speaks about two ways of seeing. One is 'of the world' and is distorted by sin. To such eyes the death of Jesus is just that, a death, perhaps even a kind of suicide since he could have removed himself from the situation when he saw how it was developing.

The other way of seeing is that of faith. This enables us to see his death in a completely different light, to see a meaning in it that is hidden from the worldly vision distorted by sin. Faith sees the cross as the tree of life, not because believers have access to some unusual mathematics which enables them to turn suffering into joy, darkness into light, or death into life. The new way of seeing comes about because faith sees whose death this is: that of the one who always does what pleases the Father, the one who is from above and has been sent by the Father, the only Son from the Father, the one who can say 'I am he'.

Believers move between these two ways of seeing. To sin is to prefer the darkness to the light. But to the eyes of faith a new and radiant vision of God's glory has been revealed, God's love, in the body of Jesus Christ given for the life of the world.