Trust the Experts
Mar. 16: Saturday of the Fourth Week of Lent
In today’s Gospel, the Pharisees, the people, and even the city guards debate whether and how the scripture foretell Jesus as the Messiah. The Pharisees accuse the latter groups of being uneducated, and thus not qualified to enter the discussion.
We Catholics are sometimes accused of not being familiar with scripture, but in fact, nearly every part of our mass comes directly from scripture.
Reading 1
Jer 11:18-20
I knew their plot because the LORD informed me; at that time you, O LORD, showed me their doings.
Yet I, like a trusting lamb led to slaughter, had not realized that they were hatching plots against me: "Let us destroy the tree in its vigor; let us cut him off from the land of the living, so that his name will be spoken no more."
But, you, O LORD of hosts, O just Judge, searcher of mind and heart, Let me witness the vengeance you take on them, for to you I have entrusted my cause!
Just as Christ was rejected in his home town of Nazareth, Jeremiah’s home town of Anathoth plotted to kill him. He had no idea.
Once again, we’re reminded that being a “lamb” isn’t a reference to gentleness, but innocence. A lamb hasn’t done anything wrong; it doesn’t hurt anyone. Neither has Jeremiah, or Jesus, as we’ll see in the Gospel.
Responsorial Psalm
Ps 7:2-3, 9bc-10, 11-12
R. (2a) O Lord, my God, in you I take refuge.
O LORD, my God, in you I take refuge;
save me from all my pursuers and rescue me,
Lest I become like the lion's prey,
to be torn to pieces, with no one to rescue me.
R. O Lord, my God, in you I take refuge.
Do me justice, O LORD, because I am just,
and because of the innocence that is mine.
Let the malice of the wicked come to an end,
but sustain the just,
O searcher of heart and soul, O just God.
R. O Lord, my God, in you I take refuge.
A shield before me is God,
who saves the upright of heart;
A just judge is God,
a God who punishes day by day.
R. O Lord, my God, in you I take refuge.
This psalm is sung by an innocent person. In a couple of verses we skipped over, he says, “If I have maltreated someone treating me equitably—or even despoiled my oppressor without cause—Then let my enemy pursue and overtake my soul, trample my life to the ground, and lay my honor in the dust.”
Only the innocent can call on God’s sanctuary for justice and protection.
Verse Before the Gospel
See Lk 8:15
Blessed are they who have kept the word with a generous heart
and yield a harvest through perseverance.
This is the tail end of Jesus’ explanation of the Parable of the Sower.1 If we make our hearts good soil for the planting of the word, we will provide a great yield.
Gospel
Jn 7:40-53
Some in the crowd who heard these words of Jesus said, "This is truly the Prophet." Others said, "This is the Christ." But others said, "The Christ will not come from Galilee, will he? Does not Scripture say that the Christ will be of David's family and come from Bethlehem, the village where David lived?" So a division occurred in the crowd because of him. Some of them even wanted to arrest him, but no one laid hands on him.
So the guards went to the chief priests and Pharisees, who asked them, "Why did you not bring him?"
The guards answered, "Never before has anyone spoken like this man."
So the Pharisees answered them, "Have you also been deceived? Have any of the authorities or the Pharisees believed in him? But this crowd, which does not know the law, is accursed."
Nicodemus, one of their members who had come to him earlier, said to them, "Does our law condemn a man before it first hears him and finds out what he is doing?"
They answered and said to him, "You are not from Galilee also, are you? Look and see that no prophet arises from Galilee."
Then each went to his own house.
The prophets were pretty clear that the Messiah would be from the City of David, Bethlehem. Jesus’ mother and (foster) father are from the Galilean town of Nazareth; He was raised there, but by a bizarre set of historical events, Jesus Himself wasn’t born there.
We all know the infancy narrative, but focus on one’s childhood is a relatively modern phenomenon.2 Even hagiographies of emperors rarely included stories about Great Men as children, unless it was mythology about fighting wolves barehanded or such.
The whole reason Matthew and Luke go into where Jesus was born is because of the exact discussion we see in today’s Gospel. Jesus was a Nazarene, but not from Nazareth.
When the Pharisees hear about the debate, they dismiss the uneducated crowd. Regular don’t have the proper qualifications to determine who is or isn’t the Messiah! Trust the experts!
Then it turns out, one of the experts disagrees. Nicodemus was a Pharisee in the ancient sense (a member of Israel’s religious authority) not the modern sense—a self-righteous hypocrite. He was open minded enough to listen to Jesus.
The others can’t imagine listening to an opposing viewpoint. The only possible explanation they can think of for Nicodemus’s fair-mindedness is that, actually, he’s biased because he must be from Galilee. Except he’s not; he just has an open heart and intelligent mind.
So, we have the crowds debating; the guards who decide they can’t just arrest somebody when it’s still an open question as to whether or not he even did something; Nicodemus willing to hear out the accused; and the Pharisees who want to cut off all debate because they’ve already made up their mind.
The issue isn’t settled here, but we can at least be grateful that Nicodemus didn’t allow it to be settled by men who had already made up their minds.
Thanks a lot, Freud.