GOSPEL REFLECTION, FRIDAY, 5TH WEEK IN LENT, 27 MARCH 2026

John 10:31-42.  It is wintertime.  Jesus is walking in the precincts of the Temple during the Feast of Dedication.  Then Jewish authorities surround him, arguing with him, but now the threat that has been growing throughout the gospel grows even more dangerous.  There is a threat of stoning him as the Law required because he had just been saying (again) that he had been given a mission by the Father, that he had come from God.  The Jewish authorities were enraged.  The text reads “the Jews again lifted up stones to stone him.”  We must be careful here least we take these words to mean the Jewish people in general, for “the Jews” in John’s gospel almost always means the Jewish religious authorities specifically, the Scribes and Pharisees.  We must be careful because this text because it had been used extensively near Easter to spark persecutions of the Jews in Europe.

Jesus’ situation is dangerous because the religious authorities were increasing their opposition and threats of death became more frequent and open.  Jesus countered the threat by claiming that he had done many signs and good works which gradually revealed who he was – Messiah.  The authorities replied that it was not for his good works that he was in danger, but for his claims to be so intimately related to God, that indeed God had sent him, that in fact he was Son of God.  The authorities took this to be blasphemy, the punishment for which is stoning to death.  He said to them that he had been ‘sanctified by God’ (v. 36),  that he was ‘Son of God’(v. 36), that ‘by my works you must know that I am in the Father and the Father is in me’ (v. 37).  The authorities then tried to ‘lay violent hands on him,’ but in the confusion Jesus escaped. 

Again the question comes to us in our Lenten reflections – ‘who is Jesus?  Do we take him at his word or not?  Do we believe he is from the Father and has a mission given him by God?  How we answer these questions really matters because that indicates the nature of our faith and trust in Jesus.  It is an opportunity to increase our faith and trust in him yet again.  And that really matters too, because it signifies who we believe it was that died on the cross and then rose again -- and Easter is now only just over a week away.