Hope for today, tomorrow, and eternity
Commentary
Object:
If there is a theme that binds these three scriptures, it must be HOPE. Not a short-term, easily disappointed hope, but a hope that holds on and recognizes that whatever is accomplished quickly is never as good as that which is accomplished with care. As the Indian hotel manager of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel says, "Things always turn out well in the end, so if it is not going well, one must know that it is not yet the end."
So we pray for the sick in the hope that they will be healed. We pray for our beloved dead in the hope that they are in the hands of God. We pray for Messiah to come so that the world may be remade into what God intended. We pray for Jesus to return and help us to succeed in the Great Commission, which we have failed to accomplish and now despair of even trying to do. We hope that our sins will be overlooked. Failing that, we pray for forgiveness without penalty. We may, however, also hope that God can not only forgive us, but remake us so that we might be the people God intended us to be.
Hope like this is a hard thing. Not brittle, but tough, resilient. Like leather that has been broken in, this hope endures stretching, a stretching of the spirit as well as the flesh. In a society that seems to approve of always doing the easy thing, taking an easy path and searching for happiness is the norm. Seeking resilience is not. Giving up is not seen as sad but reasonable when things go wrong. The person who insists on pursuing a difficult goal is not seen as visionary but stubborn.
This set of scriptures takes a very different view. The dead may be raised. Those who have died for an ideal are blessed. Messiah is not going to come with legions of angels to do our work for us. We follow a Messiah who bears the whip and thorns, even gives up his life for his followers. He does this not so we never have to pay for our sins, but so we will have the strength to face what we have done or failed to do and then to work to make amends, to clean up the messes we have created in our lives and in our world.
Each of the scriptures for today focuses on a different view of that hope. Taken together, they give us a new kind of hope.
Acts 9:36-43
The book of the Acts of the Apostles emphasizes that not only did Jesus perform miracles, but the disciples, acting in the name of Jesus, did the same after his ascension into heaven. From Acts 3, where Peter cures a crippled beggar, to the story immediately preceding today's reading, where Peter is asked to pray for a man named Aeneas who "had been bedridden for eight years because he was paralyzed," Peter and the other apostles are seen healing in the name of Jesus. All of those healings, the apostles say, were empowered by the Holy Spirit and done in the name of Jesus. None of them were accomplished by their own piety (3:12).
The effect of these healings was the same as the works that Jesus himself did -- they brought in new believers. They created a new hope that through faith in Christ, we may be made whole and even made sure that death is not the end.
The women who sent for Peter knew that he was one of the disciples and probably hoped for a healing for their friend. However, Tabitha (Dorcas, in Greek) had already died when he arrived. What hope could these women who were gathered around her dead body have at this point?
When Peter comes in, they show him the beautiful work that this woman has done for them and for others. As we usually do when someone dies, they tell him her story and what she meant to them. As any good pastor would do, he listens. So he learns how important she has been to her community, how loving and giving she was. They show him the clothes she has made for them and for others. They talk about her works of charity.
At last he asks them to leave him alone in the room with the body. Does he hope that she is still alive, even though she seems to be dead? Does he dare to hope that God will bring her back to life? Peter has always been the boldest of the disciples, always wanting to follow his Lord, even to walking on water as Jesus did one night. So of all the disciples, he is the one most likely to believe enough to try to wake the dead.
He may be encouraged in this by the memory of a similar situation where Jesus was called to the home of the head of the synagogue because the man's daughter was seriously ill (Luke 8:48-50). When Jesus and the disciples finally got there -- having been delayed by a woman who needed to be healed from a long "issue of blood" -- the girl was dead. Yet Jesus insisted on being allowed to see her. Peter may be thinking about the mourners and how they mocked Jesus when he said the girl was merely sleeping. Everyone in that time and place had watched people die. They knew what the dead looked like. Peter may have been thinking about that episode, having been one of the few in the room when Jesus went to the bed and said simply, "Little girl, wake up."
So Peter kneels down and prays. Nothing is recorded of what he said to God, even though it was customary among the Jews to pray out loud. The reverberation of the words in the air has a power of its own, beyond the intent of the person praying. Perhaps it isn't just that God likes to hear his children praying, though that is certainly true. Perhaps it is important for us to hear the words we pray. It certainly helps us to clarify our thoughts when we pray aloud.
Whatever the case, Peter prays. As one of the three disciples Jesus took everywhere with him, he knows how to pray. He knows God, because as Jesus said, he has known his master. He therefore prays with an absolute trust that God wants the best for his children. He prays as a man prays when he has failed, absolutely and completely, and been forgiven -- absolutely and completely. He prays not just for Dorcas but for those who need her. He prays for a woman who is still in her active years, a woman who is busy, not for herself but for others. We are not told how old she was, or if she had a family to support. But in Peter's day the young were not exempt from death, and it may be that Dorcas was a vibrant, young woman.
Peter then rises and as he had seen Jesus do he takes her hand and tells her to get up. And she does.
Like Jake Sully at the end of the movie Avatar, her eyes open and the story ends. Oh yes, Peter presents her -- alive -- to her friends, but we do not get to hear her story. What is it like to die? Where was she? Was she really dead? Did she see Jesus? Was she with God? The questions we might want to ask are endless. We are still left with hope, not sight. Faith, not certainty.
It is this way, always. Recently a neurosurgeon named Dr. Eben Alexander wrote a book titled Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife, in which he described his own near-death experience while in a meningitis-induced coma. His experiences convinced him that his previous attitude of dismissal of the reality of a life beyond death and all those who claimed to have experienced any part of heaven was wrong. He wrote his book to convince others, but those who do not wish to believe still don't, much to his chagrin. There will be more about that later as we discuss the gospel for today.
Revelation 7:9-17
The thing we must remember when reading the Revelation of John is that it is presented to us as a vision. It is filled with allegory and metaphor. So we need to look at the meaning of the scenes and the overarching theme, or we will trip over the details.
In today's passage, the writer of Revelation wants us to know that those who have been persecuted to death for being Christian still have life, and they are able to praise God, despite all that they may have gone through. He also wants to assure us that heaven is not a limited place. One does not have to be a Jew (or an American) to be in the multitude standing before the throne of God. By saying "every nation, tribe, people and language," he is repeating the Pentecost experience when the crowds gathering in Jerusalem were from every part of the known world and yet could each understand what the disciples were saying. Even more, as they shout out their praise to God, they are all saying the same thing: thanking God and the lamb for our salvation.
The reference to the lamb is a metaphor. Jesus has been sacrificed just as the Passover lamb is sacrificed -- to make us part of the family of God. (John 19:36 makes a specific reference to Jesus' legs being left unbroken on the cross, just as Exodus 12:46 says of the Passover lamb, "Do not break any of the bones.") So we know that the lamb means Jesus. While we may see lambs in many religious paintings about the Christ, we also know that we will be seeing Jesus in his glorified state, not as a literal lamb.
The white robes worn by all those in heaven are likewise a metaphor. White was a difficult color to obtain in ancient times, requiring special handling of wool by specialists in the art. So to wear white was a sign that you had no hard labor to perform. For this reason white robes were ceremonial garments, fit for royalty or perhaps for wearing to a wedding or other special event. The poor could not afford white cloth, nor could they afford the special cleaning that was necessary to keep the cloth white. Even today, everyone knows that eating tomato sauce while wearing white is to risk wearing the tomato sauce permanently. Imagine then in the days of old, when bleach was not readily available! So the white robes worn in heaven tell us that the multitude no longer has to labor in the way we do on earth. Instead, they are perpetually praising God, for which one wears ceremonial clothing. John the divine goes on, emphasizing this meaning, when he says:
Never again will they hunger; never again will they thirst.
The sun will not beat down on them, nor any scorching heat.
For the lamb... will be their shepherd; he will lead them to springs of living water.
John is quoting Isaiah's prophecy about the Day of the Lord (Isaiah 49:10) and David's shepherd Psalm (23 in Protestant Bibles; 24 in the Douay). The play on words in "for the lamb... will be their shepherd" emphasizes the image of the good shepherd that Jesus himself used in John's gospel immediately prior to the selection for today.
That reference was quite shocking to his hearers. This seems odd to us today, especially in light of the frequent reference to God as the shepherd of his flock in the Old Testament. But over the years, as the Pharisees sought a stricter adherence to the purity laws, shepherds had become seen as ritually unclean, due to their living outdoors with the sheep. This also lends a special meaning to Luke's description of the shepherds being the first to know of the birth of Jesus. God seems intent on including all of those who are shut out and sent Jesus to round up the sheep. This fact is what is being celebrated by this multitude before the throne of God.
This leaves us with the interesting statement that the robes have been made white by the blood of the lamb. We can take it that the sacrifice that Jesus made of his life on earth has made us all part of the family of God, and therefore royalty, entitled to wear white. Or we can take it that the blood that Jesus spilled, like the blood of animals sacrificed for our sins, has made them all pure in heart and thus worthy to be clothed in those white robes.
This is the hope that is often quoted in our funeral services, the hope of every Christian -- that the death of the body is not the end of us. Instead we will be part of a great celebration in the presence of God, joyful and carefree, with no more catastrophes to dread and no earning our living by the sweat of our brows.
John 10:22-30
In the gospel lesson, our own occasional impatience with God is given voice as "the Jews" demand to know if Jesus is the Messiah or not. "Speak plainly!" they demand. They are impatient for this knowledge but even more, they are impatient for a Messiah who will fulfill all their hopes for the Romans to be defeated and driven out of Judea. They have expectations of the Messiah, and Jesus has not fulfilled them.
Jesus gives them a direct answer, "I did tell you, but you do not believe. The works I do in my Father's name testify about me...." He says that his "sheep" know him and follow him, and therefore will be given eternal life. The implication might be that if you don't know who he is, you're probably not one of his "sheep."
In our society, we often say: "Seeing is believing." But Jesus is saying: "Believing is seeing." If you don't get it, in other words, it's because you don't believe in him. And of course this is true. We see what we are prepared to see.
An interesting study shown on a television science program recently did a number of experiments to prove that this is true. In one of them, they took a clown to a college campus and had him ride a unicycle around the quad. Deliberately choosing those who were talking on cell phones, they had the clown ride past them, not just once, but several times. One man was so intent on his conversation that he practically collided with the clown. Yet when questioned, not one of them remembered seeing a clown at all. Even when they were introduced to the clown, not one of them remembered ever having seen him before! They talked about this as the concept of a kind of tunnel vision that erases everything from our line of sight when we are concentrating on one thing -- in this case, the conversation on a cell phone. But tunnel vision applies to all kinds of focused attention. When we are intent on one way of thinking, we cannot see those things that are outside of that framework. Anything considered extraneous we eliminate from our consciousness and memory.
Jesus offers eternal life to those who will follow him. More, he promises that those who follow him cannot be snatched away. They will get the gift promised by Jesus in the name of his parent. But we judge by other standards than God. We judge by appearance, the style of clothing a person wears, the kind of car s/he drives, and/or the kind of job s/he holds. One of the things that I learned as a hospital chaplain was that when we go to the hospital we have to surrender our self-understanding. We have to take off the clothing that defines us and put on a hospital gown. If we wear dentures, we have to take them out and put them in a cup. We have none of the trappings by which we tell others who we are.
The result of this is that some patients become belligerent because no one -- nurses, doctors, chaplains, not even the housekeeping staff -- knows that this woman has money and status. They treat her like they treat any other patient, and she knows she is different from all those others. Except that without those status symbols, she is not different from the rest of the patients. In fact, if she affects an air of superiority, she is liable to be treated as less than others by some of the staff. Believing her to be just "one of the crowd," she is seen as a problem rather than a person.
Jesus runs into the same problem, perhaps, when he then says, "I and the Father are one." He has, as we have seen, said that they do not see him as Messiah because they have already decided that he is not. Now he says something that can be understood in either of two ways. It may be that he has said, "I and the Father are one in intent" -- in other words: "I do and say what the Father wants me to do and say, and absolutely nothing else." Or he could mean: "I am God." The Pharisees decide that he surely must mean the latter, and they take up stones to kill him (though that is in the next verse, not included in today's reading).
By the time of the writing of John's gospel, the church had decided that the Pharisees were right in their understanding of what Jesus had said, but that they were wrong to object to him saying so. But to the Jews, this was clearly blasphemy. God is one, the only God, and there is no other who can claim equality with God. Our changed attitude about that came from the miracles that Jesus did but more because the disciples were able to access that same power -- in the name of Jesus the Christ. And our hope in God takes form in Jesus.
However, there is one thing that needs to be said about the new understanding and that is that the Latin word persona, which is used to describe the Trinitarian nature of God, does not mean "person" as we understand in English. Persona literally means the mask that an actor wore on the theater stage. So the understanding was not that God is three people in one, but that God wears three masks, seen at different times and under various circumstances. That understanding gave the people of the time great comfort, because it meant that in seeing Jesus not as a person but as a part of God, they saw the compassionate side of God. It gave them a special hope, the hope that God is kind and loving and not the oppressive lawgiver of the Pharisees' imaginings.
In this season of Easter, hope is the overriding theme. Hope for today, hope for tomorrow -- whatever tomorrow may bring. We hope in a loving God, we hope in the Christ as the personification of that love, and the Spirit bears witness that our hope is not in vain. This is the good news, the gospel that we are to preach throughout the world. It is for this reason that every Sunday is a reminder of the resurrection of Jesus, not just the Sundays in Easter.
So we pray for the sick in the hope that they will be healed. We pray for our beloved dead in the hope that they are in the hands of God. We pray for Messiah to come so that the world may be remade into what God intended. We pray for Jesus to return and help us to succeed in the Great Commission, which we have failed to accomplish and now despair of even trying to do. We hope that our sins will be overlooked. Failing that, we pray for forgiveness without penalty. We may, however, also hope that God can not only forgive us, but remake us so that we might be the people God intended us to be.
Hope like this is a hard thing. Not brittle, but tough, resilient. Like leather that has been broken in, this hope endures stretching, a stretching of the spirit as well as the flesh. In a society that seems to approve of always doing the easy thing, taking an easy path and searching for happiness is the norm. Seeking resilience is not. Giving up is not seen as sad but reasonable when things go wrong. The person who insists on pursuing a difficult goal is not seen as visionary but stubborn.
This set of scriptures takes a very different view. The dead may be raised. Those who have died for an ideal are blessed. Messiah is not going to come with legions of angels to do our work for us. We follow a Messiah who bears the whip and thorns, even gives up his life for his followers. He does this not so we never have to pay for our sins, but so we will have the strength to face what we have done or failed to do and then to work to make amends, to clean up the messes we have created in our lives and in our world.
Each of the scriptures for today focuses on a different view of that hope. Taken together, they give us a new kind of hope.
Acts 9:36-43
The book of the Acts of the Apostles emphasizes that not only did Jesus perform miracles, but the disciples, acting in the name of Jesus, did the same after his ascension into heaven. From Acts 3, where Peter cures a crippled beggar, to the story immediately preceding today's reading, where Peter is asked to pray for a man named Aeneas who "had been bedridden for eight years because he was paralyzed," Peter and the other apostles are seen healing in the name of Jesus. All of those healings, the apostles say, were empowered by the Holy Spirit and done in the name of Jesus. None of them were accomplished by their own piety (3:12).
The effect of these healings was the same as the works that Jesus himself did -- they brought in new believers. They created a new hope that through faith in Christ, we may be made whole and even made sure that death is not the end.
The women who sent for Peter knew that he was one of the disciples and probably hoped for a healing for their friend. However, Tabitha (Dorcas, in Greek) had already died when he arrived. What hope could these women who were gathered around her dead body have at this point?
When Peter comes in, they show him the beautiful work that this woman has done for them and for others. As we usually do when someone dies, they tell him her story and what she meant to them. As any good pastor would do, he listens. So he learns how important she has been to her community, how loving and giving she was. They show him the clothes she has made for them and for others. They talk about her works of charity.
At last he asks them to leave him alone in the room with the body. Does he hope that she is still alive, even though she seems to be dead? Does he dare to hope that God will bring her back to life? Peter has always been the boldest of the disciples, always wanting to follow his Lord, even to walking on water as Jesus did one night. So of all the disciples, he is the one most likely to believe enough to try to wake the dead.
He may be encouraged in this by the memory of a similar situation where Jesus was called to the home of the head of the synagogue because the man's daughter was seriously ill (Luke 8:48-50). When Jesus and the disciples finally got there -- having been delayed by a woman who needed to be healed from a long "issue of blood" -- the girl was dead. Yet Jesus insisted on being allowed to see her. Peter may be thinking about the mourners and how they mocked Jesus when he said the girl was merely sleeping. Everyone in that time and place had watched people die. They knew what the dead looked like. Peter may have been thinking about that episode, having been one of the few in the room when Jesus went to the bed and said simply, "Little girl, wake up."
So Peter kneels down and prays. Nothing is recorded of what he said to God, even though it was customary among the Jews to pray out loud. The reverberation of the words in the air has a power of its own, beyond the intent of the person praying. Perhaps it isn't just that God likes to hear his children praying, though that is certainly true. Perhaps it is important for us to hear the words we pray. It certainly helps us to clarify our thoughts when we pray aloud.
Whatever the case, Peter prays. As one of the three disciples Jesus took everywhere with him, he knows how to pray. He knows God, because as Jesus said, he has known his master. He therefore prays with an absolute trust that God wants the best for his children. He prays as a man prays when he has failed, absolutely and completely, and been forgiven -- absolutely and completely. He prays not just for Dorcas but for those who need her. He prays for a woman who is still in her active years, a woman who is busy, not for herself but for others. We are not told how old she was, or if she had a family to support. But in Peter's day the young were not exempt from death, and it may be that Dorcas was a vibrant, young woman.
Peter then rises and as he had seen Jesus do he takes her hand and tells her to get up. And she does.
Like Jake Sully at the end of the movie Avatar, her eyes open and the story ends. Oh yes, Peter presents her -- alive -- to her friends, but we do not get to hear her story. What is it like to die? Where was she? Was she really dead? Did she see Jesus? Was she with God? The questions we might want to ask are endless. We are still left with hope, not sight. Faith, not certainty.
It is this way, always. Recently a neurosurgeon named Dr. Eben Alexander wrote a book titled Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife, in which he described his own near-death experience while in a meningitis-induced coma. His experiences convinced him that his previous attitude of dismissal of the reality of a life beyond death and all those who claimed to have experienced any part of heaven was wrong. He wrote his book to convince others, but those who do not wish to believe still don't, much to his chagrin. There will be more about that later as we discuss the gospel for today.
Revelation 7:9-17
The thing we must remember when reading the Revelation of John is that it is presented to us as a vision. It is filled with allegory and metaphor. So we need to look at the meaning of the scenes and the overarching theme, or we will trip over the details.
In today's passage, the writer of Revelation wants us to know that those who have been persecuted to death for being Christian still have life, and they are able to praise God, despite all that they may have gone through. He also wants to assure us that heaven is not a limited place. One does not have to be a Jew (or an American) to be in the multitude standing before the throne of God. By saying "every nation, tribe, people and language," he is repeating the Pentecost experience when the crowds gathering in Jerusalem were from every part of the known world and yet could each understand what the disciples were saying. Even more, as they shout out their praise to God, they are all saying the same thing: thanking God and the lamb for our salvation.
The reference to the lamb is a metaphor. Jesus has been sacrificed just as the Passover lamb is sacrificed -- to make us part of the family of God. (John 19:36 makes a specific reference to Jesus' legs being left unbroken on the cross, just as Exodus 12:46 says of the Passover lamb, "Do not break any of the bones.") So we know that the lamb means Jesus. While we may see lambs in many religious paintings about the Christ, we also know that we will be seeing Jesus in his glorified state, not as a literal lamb.
The white robes worn by all those in heaven are likewise a metaphor. White was a difficult color to obtain in ancient times, requiring special handling of wool by specialists in the art. So to wear white was a sign that you had no hard labor to perform. For this reason white robes were ceremonial garments, fit for royalty or perhaps for wearing to a wedding or other special event. The poor could not afford white cloth, nor could they afford the special cleaning that was necessary to keep the cloth white. Even today, everyone knows that eating tomato sauce while wearing white is to risk wearing the tomato sauce permanently. Imagine then in the days of old, when bleach was not readily available! So the white robes worn in heaven tell us that the multitude no longer has to labor in the way we do on earth. Instead, they are perpetually praising God, for which one wears ceremonial clothing. John the divine goes on, emphasizing this meaning, when he says:
Never again will they hunger; never again will they thirst.
The sun will not beat down on them, nor any scorching heat.
For the lamb... will be their shepherd; he will lead them to springs of living water.
John is quoting Isaiah's prophecy about the Day of the Lord (Isaiah 49:10) and David's shepherd Psalm (23 in Protestant Bibles; 24 in the Douay). The play on words in "for the lamb... will be their shepherd" emphasizes the image of the good shepherd that Jesus himself used in John's gospel immediately prior to the selection for today.
That reference was quite shocking to his hearers. This seems odd to us today, especially in light of the frequent reference to God as the shepherd of his flock in the Old Testament. But over the years, as the Pharisees sought a stricter adherence to the purity laws, shepherds had become seen as ritually unclean, due to their living outdoors with the sheep. This also lends a special meaning to Luke's description of the shepherds being the first to know of the birth of Jesus. God seems intent on including all of those who are shut out and sent Jesus to round up the sheep. This fact is what is being celebrated by this multitude before the throne of God.
This leaves us with the interesting statement that the robes have been made white by the blood of the lamb. We can take it that the sacrifice that Jesus made of his life on earth has made us all part of the family of God, and therefore royalty, entitled to wear white. Or we can take it that the blood that Jesus spilled, like the blood of animals sacrificed for our sins, has made them all pure in heart and thus worthy to be clothed in those white robes.
This is the hope that is often quoted in our funeral services, the hope of every Christian -- that the death of the body is not the end of us. Instead we will be part of a great celebration in the presence of God, joyful and carefree, with no more catastrophes to dread and no earning our living by the sweat of our brows.
John 10:22-30
In the gospel lesson, our own occasional impatience with God is given voice as "the Jews" demand to know if Jesus is the Messiah or not. "Speak plainly!" they demand. They are impatient for this knowledge but even more, they are impatient for a Messiah who will fulfill all their hopes for the Romans to be defeated and driven out of Judea. They have expectations of the Messiah, and Jesus has not fulfilled them.
Jesus gives them a direct answer, "I did tell you, but you do not believe. The works I do in my Father's name testify about me...." He says that his "sheep" know him and follow him, and therefore will be given eternal life. The implication might be that if you don't know who he is, you're probably not one of his "sheep."
In our society, we often say: "Seeing is believing." But Jesus is saying: "Believing is seeing." If you don't get it, in other words, it's because you don't believe in him. And of course this is true. We see what we are prepared to see.
An interesting study shown on a television science program recently did a number of experiments to prove that this is true. In one of them, they took a clown to a college campus and had him ride a unicycle around the quad. Deliberately choosing those who were talking on cell phones, they had the clown ride past them, not just once, but several times. One man was so intent on his conversation that he practically collided with the clown. Yet when questioned, not one of them remembered seeing a clown at all. Even when they were introduced to the clown, not one of them remembered ever having seen him before! They talked about this as the concept of a kind of tunnel vision that erases everything from our line of sight when we are concentrating on one thing -- in this case, the conversation on a cell phone. But tunnel vision applies to all kinds of focused attention. When we are intent on one way of thinking, we cannot see those things that are outside of that framework. Anything considered extraneous we eliminate from our consciousness and memory.
Jesus offers eternal life to those who will follow him. More, he promises that those who follow him cannot be snatched away. They will get the gift promised by Jesus in the name of his parent. But we judge by other standards than God. We judge by appearance, the style of clothing a person wears, the kind of car s/he drives, and/or the kind of job s/he holds. One of the things that I learned as a hospital chaplain was that when we go to the hospital we have to surrender our self-understanding. We have to take off the clothing that defines us and put on a hospital gown. If we wear dentures, we have to take them out and put them in a cup. We have none of the trappings by which we tell others who we are.
The result of this is that some patients become belligerent because no one -- nurses, doctors, chaplains, not even the housekeeping staff -- knows that this woman has money and status. They treat her like they treat any other patient, and she knows she is different from all those others. Except that without those status symbols, she is not different from the rest of the patients. In fact, if she affects an air of superiority, she is liable to be treated as less than others by some of the staff. Believing her to be just "one of the crowd," she is seen as a problem rather than a person.
Jesus runs into the same problem, perhaps, when he then says, "I and the Father are one." He has, as we have seen, said that they do not see him as Messiah because they have already decided that he is not. Now he says something that can be understood in either of two ways. It may be that he has said, "I and the Father are one in intent" -- in other words: "I do and say what the Father wants me to do and say, and absolutely nothing else." Or he could mean: "I am God." The Pharisees decide that he surely must mean the latter, and they take up stones to kill him (though that is in the next verse, not included in today's reading).
By the time of the writing of John's gospel, the church had decided that the Pharisees were right in their understanding of what Jesus had said, but that they were wrong to object to him saying so. But to the Jews, this was clearly blasphemy. God is one, the only God, and there is no other who can claim equality with God. Our changed attitude about that came from the miracles that Jesus did but more because the disciples were able to access that same power -- in the name of Jesus the Christ. And our hope in God takes form in Jesus.
However, there is one thing that needs to be said about the new understanding and that is that the Latin word persona, which is used to describe the Trinitarian nature of God, does not mean "person" as we understand in English. Persona literally means the mask that an actor wore on the theater stage. So the understanding was not that God is three people in one, but that God wears three masks, seen at different times and under various circumstances. That understanding gave the people of the time great comfort, because it meant that in seeing Jesus not as a person but as a part of God, they saw the compassionate side of God. It gave them a special hope, the hope that God is kind and loving and not the oppressive lawgiver of the Pharisees' imaginings.
In this season of Easter, hope is the overriding theme. Hope for today, hope for tomorrow -- whatever tomorrow may bring. We hope in a loving God, we hope in the Christ as the personification of that love, and the Spirit bears witness that our hope is not in vain. This is the good news, the gospel that we are to preach throughout the world. It is for this reason that every Sunday is a reminder of the resurrection of Jesus, not just the Sundays in Easter.
