Ridiculed, Resisted and Opposed

Thursday, April 11

Readings: GN 17:3-9; JN 8:51-59

Today’s readings are setting the stage for the big confrontations that will emerge during Holy Week, and you can see from the gospel that what Jesus is saying is infuriating the religious authorities as well as some of the regular religious folk as well.

Most of us know that Abraham was one of the most revered figures in the Jewish faith.  It’s actually hard to state just how important he was to Israel and the Jewish psyche.  The nation was built upon his faith response.  I wish I could draw a parallel with someone in our tradition.  But for the sake of trying, imagine someone like Mother Theresa. That’s the stature of Abraham.

In the gospel Jesus starts telling people that he knows Abraham – in the personal sense.  What? He goes on to say, “You do not know him, but I know him. And if I should say that I do not know him, I would be like you a liar. But I do know him and I keep his word.  Abraham your father rejoiced to see my day; he saw it and was glad.”  And this is where it starts to get a little incendiary.

Jesus is basically calling them out as liars – in public – and says that even though they THINK they know Abraham (and by implication the Jewish tradition and by implication God!), they don’t know the first thing about him or God. 

And then Jesus just takes it right over the top.  He says the famous phrase, “Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham came to be, I AM…”  That last, “I AM” is actually the word that God used to describe Godself to Moses when Moses asked God who he should say sent him to Pharaoh.  Jesus is saying that he and the God of Israel are one in the same.  It’s just too much for the hearers.

We read these texts from our modern vantage point (and as Christians) which makes it hard for us to imagine the emotional punch in the gut that Jesus’ hearers felt.  Imagine someone in our modern context saying that they and Jesus Christ were one in the same.  What would you say?  Modern psychiatry would call it delusion, psychosis or hallucination.  They thought the same back then.  This guy is out of his mind.

That’s actually the response a lot of people had to Jesus – including his own family.  What he was doing and saying seemed insane.

This reminds me a lot of the quote attributed to Arthur Schopenhauer, “Every truth passes through three stages before it is recognized. In the first stage it is ridiculed, in the second stage it is opposed, in the third stage it is regarded as self-evident.” Jesus’ truths were widely ridiculed and violently opposed during his lifetime.  And I am not sure that they will ever be regarded as self-evident. The gospel that we have inherited has been incredibly “domesticated” by the dominant culture that we live in (see my post about which God we serve), and my guess is that if Jesus were to appear in the modern context, very few Christians would like him one bit.

What it gets me thinking about is what “truths” we encounter in our midst that are ridiculed, resisted and/or violently opposed?  Is it something like reparations ?  Or abolishing prisons? A world without capitalism?  That God loves everyone just the same?

Just for today, think about a “truth” – at an individual level or a collective level – that you have ridiculed, resisted or even opposed.  What if that truth is actually how things really are and you are on the wrong side of the equation?  Just allow yourself to breathe into that situation.