Christian Art | Attempt To Stone Jesus | Law And Blasphemy
John 10: 31-42 – Lent Week 5, Friday (Audio Bible King James Version, KJV, Spoken Word)
31 Then the Jews took up stones again to stone him.
32 Jesus answered them, Many good works have I shewed you from my Father; for which of those works do ye stone me?
33 The Jews answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God.
34 Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?
35 If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken;
36 Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God?
37 If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not.
38 But if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works: that ye may know, and believe, that the Father is in me, and I in him.
39 Therefore they sought again to take him: but he escaped out of their hand,
40 And went away again beyond Jordan into the place where John at first baptized; and there he abode.
41 And many resorted unto him, and said, John did no miracle: but all things that John spake of this man were true.
42 And many believed on him there.
It is a tragedy that, as we approach Holy Week, the divisions between Jesus and his people the Jews become sharper, and what is more, that the Jews – a generic term in John’s Gospel for those Jewish people who have rejected Jesus Christ – seek to condemn Jesus in the name of God. By invoking the name of God, they are in fact rejecting Him. We see the Jews placing themselves in an impossible position. Nonetheless, Jesus patiently continues to reason with them, asking them to see and to believe.
Jesus quotes the Old Testament of the Bible when he says: ‘Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?’ (Cf. Psalm 82/81.) The Scriptures call us to become closer to God, as one with Him insofar as we can ever be able. If we can be called the sons of God, how much more does Jesus deserve to be known as the Son of God?
Jesus has come to fulfil the Scriptures. The whole of the Bible, the whole of human history, is centred upon him. Faced with the saving revelation of Christ, the Jews gather their stones. Their response is one of vicious barbarism. Just as many do today, when they impose barbaric punishments on other people, including stoning, so the Jews of Christ’s time refuse a future of love and cling instead to a past of hatred.
Jesus must have been desperate to save his people. He asks them to see the proofs of his divinity: to understand the words of Scripture and to consider the miracles which he has performed as signs. Jesus looks to a range of resources to try to save this people by helping them to see the truth. Their minds, however, are closed. They want death rather than the redeeming truth of salvation.
Jesus, then, returns to the place where he was baptized by John. This must have been to Jesus a place of great personal significance. This was where his ministry began. Perhaps he felt the need to recollect himself and summon his energies again, and perhaps to consider the impact he has made so far, while he anticipates Holy Week.
This passage of the Bible conveys to us a great deal of optimism despite the rejection of the Jews. Many people – many Jewish people – come to him and believe in him.
Through this Bible reading we are prepared for conflict and the refusal of belief, while also we are reminded of the faith of many, many people who have gone before us, including in this time of Christ.
‘He it is then who showed forth in himself alone all that he knew to be necessary to achieve our redemption – he who at the same time is priest and sacrifice, God and temple: the priest through whom we are reconciled, the sacrifice by which we are reconciled, the temple in which we are reconciled, the God to whom we are reconciled. He alone is priest, sacrifice and temple.’ St Fulgentius of Ruspe
Audio Bible KJV | King James Version | Endnotes
Why Do The Jews Reject Jesus?
In John 10:31-42, we see the Jews once again rejecting Jesus and accusing him of blasphemy. They demand that Jesus give them a clear answer about whether he is the Messiah or not, and Jesus responds by telling them that he has already given them proof of his identity through his works and miracles.
The psychology of the Jews who reject Jesus is complex, but one possible explanation is that they are so entrenched in their own religious beliefs and traditions that they are unable to recognize the truth when it is right in front of them. They are so focused on their own understanding of the law and their own expectations of what the Messiah should be like that they are unable to see Jesus for who he truly is.
Jesus’ retreat to the place where John baptized is significant because it highlights the contrast between the truth of baptism and the legalistic and false attitudes of the Jewish Temple authorities. Baptism represents a new beginning, a washing away of the old self and a rebirth into a new life in Christ. The legalism of the Jewish leaders, on the other hand, represents a rigid adherence to the letter of the law without any real understanding of its true meaning.
This contrast is important because it shows us that true faith is not about rigid adherence to rules and regulations, but about a personal relationship with Christ that transforms us from the inside out. It is about recognizing the truth when it is presented to us, even if it challenges our preconceived notions and beliefs.
As Catholic theologian Thomas Merton once wrote: ‘The great task is to discover the truth in the midst of our own thoughts, our own prejudices, our own conditionings. And to do this we must have a certain openness, a certain receptivity to the truth, which means, in fact, a willingness to accept whatever the truth is.’
In Protestant theology, there is a similar emphasis on the importance of being open to the truth and being willing to let go of our own preconceptions and beliefs in order to follow Christ. This requires humility, a willingness to admit our own limitations and to seek guidance from God and others.
John 10:31-42 challenges us to examine our own beliefs and attitudes and to be open to the truth, even if it challenges our preconceptions. It reminds us that true faith is not about rigid adherence to rules and regulations, but about a personal relationship with Christ that transforms us from the inside out. As we reflect on this passage during the season of Lent, may we be inspired to let go of our own preconceptions and to be open to the truth, guided by the Holy Spirit and the example of Christ.
The disciples enthusiastically acknowledge the divinity of Jesus, proved to them in these Bible verses by Jesus’ knowledge of their thoughts, which only God could know. Jesus has indeed spoken plainly to the disciples. Now it may be with some reproachfulness that he asks them: ‘Do ye now believe?’ They have spent such time with Jesus, have witnessed signs and miracles, and now they accept his teachings and express their faith in him [ … ]
Psalm 111 likely originates from the post-exilic era, a time of rebuilding and re-establishing Jewish religious and community life after the Babylonian Exile. This background is essential to understanding the psalm’s emphasis on communal worship and remembering God’s acts [ … ]
‘Death,’ says His Grace, ‘throws it all apart. For we are not as we should be. Faith requires our adjustment to God’s truth. God’s triumph in a very real sense requires in us the loss of our everything. Which, as with Mary at the other end of Jesus’s life, is God’s truth.’ The Gospel reading is of John 11: 1-45, which is a long passage, and His Grace’s homiletic theme commences in textual wilderness. Our brokenness – in this place – a family home. Our faith, our doubt, our death… The irruption – death, doubt, fear – within our precious scenes and our most intimate places. Our domesticity. His Grace speaks from the chair, as is a bishop’s prerogative, and says: ‘So much is obscure in the Gospels. We’re always reaching through them. We’re never there. Really, we never are. Our knowledge, our understanding, of the Gospels is never complete, and with each reading comes a new revelation. There are always new riches there. Just as there are between all of us, between myself and you. The Gospels are living texts. This is a part of the conversation we have with our own Christianity. It is a part of who we are in our relationship with Jesus. We are in this sense always on the brink. ‘So yes, there is plenty that doesn’t seem to make sense. As one of the order of bishops, we would be lying if we said that weren’t the case. They are not easy texts to encounter, if by that word we may signify something more than a superficial glancing off against, but rather a profound search for the word of God. The Gospels are written by people who had their own ideas, and often didn’t know what had really happened. Luke is quite explicit on this point. His is an investigation, from the explicitly claimed point of view of an historian, rather than that of a first-hand witness, who attempts, so he says, to set out an orderly account, out of the chaos, the sheer muddle, that has been handed down to him. It is possible to imagine Luke researching and composing his account after many years, when there has arisen a desire to know what exactly happened, and this implies a certain call to faith and certain demands of historicity, to historical exactitude. So in these different ways, the people of the first years of Christian faith are in the dark. There is also a decisive need to define the life of Jesus. And people didn’t get Jesus. The whole meaning of Christianity is only now beginning to take root throughout the composition. So much needs to be evangelized. The light shines almost in tentative fashion like that first star, which drew the wise men from the east to our Lord’s cradle. ‘John’s is widely held to be a very late Gospel. There are others who say that John’s Gospel might have been the first to acquire its true shape, because it most fully expresses Jesus, as we know him to be, as members of the Catholic Church. We don’t really know when any of this is being written, but we get a feel in John of a Gospel refined over many years, through a community. So there’s a lot going on there that I’d like you to think about. ‘What I would like to suggest to you is that, while within the Gospels we are often confronted with clues, guesswork, stories that have been handed down through so many people, and so in this sense we might find ourselves to be in the wilderness, this is the very desolate space itself to which we must give ourselves in order to experience Christ’s full redemption in our lives. I suggest it is for God’s glory that we do so. ‘As we become aware of ourselves, in this seminary, we find ourselves in a very secure, comfortable setting, and there are signs of Easter everywhere. Within the very fabric of these buildings, our Lord is risen; our Lord lives. But now this is our Lenten journey, where death enters, where death breaks us. We are to ride into Jerusalem in triumph, and then we are to be utterly broken, all hope gone, our hope extinguished. And really, I suggest to you, it is only by inhabiting this thought, as if we don’t know Easter is there, that our new life can follow, just when we have given up all hope, when every promise that Jesus made to us seems to have been cancelled. ‘And here now we have the story of Lazarus. I should like to suggest to you that we have a very powerful call now. In our very comfortable space, our domesticity, with all this comfort, where so very little might seem to happen each day, so it might seem to you, there is a disturbance within all of this comfort, and that is a disturbance within ourselves, and that is our call to Jesus. I think it is correct to say that our most comfortable places break in the light of Jesus from the inside, in order that we may take the necessary steps to be with Jesus. ‘Faith is not comfortable. I think that we can all receive the message of the rolling away of the rock from the tomb of Lazarus to say something of vital importance to ourselves concerning our openness to God’s love. The rock we roll away can come in all sorts of guises, but we know when we are blocked, and I firmly believe if we are truthful then we know where those blocks might be. ‘Next Sunday, which will be Palm Sunday, we process as it were to Jerusalem, to begin our Holy Week. Now as I speak to you we are on the brink. Even now, I suggest it might be very good for all of us to lay aside what we think we know, to fall apart a little, and so […]
