Thursday of the
Second Week of Easter
(Acts 5:27-33; John 3:31-36)
In yesterday’s gospel Jesus spoke of darkness as evil. He said, “’…people preferred darkness to light,
because their works were evil.’” Darkness
and its prime referent, night, do not only symbolize evil. They also represent ignorance. Earlier John’s gospel said that Nicodemus
came to Jesus at night. He was coming
out of ignorance into the light of Christ.
He called Jesus, “Rabbi,” which means “Teacher.” Today’s gospel indicates how authoritative a
teacher Jesus is.
Teachers study the ideas of wise people. They learn from the writings of Aristotle or Plato. They cannot know everything of these masters
because they didn’t live with them. They
could not ask questions of clarification and deeper probing. When Jesus speaks of God, however, he knows
all that there is to know. It is unclear whether Jesus is the speaker of today’s
passage. Nevertheless, it is clear that
Jesus is said to have come from heaven.
He shares with people on earth “what he has seen and heard.” It is like having Shakespeare as your English
teacher.
The content of Jesus’ teaching – all that he has learned
from God – is revealed in the rest of the gospel. Having been formed in the faith, we have some
idea of what it says. We are to deny
ourselves and to trust in God’s mercy. This
is not just a difficult task; it is also harrowing. Jesus lived what he taught, and look where it
got him.
