A reading of the holy gospel according to John, and this is a continuation from the readings of the last few days. When the Jews reached for rocks to stone Jesus, he protested to them. Many good deeds I have shown to you and to my father. For which of these do you stone me? It is not for your good deeds that we are stoning you, the Jews retorted, but for blaspheming.
Now notice that. You blaspheme by making yourself in some way to be god. And so his hearers understood Christ to be claiming to be God. So keep that in mind in the view of holy week that's coming. In other words, if you want good testimony, go to contemporaries.
What did they think that Christ claimed to be? They put him on the cross for blasphemy. He made himself out to be god. Now he may have been crazy. He may have been a liar, but that's what he did.
He claimed to be god. So they say, it is not for any good deed that we are stoning you, but for blasphemy. You who are only a man are making yourself out to be god. So that's what his contemporaries thought he was saying. And Jesus answered, 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 lose its force, do you claim that I blasphemed when, as he whom the father consecrated and sent into the world, I said, I am god's son? If I do not perform my father's works, put no faith in me. But if I do perform them, even though you put no faith in me, put faith in those works so as to realize what it means that the father is in me and I in him. At these words, they again tried to arrest him, but he escaped from their grasp. And then Jesus went back across the Jordan to a place where John had been baptizing earlier.
And while he stayed there, many people came out to him. John may never have performed a sign, they said, but whatever John said about this man was true. In that place, that is across the Jordan, many came to believe in Jesus, and this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of holy spirit, amen. We're winding down Christ's days on earth.
And, of course, these texts have been chosen for that reason. But you can see what a confusing picture you're getting, that is if you're getting a picture. I hope you are. Because these texts are following one after the other. It's a continuous text from Saint John.
And it wouldn't hurt, you know, to go back and read the you know, you could do it in about ten minutes if you take the four gospels, this or or the the four gospels and read just the chapters on Christ's days just before his passion and then his passion and his death. You can do it it all in about ten minutes at the most. And then you will get a synoptic view because you will have read the synoptics. And it will be a coherent view, but a confusing picture. And it's confusing because we're dealing with masses of human beings.
And they ebb and they flow, they give their confidence and they give their allegiance one minute to him and another minute to somebody else. One minute they're convinced of this and the next minute they are overwhelmingly convinced of something else. What moves? We refer to them, you know, as a crowd, multitude, the Jews. But remember, there is no such thing as that.
It's an unreality. When you say the Jews did this or the crowd did this, you're talking about an idea. The reality is individual human beings. Individual human beings, each one a unique, As our holy father said, an irreversible being, an unrepeatable being, an individual. And yet, of course, when you get a large number of people together, you can make very accurate predictions on how things will go.
And if there's anything you can say about a crowd, big or small, is that it is fickle. It is fickle. It ebbs and it flows as a crowd. And that's the statistics as we work in today are they'll predict that ebb and flow pretty well. Now the big question is for us, what do we make of all of this?
You can pick up Herodotus and read the history. You can pick up, let us say, Cicero and read what he has to say about the Rome of his day, and you may be enthusiastic about it or you may be downcast or what have you. You may pick up a history of the early days of The United States and again be be warmed by it or be repelled by it or what have you. History is a great thing. Of course it's downgraded today.
We don't even use the word in school. It's called a social science. But the point is this, this isn't history alone. This is for you and for me. See, as I'm up here, I look out and I say, there is the congregation.
There's no such thing as a congregation. All that's out there in those pews are you individual human beings, individual, each one unique. You'll never be unrepeatable as as as our holy father says. Each one, each one is on his own. You have autonomy.
It's one of the great virtues that men have laid their lives down for. Let's act that way. What does this mean to you? Now you have to hear. You have to get it into your head first.
And that's why I say go back to the text and read it. 10 will do it. And then you will get an impact which you cannot get from just hearing it by dribs and drabs. And then it then you you will see the confusion and it'll give you a sympathy for the people who listen to Christ. It was a confusing time.
Think of yourself if someone walked into the church right now and said, I'm Jesus Christ. What would be your reaction? You'd say, he needs help, wouldn't you? Could it be Jesus Christ? And so when we when we see this, it's a commentary on human nature, of course.
You're reading. If it's the word of God, that's about all I need to say to recommend it. But it is considered pretty fair literature too, you know. And so here we have an insight into human nature, but don't put it on that basis. Here is something for you individually, for you here and now, for the March 1980, not last year or not next year.
Here is something for you. You are coming into a confrontation with Jesus Christ. The the temple of holy of of Lent is mounting. We are coming more and more to the climax. Is it like reading a novel, or is this something real in your own lives?
Has it brought a refreshing view to your mind of Jesus Christ and who he was? Who he was? That question is being asked all around today and various answers are given even by so called Christians and people in the holy Roman Catholic church who deny practically the divinity of Christ. How about that? Did Christ claim to be divine?
That's the absolute essential question. Did he or didn't he? Now if he did claim to be divine, that doesn't prove him divine. You can find people over in Saint Elizabeth's who believe they're God. But the next question then is, was he a maniac?
Was he crazy? Was he a liar? See, these are the two big questions. Because as Clive Staple Lewis points out, you cannot say that Jesus Christ was only a good man, the best man that ever lived. Because if that's all he was, he wasn't the best and he wasn't even a good man.
He was either a maniac or a liar. There's your choice. Now this is a choice which is not theoretical and academic. You hear people talk about newborn Christians. You were all newborn in your baptism.
You don't need a rebirth or a new morning. What you we all need is to have our convictions, our perception of Jesus Christ renewed. It's only human that we need to have it renewed and to have it be reinvigorated in our daily living. That's what we need. And when we put ourselves in the position of these people who listen to Christ in these climaxing days, let us put ourselves in their place.
But we have the wisdom of hindsight. In the name of the father, son, the holy spirit. Amen.