Jesus answered them, “I have shown you many good works from my Father.
For which of these are you trying to stone me?”
The Judeans weren't particularly pleased with the good works he had shown them. They were likely jealous of the fame and attention those works gained for Jesus. Certainly they were critical of the way he went about those works, often on the Sabbath, often targeting people whom they considered to be undeserving. The works themselves, which to an unbiased soul were obviously good, good in the way that God alone was good, were not able to motivate the hardened hearts of the Judeans.
The Jews answered him,
“We are not stoning you for a good work but for blasphemy.
You, a man, are making yourself God.”
The Judeans clearly understood what Jesus had long implied and just clearly stated when he said, "The Father and I are one" (see John 10:30). The whole history of the people of Israel was one of struggle with idolatry, with the desire to give God a face that was not his own, and to pull him down to the level of created things. They had been sufficiently chastened by their many failures so as to be on guard against any attacks on the transcendence of their God.
It was certainly the case that men were not meant to build a bridge which they themselves could cross to the Father, not themselves able to define the features of the face even Moses was not permitted to see. Yet, to the surprise of all, it was not impossible for God himself to reveal his face to the world by joining himself to human flesh in the incarnation of Jesus.
Jesus answered them,
“Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, ‘You are gods”‘?
Jesus demonstrated this by an argument from a lesser thing to a greater thing. If even those made in the image of God could in some sense be called gods might not God himself manifest to the world through a human face? If they were the image, enough to be called gods, could not God himself demonstrate the truth of the origin of that image through the face of Christ? Clearly this would have been hard for anyone in Israel to accept. It ran against the grain of the emphasis of their teaching on the transcendence of God. Yet it was clearly not entirely without precedent. Even so, Jesus knew better than to insist that they immediately argue or reason their way into agreement with him.
If I do not perform my Father’s works, do not believe me;
but if I perform them, even if you do not believe me,
believe the works, so that you may realize and understand
that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.”
Jesus called them back to the works themselves, works which could be seen to be obviously good, obviously from God and not the Evil One, if only one would look sincerely. Those who could at least see the works might admit they still didn't fully understand the relationship of Jesus to the Father but nevertheless believe, taking the words of Peter and saying, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life" (see John 6:68).
It's OK for us to not understand every aspect of God. It is in fact always going to be the case, for he is a mystery in which what we ourselves do know is always fractional compared with what we do not. But for us this mystery must not become an excuse to pull away from Jesus. It must not lead us to try to silence him when his words become inconvenient for us as the Judeans tried to silence Jesus, just as the people had tried to silence Jeremiah before Jesus. The truth Jesus brings to us is not always easy on first hearing. We are sometimes be tempted to censor or to edit it. And if we give way to these temptations we find ourselves more and more in opposition to Jesus himself. But Jesus is finally the only one who knows and can make known the Father, and, in turn, the fullness of his love for the world. Only from Jesus can we receive the truth that sets us free. Let us side with that truth in spite of a world that imagines it has outgrown it, and that seems immovably set against it.
Sing to the LORD,
praise the LORD,
For he has rescued the life of the poor
from the power of the wicked!
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