Friday of the Fifth Week of Lent
With the coming of Holy Week and spring and all the end of the school year activities that happen around now, my life feels quite busy – to the point that I’m flagging quite a bit in my Lenten disciplines. Back when Lent started, I had all sorts of ideas about how my fasting and prayer life would go, much like the exaggerated advertising claims you hear on television: “Have a Holier Life in ONLY six weeks’ time! Join Now!”
Well, if my life is holier, I sure don’t notice, and like I said, I’m a lot busier now than I was when we were buried under snow and ice. To be honest, I like it: activity gives me a sense of purpose and makes me feel useful. All the prayer and worship we’ll be doing in the coming week, on the other hand, can sometimes seem like so many words. It doesn’t feel like we’re doing anything useful, especially in a world that needs help.
So I found in today’s gospel reading (John 10:31-42) a reminder that words do matter just as much as actions. Perhaps today’s readings are even a reminder that the words we Christians will speak and hear this week at the Palm Sunday and the Tridduum services are crucial to being faithful Christian disciples. We must speak our words in order to be faithful witnesses of Christ.
If you look at the verses immediately preceding today’s gospel, you’ll see why the Jews are claiming that Jesus is a blasphemer: he directly says that he and the Father are one, and that he is the shepherd of the Father’s sheep. As we know from other reading we’ve done in recent days, the scribes and Pharisees need only the barest of excuses to arrest Jesus, and these blasphemous words appear to be it. The Pharisees, in fact, are privileging words over actions here.
Is Jesus’ response then simply to privilege actions over words? It seems that way at first glance. He suggests that the people need to pay attention to his works even if they don’t believe his words. But notice why the people need to pay attention to the works: so that they will believe the words Jesus has just spoken about being one with the Father. Words and works go hand in hand. Lest we miss the point, the end of today’s passage emphasizes that John the Baptist did not have works like Jesus did, but John’s words confirmed all the works that Jesus did. Thus more and more people believe in Jesus Christ. John’s words are powerful – powerful enough to convert and change peoples’ lives.
The first reading (Jeremiah 20:10-13), too, is a testament to the power that words have, though in the opposite direction. Here the prophet speaks of “whisperings” that are meant to frighten, and even denounce him. He stands firm, trusting that God will act on his behalf, and so he waits patiently for God rather than trying to act for himself. And indeed, in today’s psalm (18:2-3a, 3bc-4, 5-6, 7) the psalmist proclaims that God has heard his voice and has delivered him from danger. God hears the psalmist’s voice; God is not (in this passage anyway) looking to the psalmist’s actions.
Taken together, all these passages singularly point to God’s action alone and not our own. In each of these texts, the one who is not God is the one praying and trusting in God. The one who is not God uses words to show the God’s own power.
This point about focusing on, and trusting in, God, is a good reminder for us in these last few days of Lent, even as spring beckons for us to be busy people. How often do we focus on our activity and actions as though the fate of the whole world rested with us? But aren’t today’s scriptures suggesting, gently, that time and fate are in the hands of God, who became one of us and who died and rose again, for us?
So, may we follow by turns the joyful and sorrowful liturgies of the coming week, using our words to focus our hearts on God, waiting on God’s action in our lives this Holy Week.
- Jana M. Bennett