Faith Daily | 1 April 2022

PRAYER of the DAY - APBA p 48

Almighty God,

in Christ you make all things new:

transform the poverty of our nature

by the riches of your grace,

and in the renewal of our lives

make known your heavenly glory;

through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen

GOSPEL for the Day: John 7: 1-2, 10, 25-30

After this Jesus went about in Galilee. He did not wish to go about in Judea because the Jews were looking for an opportunity to kill him. 2Now the Jewish festival of Booths was near.

But after his brothers had gone to the festival, then he also went, not publicly but as it were in secret.

25 Now some of the people of Jerusalem were saying, ‘Is not this the man whom they are trying to kill? 26And here he is, speaking openly, but they say nothing to him! Can it be that the authorities really know that this is the Messiah? 27Yet we know where this man is from; but when the Messiah comes, no one will know where he is from.’ 28Then Jesus cried out as he was teaching in the temple, ‘You know me, and you know where I am from. I have not come on my own. But the one who sent me is true, and you do not know him. 29I know him, because I am from him, and he sent me.’ 30Then they tried to arrest him, but no one laid hands on him, because his hour had not yet come.

GOSPEL REFLECTION: Cathy Grant

In this passage, Jesus follows his disciples to Jerusalem to celebrate one of the three great Jewish festivals, the Festival of Tabernacles or Booths, which reminded Israel of the time when their ancestors wandered in the wilderness living in tents (tabernacles or booths.)

Tension is mounting but Jesus’ “time” has “not yet come” so he approaches Jerusalem quietly. His reception in Jerusalem is mixed. Some say he is a demon. Others wonder whether he is the Messiah and is allowed to teach openly because the authorities know this. Confused, however, they suggest that if he really was the Messiah then they wouldn’t know where he had come from – he would appear mysteriously instead. How often our limited human understanding tries to interpret complexity through binary logic.

Jesus points out that their real ignorance isn’t that they are not sure whether Jesus comes from God, but that they don’t even know God.

The challenge of Jesus’ message then, as now, is that we must learn about God, the world and ourselves, by looking at Jesus. It is Jesus the Christ who points the way to God the Father.

May we seek him out and grow in our understanding of His ways this Lent as we look to the cross of Easter.

FINAL PRAYER: Jim Cotter “Unfolding the Living Word”, Collect for Maundy Thursday

Disturbing presence,

turning our lives inside out,

showing us in Jesus

that to be a nameless nobody

is the way to the truth of ourselves and of you,

give us the grace and courage to recognize

that it is at the point of nothing

that we are embraced by you

and welcomed freely into your domain.

We pray this in the Spirit of the One

who indeed bore the cost of love,

enduring to the end.

Amen