Friday in the Fifth Week of Lent, March 22, 2024

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 Jews to whom Jesus had been talking knew very well who he claimed to be, but they do not link his statements with the evidence in support of them — the signs, the miracles.  Those which the Lord had performed in Judea and Galilee showed beyond doubt that he was no ordinary individual.  Yet, when that individual tried to explain who he was, they rebelled with rage.  “I have shown you many good works from my Father. For which of these are you trying to stone me?”  This is a plea, but not one designed to save his life; rather, the Lord is trying to save theirs, to get them to reflect and to make the connection between what he has done and what he has said.  “You, a man, are making yourself God.”  The people understand that  Jesus has claimed to be the Son of God, that he is divine, and that he is equal to the Father, but they will not consider the abundant evidence he presents: the miracles, the Scriptures, and the testimony of John the Baptist.  

“Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, You are gods’?”  The Lord counters now that if they will not accept him as divine, they ought to grant that he, with all his power, is at least on the same level as those others whom Scripture regards as “sons of God”, namely, kings, prophets, judges, and priests, who possessed no such power.   It might seem that he weakens his own argument for who he is by resorting to such a defense, but at this point he is trying to keep them from committing a most heinous sin.

“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.”  If he was not the Son of God, he would have no power; only God could do what he had done.  The rage of the crowd is instructive.  The people do not simply walk away as though he were a mad man or possessed.  They have seen what he has done in terms of his miracles.  They have heard his claims.  But they do not want to believe him, and for fear that they will, they want to stone him, to silence him.  It is much like a guilty person trying to silence the incessant cry of his conscience.

“Then they tried again to arrest him; but he escaped from their power.”  Others among the crowd sought to detain him, to bring him before the chief priests, but as the Lord had often done before, beginning at his own home town, he evaded them.  When the Lord did this, time and again, he simply walked through the midst of the people seeking to harm them.  The angels cleared the way for him.  He loved these people too much to disrespect their free will choices, and went away from them lest they commit sin by causing him injury.  “He went back across the Jordan to the place where John first baptized, and there he remained.”  It is interesting that he went back to where he had started his Public Life.  Some of John’s disciples surely remained there, carrying out the work of their master even after his death, but it was a remote location, one where only those who wanted to find him, would.  The ones whose hearts felt the love and power of his Heart, found him.  “Many came to him and said, “John performed no sign, but everything John said about this man was true.”  People began to reflect, too, on the miracles and what they meant.  The Lord in the pause of his ministry here, was giving grace a chance to work on those who heard him and heard about him.  The call of the Lord is like a sliver that gets under the skin: a person can try to ignore it, but it gradually becomes all the person can think about and so has to do something about.

“And many there began to believe in him.”  They “began”.  They learned to believe, cooperating, little by little, with the grace they had received, until full faith blossomed.