Gospel of 3 April 2020
Friday of the Fifth Week of Lent
John 10:31-42
They wanted to stone Jesus, but he eluded them
The Jews fetched stones to stone him, so Jesus said to them, ‘I have done many good works for you to see, works from my Father; for which of these are you stoning me?’ The Jews answered him, ‘We are not stoning you for doing a good work but for blasphemy: you are only a man and you claim to be God.’ Jesus answered: ‘Is it not written in your Law: I said, you are gods? So the Law uses the word gods of those to whom the word of God was addressed, and scripture cannot be rejected. Yet you say to someone the Father has consecrated and sent into the world, “You are blaspheming,” because he says, “I am the son of God.”
If I am not doing my Father’s work, there is no need to believe me; but if I am doing it, then even if you refuse to believe in me, at least believe in the work I do; then you will know for sure that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.’
They wanted to arrest him then, but he eluded them.
He went back again to the far side of the Jordan to stay in the district where John had once been baptising. Many people who came to him there said, ‘John gave no signs, but all he said about this man was true’; and many of them believed in him.
Reflexion
We are coming to the end of the Lenten Season, and Holy Week begins this Sunday with Palm Sunday. We will be making our annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem, not in person but in character and spirit, as we follow Jesus to meet His destiny. Today’s readings provide us with a reason for His arrest, trial and crucifixion. He is accused of committing blasphemy – insulting God by claiming that He is God. Though the charges are false, in that there is no blasphemy, but the content of His claim is true - He is God.
It all began with the question on everyone’s mind – what is the source of His authority and power to teach and to work miracles. Instead of recognising and accepting Jesus as indeed the “Son of God,” they accused Him falsely as one “who claims and makes Himself only as God.” What is the “defence” of Jesus? It’s simply this – it can’t be blasphemy if it is true. Jesus does not “make Himself” God; He is God.
Whenever we recite the longer creed, during Sunday Mass outside of Lent and Easter, we profess that Jesus Christ is: “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not made, con-substantial with the Father.” By saying this part, we are professing that Jesus is fully God. Even up to our days, Christ’s divinity remains unacceptable to so many people. For some it remains blasphemy, for others utter nonsense.
For those who argue that they can only accept Jesus as a moral human teacher but not God, the great Christian apologist C. S. Lewis, once an atheist himself, gives this answer: “Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. ... and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God.” (Mere Christianity)
It is urgent that we remember that the man who goes up to Jerusalem to meet His fate is not just any mortal hero. It is God Himself who goes to meet His fate, to fulfil His mission, to atone for the sins of man on the cross, to defeat the power of death and sin by His resurrection. Thank God for that. For if it was just a mere mortal who died on the cross, then our task is merely to eulogise him; though our future is bleak. But because this man is also God, we give thanks for the immeasurable graces that have been won for us by His sacrifice. If he was just man, we would remain prisoners to our fate, but because this man was also God, we have been set free from the shackles of sin and death in order that we may share in His gift of eternal life.