Tuesday of the 4th Week of Easter
May 13, 2014 6:30am
I often feel uncomfortable with
the way John’s gospel refers to the Jews.
John sometimes seems to demonize
them.
He almost seems to be
anti-Semitic.
We see a bit of this in today’s
gospel.
So, what is going on here?
Two things, I think.
First, there was a lot of plain
old religious tension during Jesus’ lifetime and in the decades that followed
when John composed his gospel.
Jesus calls for reform and
challenges the Jewish religious leaders.
Then eventually the followers of
Jesus, who came to be known as Christians as we hear in the first reading,
began splitting away from Judaism.
There was tension and persecution
of the Christians.
And the second thing going on was
smugness.
Jesus was really bothered by the
smugness of the Jewish religious leaders.
They thought that they had the
truth, all the answers, and a corner on the market of God’s good graces.
They didn’t have to change or be
open to changing anything.
This attitude is really what
Jesus and then John are so bothered by.
So if anything, John’s Gospel is really
anti-smugness and not anti-Semitic.
I see two conclusions.
First, we as a Church have also
been guilty of intolerance of those of other faiths, of other Christians, and
even of Catholics with whom there have been differences or disagreements.
We need to be aware of this.
We dislike anti-Catholicism even
when it is rooted in our mistakes.
At the same time, we too need to
avoid demonizing any religious group and, for that matter, any group at all.
There are far better ways to
promote the love of God and the way of Jesus.
And second, we also need to be
aware of smugness.
Perhaps we can also have some smugness
in the way we assert truth and what we believe to be true.
And perhaps that is as displeasing
to Jesus as was the smugness of the Jews of his day.
