Day 11 - Saturday, March 4
Title: JESUS, THE ETERNAL PROPHET
Scripture: John 5:16–47
It was because Jesus did such things on the Sabbath day that the Jews persecuted him. But Jesus’ answer to them was this, “My Father is still at work and therefore I work as well.”

This remark made the Jews all the more determined to kill him, because not only did he break the Sabbath but he referred to God as his own Father, so putting himself on equal terms with God.

Jesus said to them, “I assure you that the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. What the Son does is always modeled on what the Father does, for the Father loves the Son and shows him everything that he does himself, Yes, and he will show him even greater things than these to fill you with wonder. For just as the Father raises the dead and makes them live, so does the Son give life to any man he chooses. The Father is no man’s judge: he has put judgment entirely into the Son’s hands, so that all men may honor the Son equally with the Father. The man who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. I solemnly assure you that the man who hears what I have to say and believes in the one who has sent me has eternal life. He does not have to face judgment; he has already passed from death into life. Yes, I assure you that a time is coming, in fact has already come, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and when they have heard it they will live! For just as the Father has life in himself, so by the Father’s gift, the Son also has life in himself. And he has given him authority to judge because he is Son of Man. No, do not be surprised—the time is coming when all those who are dead and buried will hear his voice and out they will come—those who have done right will rise again to life, but those who have done wrong will rise to face judgment!

“By myself I can do nothing. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is true because I do not live to please myself but to do the will of the Father who sent me. You may say that I am bearing witness about myself, that therefore what I say about myself has no value, but I would remind you that there is one who witnesses about me and I know that his witness about me is absolutely true. You sent to John, and he testified to the truth. Not that it is man’s testimony that I accept—I only tell you this to help you to be saved. John certainly was a lamp that burned and shone, and for a time you were willing to enjoy the light that he gave. But I have a higher testimony than John’s. The work that the Father gave me to complete, yes, these very actions which I do are my witness that the Father has sent me. This is how the Father who has sent me has given his own personal testimony to me.

“Now you have never at any time heard what he says or seen what he is like. Nor do you really believe his word in your hearts, for you refuse to believe the man who he has sent. You pore over the scriptures for you imagine that you will find eternal life in them. And all the time they give their testimony to me! But you are not willing to come to me to have real life! Men’s approval or disapproval means nothing to me, but I can tell that you have none of the love of God in your hearts. I have come in the name of my Father and you will not accept me. Yet if another man comes simply in his own name, you will accept him. How on earth can you believe while you are forever looking for each other’s approval and not for the glory that comes from the one God? There is no need for you to think that I have come to accuse you before the Father. You already have an accuser—Moses, in whom you put all your confidence! For if you really believed Moses, you would be bound to believe me; for it was about me that he wrote. But if you do not believe what he wrote, how can you believe what I say”?

Poetry & Poet:
“Advice to a Prophet”
by Richard Wilbur

When you come, as you soon must, to the streets of
     our city,   
Mad-eyed from stating the obvious,
Not proclaiming our fall but begging us
In God’s name to have self-pity,

Spare us all word of the weapons, their force and
     range,   
The long numbers that rocket the mind;
Our slow, unreckoning hearts will be left behind,   
Unable to fear what is too strange.

Nor shall you scare us with talk of the death of the
     race.   
How should we dream of this place without us?—
The sun mere fire, the leaves untroubled about us,   
A stone look on the stone’s face?

Speak of the world’s own change. Though we cannot
     conceive   
Of an undreamt thing, we know to our cost
How the dreamt cloud crumbles, the vines are blackened
     by frost,   
How the view alters. We could believe,

If you told us so, that the white-tailed deer will slip   
Into perfect shade, grown perfectly shy,
The lark avoid the reaches of our eye,
The jack-pine lose its knuckled grip

On the cold ledge, and every torrent burn
As Xanthus once, its gliding trout
Stunned in a twinkling. What should we be without   
The dolphin’s arc, the dove’s return,

These things in which we have seen ourselves and
     spoken?   
Ask us, prophet, how we shall call
Our natures forth when that live tongue is all
Dispelled, that glass obscured or broken

In which we have said the rose of our love and the
     clean   
Horse of our courage, in which beheld
The singing locust of the soul unshelled,
And all we mean or wish to mean.

Ask us, ask us whether with the worldless rose   
Our hearts shall fail us; come demanding   
Whether there shall be lofty or long standing   
When the bronze annals of the oak-tree close.

WORKING FOR THE FATHER

Truth be told: I am a workaholic. I have no real problem confessing this. The Christian tradition (and even contemporary theologians) are divided on whether or not workaholism is a sin. Historically it was virtuous to be “industrious” and, of course, in many parts of the world working a lot is simply what it takes to survive. Seeing workaholism as a vice (or even a sin) seems to be a developed world problem. Is not an eight-hour workday and forty-hour work week merely a social construction anyway?

But Jesus himself admits that he is a bit of a workaholic: “My Father is working until now, and I am working” (John 5:17). Of course, he is doing the work of his father, which certainly redeems his work and gives it a divine orientation to the extent that Jesus even says that his work simply mimics the father’s work (John 5:19). Jesus’ will is so aligned with the Father’s that he cannot help but do what the Father does. This is a demonstration of the unity of the persons of the Trinity but also a model for us who seek to be like Jesus Christ.

Jesus says that his works prove that he is “of the Father’s love begotten.” And one of the most important works that prove this is Jesus’ unique role in giving life to those whom he chooses; that is, in the words of the Gospel of John, in Jesus’ work as judge for the Father has “given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man” (5:27). Humans have searched the Scriptures in the hunt of salvation and the Father has even sent the prophets (like John the Baptist) and bore witness himself to Jesus, but folks still continue to “refuse to come to [Jesus] that [they] may have life” (John 5:40). Thus, Jesus does works to be seen so that men and women will come to him in faith.

And when we work, like Jesus works, are we not working so that others may see our works and come to the Father? Our works matter, not because our employer bestows importance on them or because we wrongly find our identity in what we do, but because if they are done properly (i.e., in line with Jesus’s will, which is line with the Father’s will) then they become signs of God’s salvation; they become works with a divine orientation? As Jesus’ works were prophetic so are ours! So, let us “abound in every good work” (2 Cor. 9:8).

Prayer:
We humbly ask you, heavenly Father, to assist us with your grace to do all the good works that you have prepared for us to walk in; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with you and the Holy Spirit, be all honor and glory, now and forever.
Amen.
 –––(Adapted from the Book of Common Prayer, 2019)

Rev. Greg Peters, Ph.D., S.M.D.
Professor of Medieval and Spiritual Theology
Torrey Honors College
Biola University
Vicar of Anglican Church of the Epiphany, La Mirada.

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