Thursday April 6
There is something prosaic and shallow about the listeners of Jesus. They are very literal people, paralyzed by the immediacy of what is before their physical eyes. They simply cannot see beyond the physicality of Jesus into the immense possibilities of Christ. Thus they confuse the meaning of death or age that Jesus speaks of. No wonder they pick up stones, for they are as sterile as the stones in their hands. In total contrast to these people is Abraham in today’s first reading. Abraham has the capacity to imagine, see beyond the literalness and limitations of the physical world and his own physical self into the possibilities of God. In other words, he walks easy on the road of faith. He understands the language of God, and God finds it easy to converse with him.
How would it be between God and me? Do we talk and hear the same language?
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The tension is palpable. The dialogue with the Jews today ends in a confrontation; they were raining stones over Christ, the controversy exasperates, concentrating around two poles. On the one hand, Jesus says twice that whoever keeps his word will not see death; presenting himself overcoming supreme evil and the doorway to an eternity of divine communion. On the other hand, he reveals that his power comes from the fact that he is the Son of God, not merely a son of Abraham: I am is repeated once again, citing the name of God himself (Ex 3:14).
