Word to the Wise
Friday, April 11, 2014 - 5th Week of Lent - Fri
[Jer 20:10-13 and John 10:31-42]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.
Jesus had great difficulty convincing his adversaries of his relationship to his "Father." This difficulty would be continued for his followers in the years that would follow. The Gospel of John reflects some of that debate. The disciples would appeal to the stories of what Jesus did as "evidence" of his being sent by God. The Christian belief about the Trinitarian nature of God is not involved here and we must be careful not to read that belief back into the Gospel because that teaching evolved from other reflection as well as the gospel two centuries or more later.
As we approach Holy Week, the gospels present us with Jesus in increasing tension with the religious authorities of his time. All his "works" do not seem to matter. He is a threat and they want to remove that threat. The authority for his teaching comes from who he is and not from what he does, but it is through what he does that we are saved. He dies on the cross and rises from the dead. Until that event is celebrated next week, we will have to join centuries of Christians who reflected on what is about to happen and lived with the tension between Jesus and his enemies as well as with the tension between their own lives and what Jesus taught. AMEN