Dear Friend,
Here is your daily Lenten meditation devotion. If you find it inspirational, we hope you will pass it along to your family and friends.
Wednesday, March 18
John 8:12-20
Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, 'I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.' Then the Pharisees said to him, 'You are testifying on your own behalf; your testimony is not valid.' Jesus answered, 'Even if I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is valid because I know where I have come from and where I am going, but you do not know where I come from or where I am going. You judge by human standards; I judge no one. Yet even if I do judge, my judgment is valid; for it is not I alone who judge, but I and the Father who sent me. In your law it is written that the testimony of two witnesses is valid. I testify on my own behalf, and the Father who sent me testifies on my behalf.' Then they said to him, 'Where is your Father?' Jesus answered, 'You know neither me nor my Father. If you knew me, you would know my Father also.' He spoke these words while he was teaching in the treasury of the temple, but no one arrested him, because his hour had not yet come.
Jesus didn't glow. Nor did he have a halo shining over his head. To anyone he encountered, he was an ordinary Jewish kid who had come to the annual Festival of Booths like every other person in Israel. Anyone who met him could see that he wasn't encumbered by a wife and children. For whatever reason, those responsibilities were not something he had chosen for himself, even though the Hebrew scriptures encouraged a man to do so. In the culture of that day, his parents may have been looked upon with some concern because they hadn't found him a suitable wife at his age, his thirties. Perhaps he would remain celibate and serve as a rabbi for the rest of his days; he certainly knew the scriptures inside out and backward. Still, to the average eye, he was little different than any other young man at the Feast, an honorable person, but not extraordinary. Being honorable was, after all, nothing but an indication that one kept the ordinances spelled out by Moses to the people.
And then he opened his mouth and began to teach. As they paused to listen, then passed on by, you can almost hear one of them muttering: "What's that? He sees himself as the 'light of the world?' What's wrong with the young man? Is he daft?" And his friend replies, "Yeah, he knows where he came from all right...and where he's going to. It isn't what he thinks! Thank God he'll be back home soon...none too soon!" We tend to think of the Pharisees as unreasonable men. But the truth is that they were being perfectly reasonable. This young man defended himself by pointing fingers, saying he didn't judge others like they did. Surely you've heard that defense at times? Heck, I've used it myself. I hear echoes of "it takes one to know one." Then the kid pulls the trick of calling them on their own rules...two witnesses, harrumph. How dare he call upon himself and God as his two witnesses? How brash and arrogant! Haven't you done that one yourself, especially when you were a kid, calling your parents to task for not living up to their own rules? I did...and still do at times with my partner or other people. In many of the cultural ways that we understand today, Jesus was acting like a wise guy to the Jews who confronted him. They weren't trying to be difficult, merely obedient servants to the law. When they asked him where his father was, what did he do? He changed the definition of what a father was, suddenly, claiming a heavenly father to avoid telling them the truth about where his birth parent was so that they could have a talk with him about this young upstart.
Yet, Jesus wasn't arrested. My guess is that they still didn't take him all that seriously and hoped that they could talk some sense into him before they had to bring more serious charges. The scripture says that it wasn't yet his time. As much as it means they weren't ready to kill him yet, I believe it also means the people weren't entirely ready to hear what he had to say. No, that time is now. Are we ready to listen? rw
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