How do you lay down your life? Sunday Readings Easter B4 (Y-not question the Sunday Readings)

by Ynot , Saturday, April 28, 2012, 11:21 (391 days ago)
edited by Ynot, Saturday, April 28, 2012, 18:34

Gospel (in part)

Jesus said:

A shepherd worthy of the name
lays down his life for his sheep
while the hired man
who is in it for what he can get
out of it
runs away.

Something doesn’t gel in this:
a shepherd has to risk his life to save the sheep, for sure,
but he must avoid getting killed
or the sheep will have no defence –
so Jesus can’t be talking about getting himself killed
for his sheep.

Strange we would have thought that’s what he meant –
to appease an angry father and pay what we owed in penalty for disobeying –
when at the very start of the story Abraham
is forbidden to offer his son in sacrifice.
We got that one badly wrong.

Then what does it mean to lay down one’s life?

Read the whole chapter, and the one before it. In fact
skim the whole gospel of John and see
that Jesus is warring with the pharisees
about truth and lying deception.

All through he makes it clear that it is his choice
to lay down his life. Here he says:
“No one takes it from me, but I lay it down on my own.
I have power to lay it down, and power to take it up again.
This command I have received from my Father.”
It is not about getting himself killed. The only ‘compulsion’
is the Father’s command: a matter of conscience.

John struggles page by page to put into words
what lies at the heart of the matter.
The other writers told the human story and one might suspect
that already by John’s time it was becoming ritualised,
theologised, formulised, religionated,
weaving in the very darkness it should be overcoming.
So he shared his meditations and wove the tale again
in full myth and symbol.

We need to go to the end of the affair, when the warfare
against the darkness the deception and the lies
went beyond words
and they used their weapon of choice terminal force.

"Consecrate them in the truth. Your word is truth.
As you sent me into the world, so I sent them into the world.
And I consecrate myself for them, so that they also may be consecrated in truth." (Jn 17:17-19)

I think the way Jesus laid down his life was in this:
that after spelling out the truth to friend and enemy alike
finally he laid himself open to judicial scrutiny
before the highest tribunals in the land.

The trial from start to end
is a battle of truth against false assumptions–
false pretensions – false accusations –
lying claims to power and lying threats by which
bullies get their way.

It is the spirit that gives life, while the flesh is of no avail. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and life.(Jn 6:63)

May I ask, kind reader, that you go through John’s account
to see how he shows it as the truth versus the lies,
with Jesus stripped of defence and dignity
made transparent
for the blinding truth to in the end prevail.

This, I think, is the battle we should all be engaged in
always
all ways
being
the candle burning to light the dark
not sacrificed – made holy by destruction
but consecrated – made thoroughly holy by dedication
to being true come what may.

'TonyL
"A post is a free gift, and it will go where it pleases."'