Saturday of the Fifth Week of Lent - March 23, 2013
Saturday of the Fifth Week of Lent
John 11:45 – 48
Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him. But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what he had done. So the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the council, and said, “What are we to do? This man is performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation.”
In John’s Gospel, you often find people saying things at one level of intended meaning, which can be read with other layers of meaning. In a sense, it is prophecy spoken in unwitting ways.
So in this passage, we hear the religious persons who are fearful that Romans would destroy their holy place if people continued to follow Jesus.
Indeed, this is what happens any time someone follows Jesus. When any person lives into the life and presence of Jesus, old systems and frameworks for living are destroyed. That may be a harsh way of putting it . . . but there is a dismantling or deconstruction of the old, of the institution (see yesterday’s blog post), and a reconstruction of that framework.
Jesus gives new wineskins for life, not patched, old wineskins.
This is the reorienting, reordering of the kingdom of God.
Sometimes, what is “destroyed” in us feels like the “holy place” in which we have invested time and emotional energy. The holy place is likely to be something very sacred to us . . . an idea, a belief, a notion, a vision of God.
In the text, the keepers of the institution said, “We cannot let this destruction happen.” They guarded what they deemed sacred, to the point of killing Jesus over it.
We are not much different from them in our willingness to guard what we deem sacred.
John 11:45 – 48
Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him. But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what he had done. So the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the council, and said, “What are we to do? This man is performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation.”
In John’s Gospel, you often find people saying things at one level of intended meaning, which can be read with other layers of meaning. In a sense, it is prophecy spoken in unwitting ways.
So in this passage, we hear the religious persons who are fearful that Romans would destroy their holy place if people continued to follow Jesus.
Indeed, this is what happens any time someone follows Jesus. When any person lives into the life and presence of Jesus, old systems and frameworks for living are destroyed. That may be a harsh way of putting it . . . but there is a dismantling or deconstruction of the old, of the institution (see yesterday’s blog post), and a reconstruction of that framework.
Jesus gives new wineskins for life, not patched, old wineskins.
This is the reorienting, reordering of the kingdom of God.
Sometimes, what is “destroyed” in us feels like the “holy place” in which we have invested time and emotional energy. The holy place is likely to be something very sacred to us . . . an idea, a belief, a notion, a vision of God.
In the text, the keepers of the institution said, “We cannot let this destruction happen.” They guarded what they deemed sacred, to the point of killing Jesus over it.
We are not much different from them in our willingness to guard what we deem sacred.
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