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We are helped in understanding the Gospel of John by realizing it was
written around 90 A.D. The community of the Beloved Disciple (traditonally
known as John the Apostle) had been separated from the synagogue already
for a decade or two. Jewish Christians who professed the divinity of
Christ Jesus were expelled from the synagogue in a prayer called the
Shomneh Esreh or the Eighteen Benedictions. We are in the midst of the
apologetics that the narrative informs us of concerning the controversies
that arose after the Johannine community or Church was formed. It is
placed by John into the time line of Jesus, but is more likely to have
happened during the time of the separation of the Church from the Synagogue
around 40 years after Jesus had died. We see that the crowds or the
ordinary people were leaning toward belief in Jesus as the Prophet and/or
the Messiah. Even the Temple guards are leaning that way according to our
passage. Then comes the opposition from the leaders, some Pharisees, and
the Sanhedrin.Throughout this chapter we are aware of Johannine irony and
his own reflection on the schism between Jewish Christians and the
Pharisees who are the Jews who are the ancestors who continue after the
destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D. The Christian believers would realize
and understand the context of this Gospel better than we understand it.
Facts are there but the person of Jesus is a sign of contradiction as we
have learned from the Gospel of Luke. So we find strains of belief in
Jesus and unbelief on the part of those opposing his teachings and
healings. Nicodemus, whom we learned about in chapter 3, has some common
sense advice to the Sanhedrin telling them no one is condemned according to
the law without a hearing. What we are seeing in this pericope is then the
different levels of belief and unbelief or doubt about the identity of
Jesus as Messiah and as the Son of God. Both titles are highly volatile in
this stage of relationships between the synagogue and the church. The
Gospel of John is a Gospel of decision making for or against Jesus. John
wants the reader to believe in Jesus--his most important theme. So we ask
ourselves who is this Jesus for us?
Homily for the Fifth Sunday of Lent, Cycle C, Lectionary #36. March 25,
2007:
Scripture: Isaiah 43:16-21. Psalm 126:1-6. Philippians 3:8-14. John 8:1-11:
This beautiful story is inserted into John's Gospel and has more of the
literary characteristics of St.Luke's writing style, nevertheless, it is a
canonical part of the New Testament and is inspired. God sometimes write
straight with crooked lines! The woman caught in adultery is a lesson in
Jesus' wisdom and his infinite loving forgiveness. She is brought to be
judged by Jesus in a trap by those who are envious of his teachings and his
healing powers. Both of these strengths of Jesus will free the woman from
those who brought her to Jesus and from her sin. I am sure she followed
the advice of Jesus and became one of his saintly followers. Certainly the
ones who brought her to Jesus had other motives than just condemning her
through Jesus. They were more interested in tricking Jesus into doing the
wrong thing so as to have more against him as he approaches his last days.
The text tells us, "They wanted to trap him, so that they could have
something to accuse him of." Through his own loving compassion and
practical pastoral wisdom he comes up with a solution that frees her from
them and also dismisses them from their own plot against him. We learn
that they too have sinned as one by one from the eldest down to the last
one peals away after they hear Jesus and watch him "writting" on the
ground. We end up seeing that Jesus is all alone with the woman as the
scene ends and has a beautiful forgiving and happy ending. "Then Jesus
looked up, and asked her, Woman, where are thy accusers? Has no one
condemned thee? No one, Lord, she said. And Jesus said to her, I will not
condemn thee either. Go, and do not sin again henceforward." (John 8:11).
This story helps all of us to have confidence in the person of Jesus who
forgives us our sins. We, too, need to be alone with Jesus as she was.
Then we can admit our sins to him and feel his loving forgiveness as she
did. Our asking needs only to be sincere, open, and honest as we speak our
failings to him. The "firm purpose of amendment" is what the woman lived
out. We are to do the same. My reflection on the passage from Paul
offered me a way of being alone with Jesus for it shows us the Paschal
Mysteries of this sacred season and how they are so much a part of Jesus'
final days. They are also central to the meaning of Lent and the Holy
Triduum. Paul says it so clearly," I wish to know Christ and the power
flowing from his resurrection; likewise to know and to share in his
sufferings by being formed into the pattern of his death. Thus do I hope
that I may arrive at resurrection from the dead. Amen."
Feast of St. Joseph, Monday, March 19, 2007:
II Samuel 7:4-5.12-14.16. Psalm 89:2-5,27,29. Romans 4:13, 16-18.22 Luke
2:41-51:
We learn from St. Luke that the genealogy of Jesus is traced back through
the Davidic lineage to Adam or God's creation of the first human being so
named because of the red clay of the earth. The lineage demonstrates also
the prophetic element in this lineage by mentioning the prophet Nathan who
is featured in our first reading from II Samuel. Luke does present Joseph
within both the prophetic and kingliy lineage and as the "supposed" father
of Jesus, the son of Mary of Nazareth. Luke takes for granted the
legitimacy of Jesus in this genealogy whereas Matthew is demonstrating it
in what he narrates throughout the whole of chapter one of his Infancy
Narrative which is all about Joseph's legal fatherhood. We read in II
Samuel something that I apply to my favorite patron saint--Joseph: "I will
be a father to him, and he will be a son to me." Luke has something
similar as he tells us after the genealogy, "Jesus, when he began his
ministry, was about thirty years of age, being the son (as was supposed) of
Joseph, the son of Heli...(Luke 3:23). Nathan is mentioned in Luke 3:31 in
the prophetic-davidic lineage that Luke has recorded. The Gospel for the
day is the final section of the Infancy Narrative (yet is considered
separate from the Infancy stories). It emphasizes the relationship of the
parents to Jesus and their growth in coming to know about their son who
reveals his relationship to God as Father to them. They grow in their
faith through listening and trying to understand. Faith does seek an
understanding and thereby grows just as human knowledge does through
deduction and induction. Jesus parents are mentioned some eight times in
this passage through the use of pronouns referring to them and through the
narrator calling them parents of Jesus. I discovered in this paragraph
that Mary and Joseph are exemplary parents, but they went through some of
the same things parents go through today. The last line is an excellent
Lukan summary: "He (Jesus) went down with them and came to Nazareth and
was obedient to them." We hear no more about Joseph after this incident.
Presumably Joseph died before the active ministry of Jesus." Amen.
posted by Fr. Bert SM at 1:20 PM
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