Tuesday in the Fourth Week of Easter, April 27, 2021

John 10:22-30

The feast of the Dedication was taking place in Jerusalem. It was winter. And Jesus walked about in the temple area on the Portico of Solomon. So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, “How long are you going to keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.” Jesus answered them, “I told you and you do not believe. The works I do in my Father’s name testify to me. But you do not believe, because you are not among my sheep. My sheep hear my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish. No one can take them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one can take them out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one.”

“The feast of the Dedication was taking place in Jerusalem. It was winter.”  St. John is referring to the feast we know as Hanukkah, a name which comes from the Hebrew word for “to dedicate”.  This feast celebrates the victory of the forces of Judas Maccabaeus over the Greeks for the control of Jerusalem, and the subsequent rededication of the Temple in 164 BC.  At this time of year a chill would have driven out the warmth of the Fall and the rain would have come more frequently.  “Jesus walked about in the temple area on the Portico of Solomon.”  As usual, John carefully notes the details of the scene, revealing to us that he is giving an eyewitness account.  The “portico” of Solomon was actually a series of columns on the outer edge of the Temple grounds.  It is here that “the Jews gathered around him” and demanded to know, “If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.”  The time and place for this questioning are significant: the feast celebrating the success of the rebellion against foreign occupiers, and at the Temple which was rededicated then.  There could be no more apt setting for Jesus to declare himself the Messiah and to rouse the people to arms, so thought the Jews.  Their impatience with him shows in their demand, too: “How long are you going to keep us in suspense?”

The Lord responds, “I told you and you do not believe.”  He has made clear to them who he is: the Good Shepherd, the Lamb of God, the Son of Man.  The people do not believe what he tells them.  His words do not make sense to them.  No one has appeared in Israel with so much power.  As Nicodemus admitted to him, “You are come a teacher from God; for no man can do these signs which you do, unless God be with him” (John 3, 2).  And yet he does not build an army and preach rebellion, which is what they were waiting for, and the only purpose that they could conceive the Messiah to have.  Jesus insists that he is a different kind of Savior — a true Savior — and that the miracles he performs should tell them this: “The works I do in my Father’s name testify to me.”  He heals, he casts out demons, he raises the dead.  All these are signs pointing to the spiritual redemption he came to bring.  “But you do not believe, because you are not among my sheep.”  That is, they are not truly committed to him; rather, they are committed to their own fantasy about who the messiah should be.  At the heart of their belief lay a terrible materialism that strangled any faith in God that they might have, and blinded them to their sins.  It is the same materialism that causes our society to look for its salvation in purely political and scientific (or pseudo- scientific) ways.  “If only we change the system,” we think.  “If only we find a cure.”  But all of our real problems are spiritual ones and have only a spiritual solution: conversion to Jesus Christ.  Those who wrap themselves in materialism cannot become the sheep of Christ: such a thing makes no sense to them.  It is, literally, unthinkable.  But to those who belong to the Lord, no other possibility for salvation exists.  It is Jesus or chaos, whether personal or societal.

“I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish. No one can take them out of my hand.”  Jesus speaks here of his kingdom, which is not of this world.  His sheep may be physically taken from his presence and even locked in deep underground prisons, which is where the Communist Chinese lock the Christians they catch, but they cannot take them from the hand of the Lord.  

“My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one can take them out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one.”  The Lord here teaches the truth of the Holy Trinity, the existence of Almighty God: the three Persons are distinct: “My Father who has given them to me”; and the unity of the Persons: “The Father and I are one.”  This goes far beyond the original demand made him by the Jews, and yet they could have accepted his statement on the basis of, say, the united intentions of the Father and Jesus: The Father and I share the same intention as to saving Israel.  But they do not, because they do not hear him aright with their material way of thinking.

Even the most religious of us is tainted to some degree by the materialism all around us.  Through prayer, vigilance, charitable acts, and the reading of the Gospels we can overcome this, with God’s help, and so be sheep worthy of so great a Shepherd.