FOURTH SUNDAY IN LENT – YEAR B
FROM THERE, HE WILL COME TO JUDGE
One day, God will evaluate the success or failure of our life. ‘From there, He will come to judge…’ is one of the articles of the faith we profess, but perhaps we have never wondered what ‘from there’ means. From there, from where? We have not asked this question, probably because the answer seems obvious: He will return from heaven.
The Risen Lord promised to be with his disciples ‘always, to the end of time’ (Mt 28:20); therefore, there is no need to wait for his return, and the throne on which he sits to pronounce his judgment should not be placed in heaven, but on earth. Where? Here's the surprise: it is from the cross that he judges the world.
It is Jesus, the Crucified who, reversing the expectations and values of the world, judges defeat a victory, service a power, poverty a wealth, loss a gain, humiliation a triumph, and death a birth. It is the crucified Jesus that we have to deal with because he alone is the one who tells the truth about our choices. It is only his judgment that should be ‘feared,’ that is awaited and anticipated.
The judgment of the Crucified does not inculcate fear. It is, yes, the most severe condemnation of all wickedness, but it is a motive of joy and hope for the sinner; from the crucified everyone needs only to repeat and trust in His word: "I did not come to condemn the world, but to save the world" (Jn 12:47).
"Let me not fear the judgments of people,
but follow your judgments, O Crucified One."
First Reading: 2 Chronicles 36: 14-16,19-25
The Israelites believed that the same fate would be reserved for the righteous and the sinner in the afterlife: to become ‘shadows’ wandering in a joyless place of silence and darkness (Ps 88:13). For this, they considered what is good and evil, the successes and misfortunes of this life, as sure signs of the blessings or punishments of God for works done. Even the authors of the books of Chronicles were thinking this way and today’s passage is its proof.
We are in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. Many years have already passed since Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem and deported to Babylon those who had escaped the sword (vv. 19-20). The exiles have returned to the land of their fathers, but they still cannot find a reason for the disaster that hit them. Why—they ask—had God allowed the destruction of the temple and the Holy City?
The first part of the reading resolves this enigma (vv. 14-18): Israel has been hit because of her infidelity and the senselessness of its leaders and priests. The Lord loved his people, cared for her, and sent the prophets to show them the way of life, but Israel despised the words of his envoys. They scoffed at and persecuted them. God then was seized with rage and punished, without remedy, the people, who were defeated and humiliated by the Babylonians.
The second part of the reading (v. 21) introduces a second example of rigorous retribution. Before the invasion of the Babylonians, Israel had neglected the observance of the sabbatical year. She had not left the ground to rest every six years, to enable the poor and the animals to feed themselves on wild fruits of the land (Lev 26:34). This is why God had laid this infidelity on his people, sending her into exile for seventy years, so the earth rested all the time that she had been ‘taken away.’
The logic of the book of Chronicles surprises us and needs to be clarified. In the face of this touchy, irascible Lord, we are shocked. We wonder: who is this God who gets angry like a man, acts as an accountant, noting creditors and debtors, coolly counting his money, and severely punishing even the innocent?
This way of understanding retribution raised insuperable difficulties. How to explain, for example, the misfortunes that affected even the righteous and the prosperity of the wicked? At the height of bitterness, Job, inconsolably, argued: “But am I innocent after all? I do not know, and so I find my life despicable. When disaster brings sudden death, he(God) mocks the despair of the innocent. When a nation falls into a tyrant’s hands, it is he who makes the judges blind. But if it is not who else then?” (Job 9:21-24), and Ecclesiastes: "All things have I seen in the days of my vanity: there is a just man who perishes in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man who prolongs his life in his wickedness" (Ecl 7:15). Even scrolling through the history of Israel, we are forced to admit that often, even when she was faithful to the Lord, these people were overwhelmed by their enemies.
Undoubtedly, the language used in the Old Testament is archaic, but it is no longer ours. It sees as God’s punishment which, in reality, is simply the result of erring humanity. Not God, but sin punishes those who commit it, and it can have an impact with disastrous consequences in "the children and their children … to the third and fourth generation" (Ex 34:7). This truth was well known to the sages of the Old Testament, who frequently repeated it: “who sins against God, harms himself; those who hate him love death” (Pro 8:36); "Do not bring about your own death by your wrong way of living. Do not let the work of your hands destroy you. God did not make death, nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living" (Wis 1:12-13).
Therefore, it was not the Lord who sent Israel into exile, nor He who incited Nebuchadnezzar to wage war and commit crimes and violence. It was the folly of the people and its government that brought about their ruin. Four centuries later, Jerusalem will repeat the error: she will reject the ‘path of peace’ offered by Jesus. She will not recognize "the time when God has visited" and will decide her own destruction (Lk 19:41-44).
The reading ends (vv. 22-23) with the story of the return of the deportees: after long years of exile, God raised up Cyrus, king of Persia, who issued a proclamation that gave freedom to all. The living image at the end of each story is between God and man: the last word will always be his love.
The unfaithful Israelite, who turns away from God, becomes the slave of his idols, but the Lord never abandons him. There is no deep and dark prison that he does not visit if he can find his son; there is no intricate condition that he does not untie, nor chains of vice that he does not determine to break, or ancient hatreds that he does not know how to settle.
Second Reading: Ephesians 2:4-10
This passage is from the second chapter of the Letter to the Ephesians, which starts by presenting, in dramatic terms, the condition of man away from God and from salvation. The one who lives a corrupt life, a slave to his vices, is not building his own life, is simply consuming his existence, and is already dead. Paul included himself among those who were in this desperate condition: "All of us belonged to them at one time and we followed human greed; we obeyed the urges of our human nature and consented to its desires. By ourselves, we went straight to the judgment like the rest of humankind." (Eph 2:1-3).
At this point in our reading, God, full of love and mercy, intervenes to free man, and he raises him, with Christ, to new life (vv. 4-7). This salvation is not a reward for our good deeds, but it is a gift of the Father so that no one can boast of the good that he finds in himself, even less, to despise the one who has not yet opened his heart to so much grace(vv. 9-10). While it is true that it is not man who saves himself by his good works, it is equally true. However, that dedication to ‘good works’ is the necessary response to the love of God. It is the sign that God's grace has been accepted and has begun to bear fruit(v. 10).
Gospel: John 3:14-21
Only John the evangelist speaks of Nicodemus, a distinguished character among the Pharisees. He was perhaps a member of the great Sanhedrin, who, taking advantage of the night's darkness and silence, went to Jesus. John seems to see this man already advanced in years, moving in the dark, verging, circumspect, around the walls of the city of Jerusalem, not to be seen by some of his colleagues. He is in search of light, and he intuits that Jesus can give it to him: the young rabbi from Nazareth, "the man coming from God as a teacher" (Jn 3:2). He comes into the picture at night and in the night, he fades away without the evangelist relating to us how he ended his conversation with Jesus.
After some time, he is among the high priests of Jerusalem engaged in a lively discussion to find a way to get rid of Jesus. He will listen to them in silence; then he will throw a provocative phrase before them: "Does our law condemn people without first hearing them and knowing the facts?” He will get a mocking response: "Look it up and see for yourself that no prophet is to come from Galilee" (Jn 7:51-52). Poor Nicodemus, too fair to be comfortable in that assembly of scoffers! He will make his last appearance on Calvary, along with Joseph of Arimathea, to wrap the body of Jesus in bandages and lay it in the tomb (Jn 19:39-40).
Today’s passage is the last part of his night-time conversation with Jesus. In the first part (vv. 13-15), Jesus recalls an incident that occurred during the exodus. He, "the teacher of Israel" (Jn 3:10), has certainly remembered it. In the desert, many Israelites had fallen victim to poisonous snakes. Moses had turned to the Lord, who ordered him to make a bronze snake and hoist it on a pole. Whoever, after being bitten, raised his eyes to the serpent saved his life (Num 21:4-9).
The fact is unique and seems to tie in with certain magical and idolatrous rites of antiquity. Even in the temple of Jerusalem, a bronze serpent was kept, which, they said, was the one lifted up by Moses. It is difficult to determine what happened during the exodus. The message of the episode is instead clear, and the rabbis had already guessed it. The Israelites were not healed because they looked at the serpent but because they raised their hearts to God. It was the Lord who saved, not the image of bronze. The Book of Wisdom commented on the fact, "For whoever turned towards it was saved, not by the image he saw, but by you, Lord, the Savior of all" (Wis 16:7). Jesus refers to this fact and interprets it as a symbol of what will happen to him: he will be lifted up on the cross, and all those who behold him with the eyes of faith will save their lives.
Nicodemus, who understood little or nothing of what Jesus had said about the need to be ‘born from above,’ certainly knew even less about raising the Son of Man. He indeed was surprised, shocked, maybe even a little disappointed. He listened in silence, unable even to make one last question. He could not understand why he lacked the light of the Risen Christ, and the claims of Jesus remained shrouded in mystery. It is not so for us today, in the light of the events of Easter, we can understand: to look at Jesus ‘lifted up means "to believe in him" (v. 15), keeping the eyes focused on the love that he has shown.
The cross is not an amulet worn around the neck or a symbol indicating the conquest of a territory or the consecration of a room. It is the reference point of each gaze of the believer that the proposal of life made to him by the Master is summarized. Slaves ended up on the cross, only slaves. On the Cross, Jesus proclaims that the fulfilled man, according to God, has voluntarily made himself a slave for love, a servant of his brothers even to the point of dying for them.
Today the snakes that wound, poison our existence, and endanger life are pride, envy, resentment, and unruly passions. Only an eye turned to Him who was raised can be healed of the poison of death injected in the heart of every person. One day—ensures the evangelist—"they shall look on him whom they have pierced" (19:37) and be saved.
In the second part of the passage (vv. 16-21), we have a theological meditation on the mission of the Son of man: “God did not send him to condemn the world; but that the world might be saved through him." Unlike Matthew, who uses the image of the Last Judgment to address the importance and the eternal consequences of choices made today, John uses a different language and more in keeping with today's mentality. He even excludes that God judges people and speaks of a judgment in the present and that alone is salvation.
The theological positions of Matthew and John seem contradictory; while they use different languages and images, the two evangelists offer the same truth. God's judgment is not pronounced at the end of time, but today. In front of each option that man is called to do, the Lord makes his opinion heard. He indicates what is right according to the wisdom of heaven and warns against the choices of death.
It does not affirm that in the end, God will forever reject those who did wrong, those who have followed other criteria, other judgments. God will not drive out anyone; he"wants all to be saved" (1 Tim 2:4). Paul presents the absurdity of his sentence with a series of rhetorical questions: "Who shall be against us? … Who shall accuse those chosen by God? He takes away their guilt. Who will dare condemn them? Christ who died, and better still, rose and is seated at the right hand of God, interceding for us?" (Rom 8:31-34). The conclusion is obvious: "No creature whatsoever will separate us from the love of God which we have in Jesus Christ, our Lord" (Rom 8:39).
Nevertheless, at the end of life, when "the fire will test the quality of each one's work" (1 Cor 3:13), the conformity or non-conformity of our actions with the Person of Christ will become evident. God will undoubtedly welcome everyone into his arms. Still, more than one will be forced to admit how badly he has mismanaged his life or irretrievably squandered the unique opportunity offered to him. As Paul warns: "If the work he has built is burned up, he will be punished, but he will be saved as one who escapes the fire" (1 Cor 3:13-15).
