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Who Do You Look Up To?

Think back to when you were a child.  Can you recall the various individuals that you looked up to?  Perhaps they included an older sibling, a favorite teacher, a star athlete, or even a grandparent.  To look up to someone was to hold them in a place of high esteem.  It was to extend to that person a level of admiration and trust that entailed granting him or her a place of authority in our life. Often it meant we wanted to emulate him or her, as that individual served as a sort of role model for us.   

Are there still people in your life that you look up to today?  Now that we are older we tend to use words like admire, or respect.  Could that be because of the simple fact that we have literally grown up?  Something about the metaphor seems unfitting when you describe a 6’6” man as looking up to his 5’4” grandmother.  But perhaps it is more than simply an issue about height.   

Perhaps as we grow older we become less impressionable and, instead, more self-centered.  Some of this progression is healthy.  As we grow older and our physical and mental capacities continue to develop and mature, a healthy person will grow more centered in his or her sense of identity.  Maintaining a stable sense of identity is important for one’s mental health.  If we do not ever fully develop our internal sense of identity, then we will continually be looking to others to define who we are.  This continual dance to emulate others will ultimately leave us exhausted and confused about who we really are.   

Alternatively, at the other end of the spectrum, if our attention becomes entirely inward looking and we lose our ability to look up then our potentially centered identity becomes, instead, self-centered.  We become rigid in our thinking and our ways of being in the world.  Our ability to experience mutuality in relationships becomes limited by our unwillingness to entertain a new perspective.  Our capacity to experience trust becomes diminished, as we grow fearful of people whose ideas are different from ours.  Having lost the ability to trust, it’s possible that we might still be able to hold respect for another individual, but it’s doubtful that we will ever find ourselves looking up to them.        

Link to the First Reading

This lesson starts out with the Israelites’ growing impatience with God and with Moses.  God sends the poisonous snakes as a result of the sin of their “unwillingness to trust God to deliver them and to fulfill God’s commitments to bring them into the land.”1  Rather than looking up to God and trusting in God’s promises, the Israelites become inward looking and begin challenging God’s plan with their own desires.  In becoming self-centered they lose their vision and their faith in God’s word.    

We can find irony in this text as well, as the very thing that threatens to kill the Israelites becomes a symbol of healing for them.  Having been bitten by poisonous snakes, they are called to look up to the bronze snake in order to be healed.  Here again we see symbols of life and death intertwined.  As one author writes, “The cross in John’s gospel, like the pole with the bronze serpent, signifies both the poison of death as well as the life giving power of God for all those who believe and look [up] to God for healing and new life.”2  Looking up at the bronze snake heals the Israelites from their sin because it is an act of faith that delivers them from their self-centeredness.  Looking up symbolizes allowing ourselves to trust in God’s plan and God’s promises, enabling us to live the quality of life God intends for us. 

Link to the Second Reading

In the second reading the theme of transitioning from death to life continues.  Again we see that God’s love for us is the very heart and source of the gift of grace (Jn. 3:16, Eph. 2:4).  It is by God’s grace that we are saved.  We need only look up to God in faith in order to receive God’s promises. 

When we look up to Christ we become more attuned to our identity as a created child of God.  “For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life” (Eph. 2:10).  When we open ourselves up to following God’s plan for our life, we allow ourselves the possibility of experiencing the full depth and richness of what God intended our life to be; thus, we begin to experience God’s gracious gift of eternal life.      

Link to the Gospel Reading

The lectionary texts for today center around the significance of looking up:  it is an act of faith.  In the first reading the Israelites are called to look up to the bronze serpent in order to be healed and to escape their impending death brought on by the poisonous snakebites.  Here in the gospel reading Jesus draws a direct parallel from this story to the significance of the lifting up of Christ.  Salvation comes to those who look up to the Crucified and Risen One.   

In John’s gospel Jesus’ lifting up refers both to his glory as well as his crucifixion.  The irony of the cross—how death is bound up with new life—is central to John’s gospel.  When we look up to the crucified and risen Christ we receive the gift of eternal life.   

In John’s gospel eternal life is used to describe a fundamental change in our present existence.  It is not solely a future-oriented possibility.  It is something we begin to experience in the here and now.  When we look up to Christ we are engaging in an act of faith.  When we extend our trust and grant Christ a place of authority in our lives, we begin to taste the fruits of eternal life.  When we look up to Christ we begin to develop an identity anchored in God’s promises, an identity that centers on being a child of God.   

Questions for Discussion

1. Who are some of the people that you have looked up to over the course of your life?  What were some of the qualities they possessed that encouraged you to look up to them?  Are there things in your life today, other than people, which you look up to?  What priorities in your life do you grant authority to?  (i.e. money, success, joy, etc.)

2.What do you think looking up to Christ entails?  What are three tangible examples that might help illustrate what this act of faith can look like in our everyday lives?

3. Can you think of any areas in your life in which you have failed to look up to Christ?  What sins might you need to confess in order to regain your freedom to look upward?

4. What does it mean to you that you are a Child of God?  How might being a Child of God play a profound role in your sense of identity, either currently or in the future? 

5. What are some tangible ways in which we begin to experience eternal life when we are looking up to Christ and living in accordance with God’s plan for our lives?