All Joking Aside

Today’s April Fools’ Day Gospel reading from John concludes with the Jews beginning to persecute Jesus.  What’s going on here?  Why the reference here and elsewhere to the “Jews” and persecution of Jesus?  After all, Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and all the rest of our New Testament cast were Jews.  Jesus was not a Christian, although most Christians worship him as if he was and still is.   His being Jewish is lost on many of us.  

The Gospel of John is a Jewish work reflecting the expulsion of Jesus’ followers from the synagogue sometime towards the end of the first century.  John was a revisionist Jew who split from orthodox Jews. 

John’s Gospel is profoundly Jewish and reveals the pain and trauma of his community no longer being welcomed in the synagogue.  After all, Jews believed the Messiah had yet to come, but John’s Jewish community believed Jesus was the Messiah, the Christ.  The two beliefs were incompatible, so something had to give.  Believing in Jesus as the Christ was no April Fool’s joke.  Their belief was deadly serious and forced these revisionist Jews to continue their movement outside the synagogue.

Inevitably, divisions and hard-feelings occurred, and that animosity is seen in John’s Gospel as he takes “pot-shots” at his fellow synagogue (orthodox) Jews who are no longer on the same page, so to speak.  The first shot across their bow was the simple statement: “Therefore, the Jews began to persecute Jesus.” From this reading and many others like it, we come to understand that century’s old dislikes, condemnations, and outright hatred of the Jewish people became the outrageous and foolish norm making the Jews perpetual scapegoats for Christian sins.

April Fools’ Day is a bit of a strange day to remember that John was not fooling when he said to the Samaritan woman: “You people worship what you do not understand; we worship what we understand, because salvation is from the Jews.”  The longstanding, ahistorical view held by many that the Jews were “enemies” of Jesus is nonsense and tragic.

“Salvation is from the Jews” is no joke.  Let’s give this careful thought when we read from the Gospel of John, especially his version of the Passion during Holy Week. 

Deacon David Pierce