Understanding the Word

By Br. John R. Barker, OFM

The Ten Commandments summarize God’s expectations of Israel,  partner in the covenant. By delivering Israel from bondage and  bringing them into this relationship, God is forming a people who  will be a “holy nation” (Exodus 19:6), set apart and shaped by God  to manifest God’s character to the other nations. The commandments  are a template, as it were, of the minimum standards by which Israel  should conduct itself as a people and as individuals in order to be  a holy nation that “looks like” God. This is, in fact, why God has  created Israel in the first place—to be a “kingdom of priests” (19:6)  to mediate God’s holiness and righteousness to the rest of the world.

As it is today, it was common in the ancient world for “thought  leaders” to attract followers. The tendency to follow the most  eloquent speaker has led to divisions in the Corinthian church.  Thus Paul contrasts human wisdom, thought to be manifest in the  persuasive speakers, with divine wisdom, which is found in the cross  of Christ. Of course, the world does not see any wisdom in the cross,  an instrument of torture and death for criminals, and it is thus a  stumbling block for accepting the full gospel. Paul will struggle to  get his audience to understand that what God has done in Christ  cannot be understood or evaluated according to the “wisdom” of  the broken social order. Nor can it be modified or diluted to make it  palatable to the larger society. 

A theme in the Gospel of John is that in Christ, the glory of God is  in the world: The “Word became flesh and made his dwelling among  us” (1:14). The Greek reads “pitched his tent among us,” a reference  to the ancient tabernacle, which was filled with the glory (the  presence) of God (Exodus 40:35). The scene this week picks up this  theme by portraying Jesus as the new temple who, though destroyed  by humans, will be raised again by God. It is this glory manifest in  Jesus that allows him to perform the various signs that draw people  to him. At the same time, Jesus is fully aware that human hearts  are fickle and that even the divine glory can be rejected by “human  nature” in its present state. 

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