Thursday, Fourth Week of Lent
What Jesus says in today’s gospel reading is part of his response to the Jewish leaders who had started to persecute Jesus because he healed a crippled man on the Sabbath day, thereby breaking the Sabbath law which said that no work could be done on the Sabbath. Jesus clearly does not have the approval of the religious leaders. Yet, in the gospel reading Jesus says, ‘As for human approval, that means nothing to me’. He goes on to say to his critics, ‘you look to one another for approval and are not concerned with the approval that comes from the one God’ For Jesus, human approval was much less important that approval from God, his loving Father. He came to do the will of his heavenly Father, even if that meant having to live with the consequences of the disapproval of powerful people. What is the will of God for Jesus? Elsewhere in this gospel of John, Jesus says, ‘This is indeed the will of my Father, that all who see the Son and believe in him may have eternal life’. Jesus came to lead all people to believe in him so that they may have life and have it to the full. Jesus’ food, his deepest hunger, was to do this will of God and, thereby, continue to enjoy God’s approval. We can all be tempted to place human approval before God’s approval. Like Jesus, we are called to live according to God’s will for our lives, as Jesus has revealed it, even if this means at times losing human approval. A life pleasing to God matters more than a life pleasing to others. God’s approval is worth a great deal more than human approval.