Saturday of the Fourth Week of Lent

Saint John’s Gospel is represented by an eagle, because it’s the loftiest of the four gospels. Jesus appears as a man from heaven, with knowledge and authority far beyond those of any other human being. His teachings challenge us to search the skies for explanation.

And yet this gospel, of the four, describes the earthiest, most plausible political scenes; such as the fussing between Nicodemus and his fellow members of the Sanhedrin. He argues principle; they retort with threatening insinuations. As the crisis of Jesus’ trial approaches, lines are drawn and sides are taken. Reason, open-mindedness, patience, and charity are thrown out the door. 

Perhaps the most damning line in this passage is the last sentence, short and penetrating: Then each went to his own house.

These policy-setting, decision-making leaders just don’t care. They have their homes and comforts and certain certainties. They have made their compromises with the Herodian aristocrats and the Roman rulers and the Levite priests; nothing more should be asked of them. The arrival of the Son of God in Jerusalem is no more than the latest nuisance; a flea on an elephant’s hide to be crushed. By next week the incident will be forgotten as other threats to their security arise.

T. S. Eliot might have been describing the banality of their evil and the transparent goodness of Jesus when he wrote Preludes:  

His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o'clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,

The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.

I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.