Friday of the Fifth Week of Lent

In today’s gospel the argument continues between Jesus and his opponents. The tension in this drama is building toward Palm Sunday and Holy Week. This is probably a good time to insert a remark about Christian-Jewish relations.

Although Saint John uses the word Jews I prefer to call them his opponents. Jews probably opposed the local church that sponsored John’s gospel during the early years of the Church, and that conflict appears in this gospel. This apparent hostility between two congregations in that city (Ephesus?) should not infect the Christian-Jewish relationship for all time.

Jesus was a rabbi among Jewish rabbis and his conflict with them should be understood historically as an argument in the family rather than a crisis between Jews and Christians.  When we read a story we should understand who is telling the story and why. If I tell a “recovering Catholic” joke to a Catholic congregation, it’s one thing; if a Protestant minister tells the same “recovering Catholic” joke to his congregation, it probably means something altogether different. For that reason I do not tell Jewish, Italian or African-American jokes. No matter how amusing the story might be, it would be interpreted with a trace of hostility toward that group. 

Recognizing that distinction we hear of Jesus conflict with “the Jews” in Saint John’s Gospel in a very different way. Even if we accept his apocalyptic tension and read it as the final struggle between good and evil, we should not suppose the Jews of Jesus’ time or ours embody evil.

The Gospel of John bears many characteristics of Greek dramaturgy[1]. Typically there were only two people or groups on stage at a time; and there is, of course, a conflict which must be resolved. The story rushes toward catharsis, an emotionally overcharged climax which sweeps the audience into a state of exhilarated intensity as they identify with the heroic protagonist. When he dies the audience “dies” with him, feeling his crushing defeat. But they also experience his triumph as a human being and a hero.

Saint John’s Gospel is like the Greek drama except that Jesus has no tragic flaw. He is not blind to his human frailty, nor does he lose his command of the situation. He remains the high priest who will lie down his life for his sheep. As he says in John 10: 17-18:

This is why the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down on my own. I have power to lay it down, and power to take it up again. This command I have received from my Father.

The Drama of Holy Week is not about the conflict between Jesus and the Jews; it is the revelation of the Most Holy Trinity. We will see Jesus surrender his life in a passion of consummate faith, hope and love, as the Holy Spirit sweeps him into the trustworthy embrace of his Abba. The vision of the Trinity is like a brilliant light, so overwhelming to the retina it looks like darkness. Where human beings see a man crucified in a most ghastly, horrifying manner, the eyes of faith see a love supreme. 

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[1] Dramaturgy: the art of the theater, especially with regard to the techniques involved in writing plays

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