5th Friday in Lent

In this morning’s Gospel we hear that the Jewish authorities tried again to arrest Jesus, but he withdrew from them. They didn’t want him to escape from their power, but he got away from them anyway, and they couldn’t stop him from leaving them. Here St John is giving us another hint that Jesus would not have been crucified unless he had willingly consented to it.

“Jesus went back across the Jordan to the place where John first baptized, and there he remained”. He made a point of going there because he wanted to remind the people of all the things John the Baptist had said about him. And since his stay in that place worked out well for many people, today’s Gospel says that “Many came to him”. These people remembered how John used to baptize and preach at that place. “John performed no sign”, they said, meaning “If we believed in John who was not a wonderworker, why shouldn’t we also believe in this man who does work amazing miracles?”

They knew that John the Baptist worked no miracles, and for that reason, some might have been thinking that John’s testimony about Christ might not be reliable. That’s why the Gospel says, “But everything John said about this man was true”. This time around, it’s not John who lends credibility to Christ; now it’s Christ who lends credibility to John.

Therefore, “many there began to believe in him”. The word “there” indicates that the people could learn something from the place itself. So Jesus frequently led the people out into desert places, separating them from the world at large in order to grant them spiritual blessings. And there was a precedent for that in the Old Testament. St Paul tells us that the people “drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ” (1st Corinthians 10:4). According to St Paul, it was actually Christ who was behind the Hebrews’ exodus out of Egypt, Christ who made them his people when they were alone with him in the
desert, and Christ who brought the various factions among them into unity by giving them the Law.

Christ’s withdrawal into the desert also has a spiritual sense: he goes out from Jerusalem where he used to teach in the Temple, and goes to the Jordan where the waters of baptism flow, that is, to the Church whose members, both Jews and Gentiles, follow the teaching and example of Christ. Many in fact have come to Christ by “crossing the Jordan” - they have passed through the waters of baptism and been born of water and the Spirit. The new life in Christ lies “across the Jordan”, which we reach by passing through baptism. There is no other way to approach Jesus and enter the kingdom of God.

After our 40 days of Lent in the desert, may we renew our baptismal vows at the Easter Vigil, and live the new life in Christ as members of his body.