Bishop Barron's Gospel Reflection April 6, 2019

Saturday, April 6, 2019

Fourth Week of Lent

John 7:40-53

Friends, today’s Gospel reports the mixed reactions of people to Jesus’ message. What does he say as he preaches? "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." We mustn’t flatten this out or render it too spiritually abstract, as though he were talking only about becoming nicer people, more generous and more kind. His preaching was about more than that. It was part and parcel of his Messianic vocation. What he was saying was something like this: a new order is breaking out in Israel, the tribes are coming back together, and Yahweh is going to reign. Therefore, adjust your lives, your vision, your expectations. Start living even now as members of this new kingdom. Israelites knew that a major task of the Messiah was to engage the enemies of Israel, to deal definitively with those powers opposed to God’s creative purpose. This very much included political oppressors, religious charlatans, and self-absorbed Pharisees—all of whom Jesus deals with and confronts. Reflect: In what ways do you need to repent or to adjust your life, your vision, and your expectations?  Saturday of the Fourth Week of Lent Lectionary: 249 Reading 1 Jer 11:18-20 I knew their plot because the LORD informed me; at that time you, O LORD, showed me their doings. Yet I, like a trusting lamb led to slaughter, had not realized that they were hatching plots against me: "Let us destroy the tree in its vigor; let us cut him off from the land of the living, so that his name will be spoken no more." But, you, O LORD of hosts, O just Judge, searcher of mind and heart, Let me witness the vengeance you take on them, for to you I have entrusted my cause! Gospel Jn 7:40-53 Some in the crowd who heard these words of Jesus said, "This is truly the Prophet." Others said, "This is the Christ." But others said, "The Christ will not come from Galilee, will he? Does not Scripture say that the Christ will be of David's family and come from Bethlehem, the village where David lived?" So a division occurred in the crowd because of him. Some of them even wanted to arrest him, but no one laid hands on him. So the guards went to the chief priests and Pharisees, who asked them, "Why did you not bring him?" The guards answered, "Never before has anyone spoken like this man." So the Pharisees answered them, "Have you also been deceived? Have any of the authorities or the Pharisees believed in him? But this crowd, which does not know the law, is accursed." Nicodemus, one of their members who had come to him earlier, said to them, "Does our law condemn a man before it first hears him and finds out what he is doing?" They answered and said to him, "You are not from Galilee also, are you? Look and see that no prophet arises from Galilee." Then each went to his own house.