A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint John. Now, what we're reading this morning is a direct continuation of yesterday's reading, where the Jews were about to stone Jesus because they thought that he had claimed to be God and therefore was guilty of blasphemy. Now this continues right along. You'll see I wasn't exaggerating. When the Jews reached for the rocks to stone Jesus, he protested to them.
Many good deeds have I shown you from the father. For which of these deeds do you now stone me? It is not for any of your good deeds that we are stoning you, the Jews retorted, but for blaspheming. You who are only a man are making yourself out to be God. So there wasn't any doubt what they did that they got the message.
And Jesus said, is it not written in your law I have said you are gods? If it calls those men gods to whom god's word was addressed and scripture cannot cannot lose its force, do you claim that I blasphemed when, as he whom the father consecrated and sent into this world, I said, I am god's son? Now listen. See, our blessed Lord shifts entirely. He's going now from his left words.
Now he's going to something that counts more than words. Then he says, if I do not perform my father's works, put no faith in me. But if I do perform, even though you put no faith in me, put faith in these works so as to realize what it means that the father is in me and I in him. And how do they respond to that? At these words, they again tried to arrest Jesus, but he eluded their grasp.
Then he went back across the Jordan to the place where John had been baptizing earlier, and while he stayed there, that is on the Eastern Bank, many people came to him. John may never have performed a sign they commended, but whatever John said about this man was true. In that place on the East Side Of The Jordan, many came to believe in Jesus, and this is the gospel of the lord. The name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. As I said yesterday, the church is extremely anxious in her as formally, as officially as she could do it, to bring home to us the basis of our entire faith.
That this son of Mary, this man called Jesus Christ, the son of carpenter from up in the boondocks, up around the lake there, that this man was truly more than a man, but the son of God. But truly man, but that that person of Jesus Christ is God. Because when you come to holy week as we're going to come to it and see what happens to this God man, it's enough to break anybody's faith unless we have it firmly based on the only thing where it can be based. And that is not emotion, it is not sentiment, it is not my feeling, it's upon an act of cold blooded assent. I believe in Jesus Christ, the son of Mary and the son of God.
It's not how you feel about it. When Saint Thomas More left his cell in the tower to have his head chopped off, he didn't have any great feelings of exaltation, believe me. Neither did Saint John Fisher, neither did the Carthusian monks. It's not how you feel, it's what you do. It's your ascent of an intellectual reasonable person.
Do you believe or don't you? Now what do you believe? Here, it's it really the more you read of this and think about about these words of our blessed lord, the more profound they get and and the smarter he gets. Now today, we are we are pulled apart with two concepts of faith. Since Martin Luther's time in the Western world, the word faith has almost become the equivalent of trust.
Do you trust me? Do you have faith in me? But there's another and a much more basic meaning to the word faith, and that is what we may say belief or credibility, motives of credibility. I may have trust in you, but I have should should have reasons for trusting you. The reasons for trusting you are motives of credibility.
Now these are two very different things. A man comes up and wraps on your door, he's nicely nicely dressed. He has a very fine demeanor. His his language is very cultivated. Suave.
So he impresses you. You trust him, so he sells you a new roof. What reason did you have to trust the man? Well, you say he looked good and he spoke well. Well, maybe, but are they good reasons?
And you see, when you talk about motives of credibility now I know this is a little early in the morning to talk like this, but I make no apology for it. Christ talked this way. You should have you should say, why do I trust this guy? He may he may look good. He may have fine language, and he certainly knows how to get into my confidence.
But why? What reasons do I have? How many of you have ever asked to see your doctor's diploma where he graduated from a medical school? How do you know he graduated from a medical school? How do you know he's a doctor?
Have you ever asked yourself that? Well, if you do, I'm not saying you should, that your next visit say, Doc, I don't know whether you're a doctor or not, would you like to show me your credentials? But the thing is, in important matters, it's not wrong to ask why should I believe you? Why should I put my trust in you? Now here's that twofold meaning, you see.
Trust, confidence, that's emotional feeling and all the rest of it. I don't despise it, but I distrust it. On the other hand, under the same words, you have these motives of credibility. Why should I believe you? Oh, that's something else.
I can measure it. I can weigh it. I can evaluate it. I can analyze it. I can verify it.
That's exactly what our lord does here today. He's saying, look, you don't believe my words I'm not asking you to believe my words now. Look what I've done. Have I done the father's words? So don't believe me.
Notice he's he is leaving the idea of trust and he's asking you now to to to look at the reasons that you should trust him. So what he's saying is and he's saying it explicitly. Don't take my words. Even though I've put a scripture to you, don't bother with it. Look at what I've done.
Have I done the works of God? Well, he doesn't enumerate them, but they knew them. Notice this isn't taking place across the Jordan. This is taking place on the Western Bank. You're talking here to Jews.
These are the people who have been following Jesus. These are the people who were out to trap him, to entrap him, to destroy him, to destroy him. They were not seeking truth at all. And we're told that right at the end. Because what is their reply when he says, look, forget all that I told you.
Leave scripture aside. Get out of all the books and all that kind of stuff, and just look at what I've done. Then make up your mind. And what is their reaction it? Do they say, look.
What have you done? Tell us. Even if we know it, you just tell us what you've done. Or they say, yeah. You've you've done this.
You've done that. You raised the dead. Oh, you you know, the whole litany of our lord's miracles. Do they do anything like that? Nothing like that.
What do they do? Listen. At these words, they again tried to arrest him because they see, they thought that they had him, by his own words, condemned to death because he had claimed to be the son of god, and that made him guilty of death. In the name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit. Amen.