The feast of the Dedication was taking place in Jerusalem.
It was winter.
And Jesus walked about in the temple area on the Portico of Solomon.

Many times we forget that Jesus was Jewish.  The scripture selections today remind us of that.  The opening lines in John’s Gospel (Jn 10:22-30), describe Jesus in Jerusalem for the feast of the Dedication, which today is known as the Feast of Lights or Hanukkah.  The Jewish Feast itself commemorates the re-consecration of the temple by the Jewish people after they reclaimed it from their persecutors in the 2^nd Century BC. So, we have Jesus, walking along the Eastern side of the outer court of the temple, a venerated colonnade known as Solomon’s portico.  It was winter we are told.  I wonder what he was thinking…Suddenly, he is confronted:

“How long are you going to keep us in suspense?
If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.”
Jesus answered them, “I told you and you do not believe.
The works I do in my Father’s name testify to me.
But you do not believe, because you are not among my sheep.
My sheep hear my voice;
I know them, and they follow me.
I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish.
No one can take them out of my hand.
My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all,
and no one can take them out of the Father’s hand.
The Father and I are one.”

Again, using the image of sheep that listen and follow the voice of their shepherd, Jesus confronts the narrowness of the questioning that keeps coming at him.  He points out to them that his actions and life speak for themselves.  More than that, the experience of those who listen to him is itself a testimony to WHO he is.  Those who can see and hear the voice of the Divine in the person of Jesus follow him.  And because of this they have eternal life – something that cannot be taken away from them.  And then, that last line that sealed his fate in the minds of his questioners – “The Father and I are one.”  Plainly this cannot be Christ!  Blasphemy!

Imagine…here is the living temple of God walking in the physical temple structure of the Jewish people during the feast that commemorates the re-consecration of the temple itself.  The layered context is astounding and apparently totally confounding to those blindly questioning him.  How rigid our minds can be that they can prohibit us from the experience right before us.   The experience is the invitation to be caught up in the very hand of God, to not only be protected but to be given imperishability – eternal life!   To be with God, in God.  Could it possibly be true?  How could we possibly experience this?

We are somewhere in between Jerusalem and Antioch in the scripture passages today.  From the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 11:19-26), we hear how quickly the Gospel spread everywhere subsequent to the martyrdom of Stephen.  First, only to the Jews, and then the Greeks:

Those who had been scattered by the persecution
that arose because of Stephen
went as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch,
preaching the word to no one but Jews.
There were some Cypriots and Cyrenians among them, however,
who came to Antioch and began to speak to the Greeks as well,
proclaiming the Lord Jesus.

On account of this explosive spread of the Gospel, Barnabas along with Saul end up spending an entire year in Antioch with the Greek community there, and it was here we are told that the disciples were first called Christians.

For a whole year they met with the Church
and taught a large number of people,
and it was in Antioch that the disciples
were first called Christians.

There was an exponentially growing embrace of this astounding offer that Jesus gave on Solomon’s Portico on the East Gate of the Temple.  The opportunity to share in Divine Life.  The Greeks of Antioch, who were first to be called Christians, listened and followed even though they did not fully understand the mystery.  Perhaps, they were mysteriously compelled inwardly to respond to this invitation.  The Holy Spirit dwelling within them, as in all of us, awakened in their inner depths and echoed the invitation offered by the disciples.  This is the holy voice of the Shepherd heard in the precious hearts of the sheep.  The experience offered comes from within.

The Interfaith Mystic, Raimon Panikkar, describe the experience as that which transforms our entire being, an ontological touch that feels like we are taken over by a reality that penetrates and transforms us.[i]  When we experience this, it comes from within.  Panikkar goes on to say that God is the transcendent mystery immanent in us.

Jesus as the Christ temple of the Divine resides within the temple of humanity and is always inviting us to awareness and experience of and engagement in this – to re-consecrate, re-dedicate our hearts over and over again.  When we become aware of the temple within us, where God lives and sustains us, and can hear the Divine echo within our hearts, we know we are caught up in God’s own life and we are empowered to respond and participate.  This is the mystery of Christ, the interpenetration between the divine and the human.[ii]  This experience of awareness is not of the mind, but is the Heart’s experience.  It is a transformative love that flows from a Divine Home within that can become dammed up when we lose sight of it or will not follow its alluring music – when we choose to remain in winter.

The beautiful Psalm 87 describes this so wonderfully:

And of Zion it shall be said,
    “This one and that one were born in it”;
    for the Most High himself will establish it.
 The Lord records, as he registers the peoples,
    “This one was born there.”

⁷ Singers and dancers alike say,
    “All my springs are in you.”  (NRSV)

We are established and registered with God from the beginning – ‘this one and that one were born in it!’ Yet, it is up to us to, as Panikkar tells us, see for ourselves where God lives, and let God move in us – dance in us – to let the springs of the Divine well up in our lives and overflow into our actions.[iii]  This alone can break the rigidity of our sometimes heartless questioning of Christ.  Maybe it’s not a question of Christianity as much as it is the question of Christ.  Put another way, rather than understanding only based upon our minds, our faith arises from our direct intimate experience!

How do we follow Christ?  How do we concretely flow Christ as the Divine life within us out into the world?   How are the ways that we allow and participate in the Spring of the Divine that makes even winter bloom?

When we flow Christ, we participate in re-consecrating the world through confident and humble human/divine gestures!  Is this not another form of the Risen Life of Easter?  I wonder if the pandemic in all of its disruption and death could not be asking us to consider personally and collectively how we can re-consecrate all the temples of the Divine – those within and those without – All the Springs now and ahead.

[i] Raimon Panikkar, CHRISTOPHANY: The Fullness of Man (Orbis Books: 2004), 21-23.

[ii] Ibid.

[iii] Ibid., 20.