Daily Liturgy and Scripture

As Jesus’s time is fully come, he is drawing ever closer to the Father. He is fulfilling the purpose he has been about with the Father, and as he gets closer to the cross, he also gets closer to the Father. Prophecy is being fulfilled, and people are being divided. Those who are with Jesus are also with the Father, because nobody was closer to God the Father than Jesus in this time of deep purpose.

The power of resurrection was with Jesus even before he Himself rose from the dead. Lazarus’s resurrection was such a powerful attraction to the work of God that Jesus’s enemies wanted to kill him! This was a preview of the resurrection that was to come, because Jesus would prove himself as Lord and true Son of God by returning from the dead as the prophecies about him predicted.

It's odd that the high priest should say he would give Jesus up to save the people, not realizing that the Son of God would indeed sacrifice himself to do just that. The plans of God are not thwarted, and Jesus was part of that plan. Though his divinity couldn't be seen by all those around him, he would achieve the purpose he came for. Sometimes that happens even through his enemies playing a part.

The entire story of Lazarus being raised seems filled with intention from Jesus to perform a resurrection to show God’s glory, and maybe even a preview of his own future. Certainly, resurrection is what all of us who follow Jesus have to look forward to, and Jesus seems more focused on that than the facts of a funeral. Of course, if you knew you were about to raise the dead person, the funeral doesn’t matter much. In the midst of this miracle, those around him are missing what’s going on. Some want him to do tricks, some are mad at him. Some think he’s going to be killed himself. Perhaps all this distraction and missing what God was doing right in front of them was why he wept.

Jesus is again at a festival, and this one commemorates the deliverance of Israel by force by the Maccabees, a violent uprising that gave them the Festival of Dedication (dedicating the new temple after that deliverance). In this time, a true deliverer appears, Jesus himself. He compares himself to a shepherd who cares for his flock, which of course is his form of deliverance contrasted against the violent deliverance of Israel’s past. How do the leaders respond? By trying again to execute violence on him.

Jesus continues his rebuke of the religious leaders who have criticized a blind man who has been healed. In yesterday’s passage, he said they were the blind ones. Today, he takes it a step farther: he says that he is the gateway, and anyone who goes another way is mistaken in their approach. His love for the sheep certainly sets him apart from these leaders, and their treatment of this healed man is pretty solid evidence of that. Thank goodness, by the end, a few start to realize that the healing itself is a pretty good proof of who Jesus is.

What a time for an interrogation! A man miraculously healed, now questioned over and over by the very people who should be happy for him, praising God for the miracle. That’s a true tragedy: not just that the religious leaders were so belligerent toward Jesus, but that they were willfully missing what God was doing in their midst. Hopefully, we will be more attuned to see miracles when they happen, and a spirit of love will guide us instead of a spirit of judgement.

Jesus concludes his conflict with the Jewish leaders at the Feast of Tabernacles by making a pretty bold assertion: "Before Abraham was, I am." This is how God described himself from the burning bush to Moses, "I am." Jesus is further pressing the idea not only that God the Father testifies to who Jesus is, but that Jesus was with the Father before Abraham. It's no small wonder that the crowd went wild, but this is the Gospel. It may not always be popular, but it carries power.

Jesus is defending that he is who he is by invoking a witness to affirm his word: God the Father. Of course, God the Father will now show up and testify on the spot. While that has happened before (remember when Jesus was baptized?), the challenge is actually to Jesus's hearers. If they were actually listening to God the Father, they would see that Jesus is who he says he is.

Jesus, the very Son of God, is at a festival that commemorates God being with the people as they walked the wilderness. It’s easy to be rough on the religious leaders who just wouldn’t believe who Jesus was, but their argument would probably have been many of ours. We know this guy. He’s just a guy. Jesus is up against a difficult situation, but he doesn’t stop being the Son of God, and he doesn’t stop preaching the Gospel. A few even believe, and good for those few. It must have been difficult, but Jesus would later commend even those who had believed without seeing.