Testifying about Jesus
Thursday of the Fourth Week of Lent
Gospel: John 5:31-47
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/040325.cfm
As we’ve learned throughout this Lenten season, Jesus is the fulfillment of the divine message that came before him. The law pointed to him, The prophets pointed to him. John the Baptist as the last prophet before Jesus pointed to him. They testified on his behalf.
In today’s gospel, Jesus shows that Jewish history and scripture were pointing to his coming. Yet, the people of Jesus’s time didn’t recognize it and see it. They put their faith in the people within their scripture, but did not put their faith in the prophet and the divine right in front of them.
God is God regardless of time and place. Oftentimes, it’s easier for us to find our faith in scripture than in what’s all around us. It’s easier to see the errors on the things right in front of us. Within literature, we’re able to bring our own ideologies and expectations to it. With its distance, we’re able to draw more from it. We are able to encounter it again and again and glean more out of it. We know that it doesn’t change, but what we get out of it changes because we’ve changed. We don’t get the chance to experience life over and over again. Each moment flows into the next and we’re in a perpetual state of now and newness. It’s hard for us to see our moments and our time as sacred as what we find in scripture, but it is.
The divine spark is alive in us and the world around us. We can choose to not see God’s activity right in front of us as those in Jesus’s time and always look backwards for God, but God does not have such limits. God is always active in the here and now. God wants to encounter us in the here and now. Scripture is good, and scripture serves its purpose, but so does God’s activity in our lives today.
As we continue to approach Good Friday and Easter, may we find God drawing near to us. Let us look up and out into the world around us and see God’s activity. Let us look inside and see the same. May we not get lost in what was so that we can see that what was still actually is.
