Friday in the Fifth Week of Lent, March 31, 2023

John 10, 31-42

The Jews picked up rocks to stone Jesus. Jesus answered them, “I have shown you many good works from my Father. For which of these are you trying to stone me?” The Jews answered him, “We are not stoning you for a good work but for blasphemy. You, a man, are making yourself God.” Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, You are gods”‘? If it calls them gods to whom the word of God came, and Scripture cannot be set aside, can you say that the one whom the Father has consecrated and sent into the world blasphemes because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’? If I do not perform my Father’s works, do not believe me; but if I perform them, even if you do not believe me, believe the works, so that you may realize and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.” Then they tried again to arrest him; but he escaped from their power.  He went back across the Jordan to the place where John first baptized, and there he remained. Many came to him and said, “John performed no sign, but everything John said about this man was true.” And many there began to believe in him.

The Gospel Reading for today’s Mass is taken from the confrontation between Jesus and the Jews, of whom a number were Pharisees, following his healing of the man born blind.  In the verse immediately preceding this reading, Jesus taught them that he and the Father were one, thus again claiming divinity and equality with the Father.

“The Jews picked up rocks to stone Jesus.”  This comment tells us that the confrontation continued outside the Temple.  It seems that the crowd of the Jews pushed or dragged the Lord outside.  “I have shown you many good works from my Father. For which of these are you trying to stone me?”. The Lord knows why they are doing this.  He asks the question in order to return them to reason and to move them to avoid further sin in attempting to harm him.  He also points to his miraculous works because they validate his claim to be the Son of God.  “We are not stoning you for a good work but for blasphemy. You, a man, are making yourself God.”  They have seen the miracles, know them to be true, and still reject the one who performed them.  “Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, You are gods?’ ”  The Lord quotes Psalm 82, 6, in which the Lord calls the judges of his people to account.  He calls them “gods” because of the power they possess.  The Lord uses Scripture familiar to the Jews in order to show that precedent exists for a man to be called a “god”, and if a judge can be so-called, then certainly he who heals the sick, drives out demons, and gives sight to a man born blind can be so-called as well.  Notice how the Lord, in his patience, speaks on a very basic level with the outraged people here.  “If I do not perform my Father’s works, do not believe me; but if I perform them, even if you do not believe me, believe the works.”  The Lord makes a plea here.  It is not to Dave himself, but them.  “Then they tried again to arrest him; but he escaped from their power.”  It would seem that higher officials of the Temple appeared at this point and they made the people put their stones down so that they could arrest him.  They did not do this out of a desire for justice but because they very much feared a riot between the Lord’s supporters and his enemies which could lead to Roman intervention, as had happened in the recent past.  

“He went back across the Jordan to the place where John first baptized, and there he remained.”  Curiously, the Lord did not return directly to Galilee.  He lingered in the Judea wilderness.  Perhaps some of John the Baptist’s followers continued there and he talked with them: “Many came to him and said, “John performed no sign, but everything John said about this man was true.”  Those who came to him had considered the works the Lord had done as well as the prophetic words of John.  They did precisely what the Jews in the Temple failed or refused to do, showing that it was not an intrinsic fault in human nature that caused or causes people to reject Christ but rather ill-will.  “And many there began to believe in him.”  We should understand that to believe in Jesus, in terms of true faith, means to enter an intimate relationship with him.  It means to live his life and to obey the Father’s will.  It is much more than acknowledging his existence or even following his commands.

We should think about how the Son of God suffered from the repeated rejections from the people he had joined when he became man.  If he wept at the death of his friend Lazarus, how much more might he have wept over people throwing their souls away despite his pleading, out of sheer spite?