THE WORD BECAME FLESH

Friday in the fourth week of Easter, 2021

Acts 13:26-33

Ps 2

John 14:1-6.

God uses his adversaries…

In the first part of Luke’s account of the speech or address of Paul in the synagogue of Antioch in Pisidia, he focused on the history of salvation up to the point where John the Baptist introduced Jesus unto the public scene.

In the second part of the address which we read today, he concentrated on the condemnation of Jesus, his passion, death and resurrection. For Paul, and indeed all the disciples of Jesus who went about proclaiming the good news of the resurrection of Jesus, his death was according to the plan of God. It was not a victory of his enemies over him. Paul and the other disciples were resolute in affirming that God did not abandon Jesus into the hands of his enemies.

 God used his enemies to carry out the plan he laid out for his beloved Son from all eternity. He still does that today. The only way for Paul to explain this was to refer to the Scriptures.

 In the reading today, Paul affirms that the condemnation of Jesus by the Jews was in fact to fulfil the prophecies read on every Sabbath. If the Jews did not realise that they were fulfilling the plan of God in Jesus, it was because their primary intent was to eliminate a person they found to be a nuisance, a disturbance to their long held traditions.

They thought of him as someone who was leading the people astray; away from the ways of God.

They did not realise how far they were misled by their own distorted traditions and interpretations of the word of God that they read on every Sabbath. We need to be careful not to fall into the same error as we defend our Christian traditions.

At times, our Christian traditions are the fruits of historical and cultural circumstances.

When we allow these traditions to overshadow the real message of the word of God, we risk the same blindness as the Jews at the time of Jesus. We may end up fighting against God while thinking that we are defending his course.

Like Thomas, we also need to constantly pray to the Lord to show us the way so that we may not be led astray by our own blindness and misinterpretations of the word of God.

We should always keep in mind the words of Jesus in the gospel reading today: “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one can come to the Father except through me."

Let us pray: Lord Jesus, you fill us with the joy of your saving presence and you give us the hope of everlasting life with the Father in Heaven. Amen.

+Remain blessed