Day 38, Friday, 26 March Denounce him! Let us denounce him!

 

RETREAT IN LENT 2021

Day 38, Friday, 26 March

Denounce him! Let us denounce him!

It is terrifying to be caught up in the midst of mob rule. Individual judgement gives way under the pressure of the group who are seized by some mad urge to destroy. An individual is suspected of some crime and mob energy takes over, oblivious of the truth. Jeremiah (20:10-13) experienced this and the Friday before Good Friday prepares us for the cries against Jesus, ‘Crucify him! Crucify him!’

In the passage from John today (10:31-42) the Jews want to stone Jesus and probably would have done had he not eluded them. They seem incapable of stopping, of thinking and of using their own individual judgement.

History tells us that we have to progress from ‘we’ to ‘I’. People sometimes say ‘we don’t know about this’, meaning, I am suppressing what I know and taking shelter in the crowd! I may know something or suspect something but I just keep quiet. I do not want to stand out among the crowd.

The Acts of the Apostles, which we will read in Easter time, is littered with examples of the disciples of Jesus standing up and speaking out about him, about the truth, regardless of the consequences. When Jesus says, ‘the truth will make you free’, this is what he means. The apostles rejoiced in the new freedom they discovered in witnessing to Jesus even though they had to suffer for it.