This coming Sunday is the 5th Sunday of Lent. 27 “I am troubled now. Yet what should I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But it was for this purpose that I came to this hour. 28 Father, glorify your name.” With the word “now” the focus returns to Jesus’ hour and St. John portrays a different Jesus than the one we encounter in Gethsemane as portrayed by the other gospel writers. Continue reading →

This coming Sunday is the 5th Sunday of Lent.  The introduction of a new group of people (some Greeks) indicates a new narrative and thrust of the gospel message. Anyone could “see” Jesus as he was in the Temple precincts. I think it is a given that the Greeks wanted more. Continue reading →

This coming Sunday is the 5th Sunday of Lent. In John 11:47, as Jesus’ popularity grew, the Pharisee had asked of one another: what are we to do? The Pharisees themselves testify to the fulfillment of their fears in v.19: “So the Pharisees said to one another, “‘You see that you are gaining nothing. Look, the whole world has gone after him.’” Their confession of vulnerability (“You see that you are gaining nothing”); their hyperbolic announcement that the “world” (kosmos) has gone after Jesus provides ironic testimony to the truth of Caiaphas’s prophecy:  50 nor do you consider that it is better for you that one man should die instead of the people, so that the whole nation may not perish.” 51 He did not say this on his own, but since he was high priest for that year, he prophesied that Jesus was going to die for the nation, 52 and not only for the nation, but also to gather into one the dispersed children of God. (John 11:50-02) Continue reading →

This coming Sunday is the 5th Sunday of Lent in Lectionary Cycle B. During Ordinary Times, the lectionary selection for readings largely follow the flow the gospel accounts. But this is Lent and the gospels are taken to reflect, not the sequence of gospel events, but large themes important to the Lenten season. Previously on the 4th Sunday of Lent we read from John 3; this week we jump all the way to John 12. This chapter is located at the end of a multi-chapter section called the “Book of Signs” which contains all the miracle stories from the Gospel of John. A quick recounting of preceding events include: the anointing of Jesus’ feet by Mary a type of burial anointing, the triumphs entry into Jerusalem, and then our gospel. Continue reading →

A Reflection from Gail O’Day

In interpreting John 3:1–21, then, it is not enough to say on the basis of the discourse in vv. 11–21, for example, that this text is about faith, decision, and judgment, because that way of interpreting diminishes the full impact of the text. One needs the preceding dialogue, with Nicodemus’s misunderstanding and Jesus’ repeated offer of new images, to understand what the words of vv. 11–21 are really saying. The interpreter must attend to how John tells this story of Jesus and Nicodemus, how he moves the reader through the give and take between the two characters and thus affords the reader the chance to understand what Nicodemus can only misunderstand. Because the reader has participated in the dialogue between Jesus and Nicodemus, the words in vv. 11–21 are heard with more immediacy. Moreover, the reader has read the Prologue and attended to the witness of John, so that he or she has a wider theological context in which to place those words. Continue reading →