[
For a while, I would like, each week, to pay some attention to the lectionary
gospel reading for the next Sunday. And
so... ]
At
that time the festival of the Dedication took place in Jerusalem. It was
winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the portico of Solomon. So the
Jews gathered around him and said to him, “How long will you keep us in
suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” Jesus answered, “I have
told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name
testify to me; but you do not believe, because you do not belong to my sheep.
My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal
life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. What
my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out
of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one.” [John 10: 22-30]
It is important, with John’s Gospel, to remember that these words
come to us through the experiences of second or even third-generation
Christians. The church had grown and
spread, by then through numerous cultures.
And already the whole spectrum of human sinfulness and wilfulness had begun
to show up in the church. It now had its
own internal politics and strife. It was
under persecution from Jews and Romans and others. There were numerous parties and opinions and
much confusion at times, schisms and divisions and people falling away. We can see all this in the Letters of St
Paul. And it is from somewhere out of
all that, that we have this report of an encounter with Jesus in the temple.
It is the Feast of the Dedication – that is, Hannukah, the joyous
celebration of the rededication of the temple by Judas Maccabeus in the 2nd
century BC after it had been desecrated by Antiochus Epiphanes. But then, says John, it was winter – why would he add that? The young church was now experiencing its
winter.
Jesus says that the bond of his people to him, and of him to them,
is one of mutual recognition. My sheep hear my voice. I know them.
They follow me... It is not a
matter of whose doctrine you accept, whose denomination you belong to, how you
conduct worship. It is at another level
altogether. We know his voice. We come to know what is Christ and what is
something else. He says, I know them...
Mutual recognition, mutual love, mutual abiding, to use another of
the 4th Gospel’s favourite words.
It is heart speaking to heart. It
is not accessible to rational defence or argument. In times of strife and all kinds of distress,
we know whose voice is his. It is the
same as Jesus’s own relationship with his Father. We have, in our prayer, come to stillness and
silence, and quietened other voices – and we are then in the space Jesus
occupies in his prayer.
Then he says, they will never perish, no one will snatch them out of my
hand... Whatever the confusion, whatever the persecution, this
inner mutual recognition remains. It is
what Jesus teaches later in the Gospel, Abide
in me, and I in you...
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