Word to the Wise
Thursday, March 18, 2010 - Thursday in the Fourth Week of Lent
[Exodus 32:7-14 and John 5:31-47]If I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is not true. But there is another who testifies on my behalf, and I know that the testimony he gives on my behalf is true.......The works that the Father gave me to accomplish, the works that I perform testify on my behalf that the Father has sent me. Moreover, the Father who sent me has testified on my behalf......You search the scriptures, because you think you have eternal life through them; even they testify on my behalf......
One way to read the entire Gospel of John is to see it as a series of legal confrontations! The language of testimony and judgment appears in many contexts. This is nothing new in the Bible. Much of the Old Testament is framed this way with mountains and hills called as witnesses in a dispute between God and Israel! In the Gospel of John, however, the background of the material arises from disputes between the early Christian community and the Jewish community which was beginning to expel Christians for their beliefs about Jesus and his teachings. This gives rise to a large scale krisis - a Greek word for "judgment." First comes the testimony of the scriptures and the works of Jesus (this passage comes after the healing of the sick man at Bethesda). Then comes the resulting "judgment" (krisis) on those who refuse to accept the "testimony." Our situation today is different and similar at the same time! The dispute is not between Christian and Jew but between belief and non-belief in a society that rejects faith as a given and chooses a secular "scientific materialism" as the given against which Christianity must make its appeal! The underlying ethical implications of this are enormous! The failure to include "conscience clauses" and prohibition against federal funding of abortion and other morally objectionable practices in the reform of the health care system reflects a background that is "expelling" Judaeo-Christian values as the starting point for ethical behavior! The stakes are nothing less than life and death! No wonder the Greek word for judgment is the root for our modern word, "crisis." The "testimony" of our own lives and our willingness to stand up for the "consistent ethic of life" in contrast to the "culture of death" will be powerful. The poor, the homeless, the unborn, the immigrant, the elderly and disabled will be the first to suffer from the secular morality but soon others will find themselves being "selected out." This is not the product of any given political administration here or there or at any given point. The process has been going on since the Middle Ages. We Christians have failed to provide convincing testimony and the "judgment" is against us as well as against the philosophy that seeks to expel faith from public life! AMEN
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