Coffee With God

Reflection: John 10:31-42

We are close to the Holy Week. From the fourth week of Lent, the Gospel texts for day’s liturgy are almost exclusively from the Gospel of John. In the last two weeks, we have been reading about the progressive revelation that Jesus makes, of the mystery of God the Father on the one side and on the other side, the progressive rejection of the Jews who became more impenetrable to the message of Jesus. Today’s Gospel presents the second occasion that Jesus’ enemies wanted to stone him. The Jews were celebrating the festival of the consecration of their temple. But why this violence? They want to kill him for insulting their god. This is the irony of our religious practices even today. Many people tend to become protectors of their gods as though god cannot protect himself! Jesus challenged their idea of God. He did not ask them to deny God but to probe further the truth of that God. “You, a man, are making yourself God.” Jews consider this amounts to blasphemy. But Jesus quotes their Scriptures which have God calling some people, “You are gods”. The ‘judges’ mentioned in the scriptures were accepted as people who were chosen by God and had the responsibility to pass judgement – something which belongs only to God. Therefore, in the scriptures, they were called “gods” (cf. Deut 1:17; Exod 21:6; Ps 82:6). To accept the challenge that Jesus raised would mean the Jews to change their belief and practices radically, which was not easy to accept. Therefore, they thought if they eliminated him, they could be left in peace and were willing to kill him. Jesus stood his ground and challenged them based on the signs he performed. Earlier, After his healing of the crippled man, Jesus had similarly nominated the Father as the source of his works: The works that the Father gave me to carry out, these works that I do, they witness that the Father has sent me [5:36]. In referring to himself as the one sanctified by the Father, Jesus used the word that described the festival they were celebrating – the sanctification (consecration) of the temple. Jesus is the new Temple where God would be present and accessible to all. Though they would soon desecrate this “temple” by crucifying him, the Father would re-consecrate (sanctify) him by raising him to new life. His arguments apparently unsettle Jews, and Jesus was in control of the situation. “His time had not yet come”– although it was ominously drawing closer. When the time came, Jesus would return to Jerusalem to face his destiny. The final words of today’s gospel, “Many there began to believe in him” provided a positive conclusion to Jesus’ long and tortuous debate with the Jewish leadership and crowds.