Thursday March 31, 2022

Thursday of 4th Week in Lent

 

Jesus Mediator

From today on and in the Holy Week, the opposition between the Jewish leaders and Jesus is growing.

People always tend to adore their own god – a god or gods made in their own image and likeness, rather than accepting in humility, conscious of our limitations, that we are made in the image and likeness of God.

But we are fortunate enough to have Christ – as the Hebrews had Moses – a mediator who pleads for us, whom we can easily accept and identify with because in him we can recognize one of us, who opts for people, who defends us, who is involved with us in spite of our failures.

 

First Reading: Exodus 32:7-14 

God spoke to Moses, “Go! Get down there! Your people whom you brought up from the land of Egypt have fallen to pieces. In no time at all they’ve turned away from the way I commanded them: They made a molten calf and worshiped it. They’ve sacrificed to it and said, ‘These are the gods, O Israel, that brought you up from the land of Egypt!’”

God said to Moses, “I look at this people—oh! what a stubborn, hard-headed people! Let me alone now, give my anger free reign to burst into flames and incinerate them. But I’ll make a great nation out of you.”

Moses tried to calm his God down. He said, “Why, God, would you lose your temper with your people? Why, you brought them out of Egypt in a tremendous demonstration of power and strength. Why let the Egyptians say, ‘He had it in for them—he brought them out so he could kill them in the mountains, wipe them right off the face of the Earth.’ Stop your anger. Think twice about bringing evil against your people! Think of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants to whom you gave your word, telling them ‘I will give you many children, as many as the stars in the sky, and I’ll give this land to your children as their land forever.’”

And God did think twice. He decided not to do the evil he had threatened against his people.

 

Gospel: John 5:31-47 

 “I can’t do a solitary thing on my own: I listen, then I decide. You can trust my decision because I’m not out to get my own way but only to carry out orders. If I were simply speaking on my own account, it would be an empty, self-serving witness. But an independent witness confirms me, the most reliable Witness of all. Furthermore, you all saw and heard John, and he gave expert and reliable testimony about me, didn’t he?

 “But my purpose is not to get your vote, and not to appeal to mere human testimony. I’m speaking to you this way so that you will be saved. John was a torch, blazing and bright, and you were glad enough to dance for an hour or so in his bright light. But the witness that really confirms me far exceeds John’s witness. It’s the work the Father gave me to complete. These very tasks, as I go about completing them, confirm that the Father, in fact, sent me. The Father who sent me, confirmed me. And you missed it. You never heard his voice, you never saw his appearance. There is nothing left in your memory of his Message because you do not take his Messenger seriously.

 “You have your heads in your Bibles constantly because you think you’ll find eternal life there. But you miss the forest for the trees. These Scriptures are all about me! And here I am, standing right before you, and you aren’t willing to receive from me the life you say you want.

 “I’m not interested in crowd approval. And do you know why? Because I know you and your crowds. I know that love, especially God’s love, is not on your working agenda. I came with the authority of my Father, and you either dismiss me or avoid me. If another came, acting self-important, you would welcome him with open arms. How do you expect to get anywhere with God when you spend all your time jockeying for position with each other, ranking your rivals and ignoring God?

 “But don’t think I’m going to accuse you before my Father. Moses, in whom you put so much stock, is your accuser. If you believed, really believed, what Moses said, you would believe me. He wrote of me. If you won’t take seriously what he wrote, how can I expect you to take seriously what I speak?”

 

Prayer

Lord our God, we know,
perhaps more in theory than in practice,
that you are with us,
that you are our God and we your people.
Forgive us, Lord, when we fashion
our own gods made in our own image –
honor, power, prestige,
things to which we are attached and enslaved.
Remind us again and again
that you are our loyal God,
who made us in your own indelible image
and who shows us your perfect likeness
in Jesus Christ, your Son and our Lord. Amen.

 

Reflection:

Re-read the Scriptures to deepen our faith

Today we are ten days away from the beginning of Holy Week. It is a good time to renew our commitments we have taken up on the Ash Wednesday. We began with prayers fasting for world peace. Because it is the Lenten season, we are probably a bit more spiritual than at some other times of year; probably a bit more patient, a bit more humble. This is good – and worth DOING more consistently.
John the evangelist uses a literary style in his Gospel to make it effectively look like a trial that Jesus conducts, where the religious leaders are exposed. The Gospel presents a kind of court-room investigation where Jesus would conduct his own defence. In Jewish law, truth was to be ascertained by the testimony of two or more witnesses. From conducting his own defence, Jesus would move to assume the role of prosecutor, with the Jews becoming the defendants.
Jesus brings in four witnesses in his defence: God the Father – His own Father, John (the Baptist), his own life and signs he performed, and the Hebrew Scriptures – The Thora and the Prophets
But no matter what the arguments of Jesus were, the Jews were not going to accept him. Decades later, while writing the Gospel, John presents those four witness of Jesus in an attempt to encourage the Christians of the early Church. The Church was facing severe persecutions and John brings up these witnesses to tell the disciples why should they continue to believe in Jesus.
It was the profound experience of the risen Jesus that gave the Christians of the early Church the strength to face persecutions courageously. Now John wants his community to meditate on this living presence of Jesus amidst them. John wants them to meditate on the life, teachings and signs of Jesus and also to re-read their Scriptures in the light of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection.
As we draw closer to the Holy Week and Easter, the Church invites us to meditate on why do many people continue to close their minds and hearts to Jesus? The Jewish leadership of Jesus’ time refused to accept him because of their faulty understandings of the scripture and traditions. They were afraid that acceptance of Jesus would jeopardise their social status and authority. Today, the Church invites us to re-read the scriptures in the light of various happenings in the world, where Christ is still rejected by many and the life of our universe is threatened by wars and violence.
What are the concerns that trouble us as Christians, and that threaten our life in faith?

 

Video available on Youtube: Re-read the Scriptures to deepen our faith