What kind of god would allow this suffering, this virus, this inconvenience, this social disarray, this economic plunge, this pandemic, this fear, this death?  Who is this god, and what power does he really wield?

We have asked for this by our immorality, by our disobedience. This present situation is a judgment of god upon us, a punishment fully justified.

“I hear the whisperings of many:
‘Terror on every side!”’ (Jer 20:10-13)

The Gospel today (Jn 10:31-42) picks up immediately after Jesus has proclaimed that “I and the Father are One!” So what happens? Well, just as in the case of the woman ‘caught in adultery,’ people pick up rocks to stone Jesus…

As humans, we quite naturally respond to circumstances based upon our past experiences. What we have judged to be right or wrong, appropriate or inappropriate, agreeable or disagreeable, attractive or repulsive, beneficial or threatening. We can find any excuse manty times to condemn one another, all seemingly justifiable.

I wonder what really makes something or someone justifiably condemned? Jesus seems to be broaching this question…

“I have shown you many good works from my Father.
For which of these are you trying to stone me?”
The Jews answered him,
“We are not stoning you for a good work but for blasphemy.
You, a man, are making yourself God.”
Jesus answered them,
“Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, ‘You are gods”‘?
If it calls them gods to whom the word of God came,
and Scripture cannot be set aside,
can you say that the one
whom the Father has consecrated and sent into the world
blasphemes because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’?
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 is guilty of a man making himself God. This flies in the face of established religious beliefs about the absolute otherness of the Divine. And the people are not happy about this. It’s a matter of identification. In the eyes of Jesus’ hearers, he is equating himself with God by calling God his Father. He is elevating himself to not only a personal relationship but a union with the unnamed Divine! On the other hand, it seems that Jesus himself does not so much identify himself AS God but rather in union with the Divine precisely in the singularity of his actions, i.e., his way of Life. It is the Divine Life – living life from the Divine, from God Whom he calls “Father.”

It’s really too much for them, and his distinction in this identity of full relatedness and communion, they just cannot bear. It blows the mind and more than that, it disrupts the line of authority established in otherness as a way of identification. Otherness here is the constant play of this or that, the dualism of right and wrong, good or bad. No one can really cross that gap, because if you do, it will call everything into question. All certainties and assumptions that maintain the comfortable (for some) order of society and culture will be called into question. And we cannot let that happen. Like gods, our identities cannot be forsaken.

I am most struck by Jesus’ question concerning for which of his works is he being condemned. The move is away from the mental and toward interaction and relationship. He is asking them, for which of the good works of mercy and healing of living the Divine life, the life of the “Father” is he being stoned? In short, Jesus is pointing out that the works of his life are in communion with God, with the Divine. They are in communion because they accord with and flow from the Loving will of the One who is LOVE. He is living from God and this is attunement to love is Love. God’s identity cannot be other than God’s actions. They are of one piece.

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 seems to be saying:

So, blasphemy aside, even if you do not believe who you think I claim to be, believe in me within the loving context of how I am interacting with you and everyone else. This is the Divine Life living in me and inviting you in. Indeed, you are already here you just have to wake up dive in!

So often, we do so much unconscious damage to ourselves and each other by what we believe about ourselves, others and God. I am not talking about belief in terms of faith here. I mean belief as a mental commitment to identification. We identify ourselves, each other, our world, and our God by how we can describe them as objects. And when something or someone threatens these identifications, we become fearful, panicky, defensive, angry. And when something happens that disrupts all the patterns of identification in our lives, we feel totally lost. The gods of identification crumble before us, and we desperately clutch them and try to hold onto them.

What if God really is here, right now, here in everything, in everyone? What might She be telling us? Are we listening to Him? What would that listening look or sound like? What kind of language does a God of love speak? The Word we have used for this is Incarnation – Embodiment! For us, the only kind of language that Love has is embodied, not in the past, nor in an undetermined future, but right here right now, me and you, and everything else.

the Father is in me and I am in the Father

We don’t have to wait to be sons and daughters of God, but we do have to embrace and participate in the kinship, i.e. to realize and actualize it. The Divine Life can only live. The singularity of Love, the communion with the Divine is all of us. We simply have to discover that unique way in which God is living in me and you and open it up. This may seem an insurmountable difficulty, but there are so many ways to discover this just beneath the surface of our lives, which right now is being stripped bare. Right now may be the optimal time to discover new ways of identification that don’t function as unconscious gods we worship, but rather move us into the most fundamental elements of our lives, where love and mercy flow from God through us and grant God newness in each precious moment of our lives.