As it’s always been
Saturday of the Fifth Week of Lent
Gospel: John 11:45-56
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/041225.cfm
This is the last day before we move into the passion week. Today’s gospel is a transition to it. This whole past week was full of readings about the Pharisees and others in Jerusalem wanting to stone or kill Jesus for what he was saying or doing within the Temple grounds.
The chief priests and Pharisees have had enough with Jesus and escalated their concerns to the Sanhedrin. They want the Jewish civil and religious governing body to do something about him. They were worried that Jesus’s signs could cause an uprising and that the Romans, the occupying government, would take away their land and authority. In addition to the civil concerns, the high priest for the year had visions that Jesus’s death would lead to that reunification of the people of God. They saw both political and spiritual reasons to move forward with the execution of Jesus.
While this was occurring, Jesus was staying out of the public domain in the company of his disciples. The Sanhedrin wondered if Jesus was going to return to Jerusalem for purification in preparation for the feast of the Passover as was customary. They were wanting to use their tradition as a means to capture Jesus. A celebration about redemption and salvation was to turn into a means for imprisonment and murder. Symbolically, this would make Jesus a replacement for the sacrificial lamb at the passover. As the lamb saved the Jewish people from the Egyptians, the death of Jesus was seen by a means of reunification.
So God sent his son, and religious and civil authority saw him as a threat. A threat that was worthy of capital punishment. They were motivated by avoiding their own demise and bringing on their salvation as a people. Jesus was a scapegoat for hypotheticals; not for what was, but what could be. The Sanhedrin were proactively trying to do the right thing as they understood it from their spiritual revelation and care for their people. We too take extreme measures for such things. We worry about self-preservation and own success at the expense of others. Such things go against the spirit behind the law and the prophets, the message that Jesus was sharing. But it’s the willing sacrifice that shows love, not the one making the sacrifice; for us, it’s often difficult to distinguish. May we learn to distinguish.
