RBWords

     The gospel scripture today from the Gospel According to John continues from yesterday's account of the healing of the crippled beggar.  We encounter two of the major features of this gospel in these two passages.  The first is that the "signs" of Jesus serve as a kind of introduction/platform for a discourse that follows.  In this case, Jesus had performed a sign on a sabbath.  To the Jewish religious authorities, this constituted "work" and was a violation of God's law.  The discourse that follows builds on the notion of Jesus' "works:" My Father is at work until now, so I am at work."

     The second major feature is the use of the "Amen, amen...." statements.  This expression is equivalent (roughly) to our saying, "Listen up! This is important."  The quotation at the beginning of this reflection is an example and contains two "Amen, amen..." statements which themselves contain a major theological theme of the Gospel According to John - what theologians call "realized eschatology>"  This is a fancy way of saying that the eternal life promised by Jesus does not begin only at death.  It begins with faith in Jesus as the one whom God has sent.  Jesus will repeat this again in the very next chapter in response to the question, "What do we have to do to accomplish the work of God?"  He says, "This is the work of God, that you believe in the one whom he has sent."

     It can be difficult to understand how our religious faith in the present is an experience of eternal life.  Our idea of this is strongly connected to life beyond the grave.  But Jesus tells us that our relationship to him is, in fact, eternal life.  The strong contrasts we hear in this gospel between darkness and light or blindness and sight are meant to contrast between belief and unbelief.   Jesus' suffering, death and resurrection are meant to be the ultimate "works" that offer eternal life to the eyes of faith.  Do we believe in him as the one whom God has sent?  AMEN