Beyond the surface
Thursday of the Fifth Week of Lent
Gospel: John 8:51-59
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/041025.cfm
In John’s gospel, there is a lot of confusion when Jesus speaks figuratively. His audience likes to take him literally. Jesus in these passages speaks of spiritual things. To speak of spiritual things, it takes allegory, parables, and metaphors. Jesus’s words aren’t intended to be taken on the surface level, but they point to something deeper. With these two different ways of thinking and speaking, Jesus and his audience aren’t connecting as they’re talking and thinking about different things.
In addition to the words of Jesus, the audience also took a very literal interpretation of their tradition with the law and the prophets. They tried to follow the law to the letter. Jesus was challenging them to think deeper than this. What is the law pointing to? What were the prophets pointing to? What were their stories and traditions telling them about God beyond the surface level of things? They had lost themselves in a literal understanding which caused them to lose the point.
The full mystery is not easily understood or symbolized through our language, but we know it when we experience it. To turn scripture into legal and moral platitudes is to lose the depth found within the journey to God. Scripture is not a little instruction book, but it helps us work through our relationship with God and with each other. We’ll have good times and bad times. We’ll have times of plenty and times of scarcity. These different times shift how we see God and how we see others. Good things may happen to people acting poorly, and bad things may happen to people acting righteously and vice versa. It’s all part of the mystery. Scripture and our traditions show us how our ancestors worked through this tension of mystery on their way to God.
To see things literally is to lose the depth. There is always more with God. The testament of Jesus can be summed up in simple words, but there is great depth in how it’s lived out. It takes creative expression and interpretation to go beyond, to journey into that depth, to see past the surface of things. Jesus understood this, that is why he spoke the way he did. Those around him were wanting easy answers and a reinforcement of the norm, and he gave the questions and a new way of thinking. He was pushing them further. He was taking them on Abraham’s journey for themselves to grow in and be surprised by God. To follow Christ is to journey through the mystery, not obey already established answers with certainty. God will always stretch us to more than we imagine possible.
For the first shall be last, and the last shall be first. From time-to-time, we’re one or the other, other times we’re both, then again sometimes we’re not, and for all we know we might just be in between. God loves us so much that he made existence a mystery so that we’re never done and there’s always something new to discover. Answers will lead to questions, and questions will lead to more answers. May we journey beyond the surface to God.
