Friday of the Fifth Week of Lent

 Lectionary: 255

The Jews picked up rocks to stone Jesus.
Jesus answered them, “I have shown you many good works from my Father. For which of these are you trying to stone me?”
The Jews answered him, “We are not stoning you for a good work but for blasphemy. You, a man, are making yourself God.”

The "Jews" in the Gospel of Saint John should be understood as characters in a play. The Gospel is written in the form of a Greek drama; its dialogic style dictates that every scene is a discussion with a person, the disciples, or the mob as one party, and Jesus as the other. The gospel's character of "Jews" is not all the Jews of the entire Roman empire during the first century, nor is it the Jews of the twenty-first century. It is a literary trope to serve the author's purposes.  

Saint John's "Jews" represents those who clearly understand what Jesus says, and who he is; and yet refuse to receive him. Although he has not said in so many words, "I am God," his words clearly mean that, and his signs demonstrate it. Nor do the "Jews" simply dispute his being God; rather, they object to God's coming in the flesh. As the Evangelist had said in the Gospel's preamble, "He came to what was his own, but his own people did not accept him."

Holy Week challenges us with the doctrine of Jesus's frail humanity. How can our God come to us as an infant needing to be suckled, carried about, diapered, and spirited into Egypt? How can our God suffer the processes of learning human language and human ways, and of being subject to human laws? How can God die like any man on a  cross? 

Shouldn't our God be above all that? Shouldn't he simply tell us what we should do to get along successfully in this world? And, by the way, I am doing good and avoiding evil; why is that enough to merit eternal bliss in heaven? He didn't have to become a human being to tell us that!

But there are more questions than the ones about God's humility. They involve our frail humanity. Why does a spiritual being -- as I am! -- have to suffer the indignities of aging, and the threats of accident and poor health due to genetics or environmental contamination? Not to mention the crippling abuse of other people? I deserve better! Here I am with a perfectly clear consciousness of myself as a human being of worth and dignity, imprisoned in a frail body. That's just wrong!

These questions often slam us from an unexpected direction. I think, for instance, of Agent Orange. The American military dumped it by the ton on Vietnamese vegetation, assuming that it would have no effect on the human beings who absorbed it. It might bother "animals but we're not animals." Hello? This was more than a miscalculation; it was willful ignoring of our earthiness. And so millions of Vietnamese people and American Veterans suffer to this day. 

God comes to us as a human being because we cannot be saved unless he does so. Nor can we be saved if we do not embrace God's frail, suffering humanity as our own. This human dimension is beautiful, as every mother who embraces her infant knows. 

I am moved by fancies that are curled

Around these images, and cling:

The notion of some infinitely gentle

Infinitely suffering thing. (T.S. Eliot)

Let us pray.