Wednesday in the Fourth Week of Lent, March 22, 2023

John 5, 17-30

Jesus answered the Jews:  “My Father is at work until now, so I am at work.” For this reason they tried all the more to kill him, because he not only broke the sabbath but he also called God his own father, making himself equal to God.  Jesus answered and said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, the Son cannot do anything on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; for what he does, the Son will do also. For the Father loves the Son and shows him everything that he himself does, and he will show him greater works than these, so that you may be amazed. For just as the Father raises the dead and gives life, so also does the Son give life to whomever he wishes. Nor does the Father judge anyone, but he has given all judgment to the Son, so that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes in the one who sent me has eternal life and will not come to condemnation, but has passed from death to life. Amen, amen, I say to you, the hour is coming and is now here when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. For just as the Father has life in himself, so also he gave to the Son the possession of life in himself. And he gave him power to exercise judgment, because he is the Son of Man. Do not be amazed at this, because the hour is coming in which all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and will come out, those who have done good deeds to the resurrection of life, but those who have done wicked deeds to the resurrection of condemnation.  I cannot do anything on my own; I judge as I hear, and my judgment is just, because I do not seek my own will but the will of the one who sent me.”

The beginning of today’s Gospel Reading indicates that the Lord is replying to some remark made by “the Jews”, St. John’s term for the Jewish leaders, comprising the chief priests, the elders, and the Pharisees.  However, the words, “Jesus answered the Jews” comes directly after the final verse of yesterday’s Gospel Reading: “Therefore, the Jews began to persecute Jesus because he did this on a Sabbath.”  Jesus, then, is not answering so much a particular remark as the Pharisaical interpretation of the rules regarding  the Sabbath.  

The basis for the Sabbath rest comes from Genesis 2, 2-3: “On the seventh day God ended his work which he had made: and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done.  And he blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.”  The Law regarding the keeping of the Sabbath was very strict, too, for in Exodus 35, 2, we read: “And the rest of the Lord: he that shall do any work on it, shall be put to death.”  This would explain the actions of the Jewish leaders.  At the same time, the law presupposes  correct interpretation, which is lacking in this case.  This is behind the Lord’s assertion that, “My Father is at work until now, so I am at work.”  That is, while God may be said to cease the creation of the structure of the universe on the Sabbath, he did not cease from the ongoing creation of its components nor of the conservation of the universe itself, both of which actions must be understood as work.  The Lord Jesus claims that as his Father did not cease from work he simply carries on his own work.  The idea of God deciding to “rest” is a very primitive one anyway and was not worthy even of the Jews of the time. It assumes too much that God is like a human, who needs rest from time to time.

“For the Father loves the Son and shows him everything that he himself does, and he will show him greater works than these.”  This love of the Father for the Son is work and it did not cease on the first Sabbath nor any other.  The Son, whom Jesus claims to be, sees what the Father has continuously done since the first momentous words of creation, “Let there be light.”  We should note how the Lord expresses this: “loves the Son . . . shows him everything.”  The verb tenses are on the present continuous, not the imperfect, which would be necessary if the work of creation had gone on for a time and then actually ceased.  “He will show him greater works than these.”  As great as the vast display of the universe, still greater than this will be the Resurrection of the Lord from the dead, and the raising of the just. “For just as the Father raises the dead and gives life, so also does the Son give life to whomever he wishes.”

“Nor does the Father judge anyone, but he has given all judgment to the Son, so that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father.”  The Lord Jesus advances his main point: it is because he is equal to the Father in glory and power that he continues to work on the Sabbath.  This glory even extends to his judging the living and the dead.  “Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes in the one who sent me has eternal life and will not come to condemnation, but has passed from death to life.”  To obey the Son and believe in him is to obey and believe in the Father, and this leads to a relationship that results in eternal life.

“Amen, amen, I say to you, the hour is coming and is now here when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.”  The teaching that the souls of the dead waited in limbo for the Son of Man to preach to them already existed in the Lord’s time, as we see in such books as the apocryphal Book of Enoch.  Here, the Lord announces that he himself is the one who will perform this work.  The Lord’s declaration is quite majestic, but it must have shocked the materially-minded Jewish leaders to whom he was speaking.  

“For just as the Father has life in himself, so also he gave to the Son the possession of life in himself. And he gave him power to exercise judgment, because he is the Son of Man.”  The Lord reveals something of the inner life of the Holy Trinity.  He identifies the Son of Man as indeed the Son of God.  By teaching that the two titles belong to the same Person, the Lord teaches that the title “Son of God” does not have the same meaning as it did in the Old Testament where it signified angels, kings, prophets, and even judges.

“Do not be amazed at this, because the hour is coming in which all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and will come out, those who have done good deeds to the resurrection of life, but those who have done wicked deeds to the resurrection of condemnation.”  The Lord also speaks this to the Sadducees who made up most of the Temple leadership, for they denied that there was life after death, that there would be a resurrection of the dead, and that a great judgment of all humans would be given.  

“I cannot do anything on my own; I judge as I hear, and my judgment is just, because I do not seek my own will but the will of the one who sent me.”  The Lord reaffirms that is the one who will come to judge.  He has spoken of the Son of Man and the Son of God judging the living and the dead, and lest anyone doubt that he was speaking of himself, he says this now.  He also confirms the unity of the Father and Son.  His judgment will not veer in any way from that which the Father  would judge.  And though it would be as if the Father speaks his verdicts through the Son’s mouth, the Son is distinct in his Personhood from the Father, for the Father, the source of all life, human and divine, gives this power to the Son just as he has given him life.

The Sanhedrin who taunted the Lord with his teachings on the night he was betrayed to them will one day look with absolute terror when he comes on the last day for judgment.  Zechariah 12, 10: “They shall look on him whom they have pierced.”  St. John quotes these words in his Gospel and again in Revelation 1, 7.  The just shall look upon the Pierced One when he comes and weep for joy, knowing that he is the Son of God and the Son of Man.  But not the wicked.