Psalm23│Jeremiah 25.1-14│Hebrews 13.17-25│John 12.36b-50
Psaumes 23|Jérémie 25.1-14|Hébreux 13.17-25|Jean 12.36b-50
The gospel-writer draws
breath today before he - and we - begin the week of Jesus’s sacrificial death. John
is about to embark on his account of Christ’s rejection and execution, but,
with Jesus temporarily removed from the scene (“Jesus departed and hid from
them”, 12.36), he first asks why it was that the people did not respond more
positively to Jesus’s message and the accompanying miraculous signs that he has
been recounting.
Light of the world, Monastery of Saint Nicholas, Dobrunska Rijeka
He offers two
explanations. The first (12.38-41) is that it was foretold in Old Testament
scripture that the people would not believe. He quotes Isaiah 53.1 and Isaiah 6.10.
In the passion narrative, it becomes almost a rhetorical tick to assert that
Jesus is the fulfilment of what was foretold (John 13.18; 15.25; 17.12; 19.24;
19.28; 19.36-37), but in this instance the reference to Isaiah’s vision is also
an assertion about the nature of Jesus: that he is the eternal son of God. The
second explanation is that some who believed Jesus kept quiet about it for fear
of being excluded from the synagogues.
John then inserts a
summary of Jesus’s teaching, including the important assertion: “Whoever
believes in me believes not in me but in him who sent me.” Jesus is not some
rival independent deity. To be for or against Jesus is to be for or against
God. There is no contest and no contradiction. So, the stage is set for the
week ahead.
A thought to hold on to:
the story of Jesus is not simply a story of rejection, of how “his own people
did not accept him” (John 1.11). By the time John is writing, the numbers of
those who have accepted Jesus has multiplied, so that the gospel is also a
story of how “to all who received him…he gave power to become children of God”
(John 1.12).
A prayer for the
persecuted: To those who this day suffer persecution and oppression,
give courage, O Lord Christ, and hope beyond themselves, and faith in God.
Shorten their trial, bring them deliverance, and amid fear, suffering and grief
may love and justice prevail.
Tim King
No comments:
Post a Comment