Friday in the Fifth Week of Lent, April 11, 2025

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 events of today’s Gospel Reading follow after the Lord Jesus teaching in the Temple courtyard about his relationship with the Father: “I and the Father are one” (John 10, 30).  It is only after two years of curing the sick, giving sight to the blind, healing lepers, and raising the dead that Jesus begins to reveal himself — in words — as divine.  He first establishes the fact of his unlimited power and the approbation of the Father that this carries with it, and only with this done does he teach, “I and the Father are one.”  St. John tells us that a certain number of the Jews “picked up stones to stone Jesus” for the perceived blasphemy, but it should not be assumed from this that all the Jews rejected him.  At the end of the Gospel Reading he writes that “many . . . began to believe in him”.  

“I and the Father are one.”  The Lord Jesus is not claiming that he and the Father are the same Person, and those who wanted to stone him may have interpreted his words that way.  The Lord is speaking of the union between the Father and the Son, the two Persons.  The Jews of the time had no concept of God as Trinity.  For them, God was solitary.  Jesus introduces a radically new idea in saying that he, the Son, and the Father existed in a unity.  In this sense their incredulity almost makes sense.  However, as the Lord reminds the people of his “many good works”, they should have continued to listen so as to understand.  Fallen human nature being what it is, though, it is easier to deny plain evidence and stick to what we think we know than it is to change our minds and think in a completely new way.  It can be done.  The Apostles did it.  Ordinary tax collectors and fishermen did it.  But most of the learned Jews did not, some out of pride and some out of fear.  

“John performed no sign, but everything John said about this man was true.”  Here we see how many of the Jews did adapt themselves to the truth that Jesus taught.  They reasoned from the witness of John the Baptist to the the works of Jesus of Nazareth and they began to see that John was the Prophet foretold by Moses as well as the Elijah prophesied by the Prophet Malachi who were to point out the Savior when he came, and the works this one performed confirmed this.  

It is necessary to keep in mind that the Jews were not expecting a religious Messiah but a military one.  If the Lord had cured lepers and preached war, the mass of the Jews would have acclaimed him as their king.  But because he cured lepers and preached repentance, they disregarded his claims and at last had him killed — and went on awaiting a messiah who never came.

We see how hard it was for these Jews to give up their old way of thinking for a new way.  This helps us to see the difficulties we face in looking at the world not materially as those around us do but spiritually, as the saints do.