The Lord be with you. 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.
It wasn't any doubt that they got the message. 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 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. 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, East Side Of The Jordan, many came to believe in Jesus. This is the gospel of the Lord.