John 10:30 I and the Father are One

TUESDAY, MAY 17JOHN 10:22-30

Jesus walking in Solomon's porch

AMPLIFIED BIBLE

Joh 10:22  After this the Feast of Dedication [of the reconsecration of the temple] was taking place at Jerusalem. It was winter, 
Joh 10:23  And Jesus was walking in Solomon's Porch in the temple area. 
Joh 10:24  So the Jews surrounded Him and began asking Him, How long are You going to keep us in doubt and suspense? If You are really the Christ (the Messiah), tell us so plainly and openly. 
Joh 10:25  Jesus answered them, I have told you so, yet you do not believe Me [you do not trust Me and rely on Me]. The very works that I do by the power of My Father and in My Father's name bear witness concerning Me [they are My credentials and evidence in support of Me]. 
Joh 10:26  But you do not believe and trust and rely on Me because you do not belong to My fold [you are no sheep of Mine]. 
Joh 10:27  The sheep that are My own hear and are listening to My voice; and I know them, and they follow Me. 
Joh 10:28  And I give them eternal life, and they shall never lose it or perish throughout the ages. [To all eternity they shall never by any means be destroyed.] And no one is able to snatch them out of My hand. 
Joh 10:29  My Father, Who has given them to Me, is greater and mightier than all [else]; and no one is able to snatch [them] out of the Father's hand. 
Joh 10:30  I and the Father are One. 

Commentary of the day : 
NJB: "The works that I do in my Father’s name testify to me; but you do not believe, because you do not belong to my sheep" (vv 27,26).
READING: As a faithful Jew, Jesus went to the temple for the Feast of Dedication ("Hanukkah"). This feast commemorated the rededication of the templeby the Maccabees after its desecration in 164 BCE by the Syrian King Antiochus IV Epiphanes (1 Mc 4:36-59). While in the temple, Jesus was confronted by those who demanded to know whether or not he claimed to be the Messiah. Jesus pointed to the works that he did as evidence that God sent him. The words and deeds of Jesus were the words and deeds of God. The reason his adversaries did not recognize him was because they did not belong to his flock. Those who belonged to Jesus knew him and followed him. God gave these faithful ones to Jesus, the "good shepherd" (v 11), who kept careful watch over his own. No one could snatch them from his hand because he and the Father are one

POPE BENEDICT XVI
JESUS OF NAZARETH Part I

Shepherd . . . pp. 282-286

Let us listen once more to these decisive words: "I am the good shepherd; I know my own and my own know me, as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep". (Jn 10:14f). This statement contains a second set of interrelated ideas that we need to consider. The mutual knowing of shepherd and sheep is interwoven with the mutual knowing of Father and Son. The knowing that links Jesus with "his own" exists within the space opened up by his "knowing" oneness with the Father. Jesus' "own" are woven into the Trinitarian dialogue; we will see this again when we consider the high-priestly prayer. This will help us to see that Church and Trinity are mutually interwoven. This interpenetration of two levels of knowing is crucial for understanding the essence of the "knowing" of which John's Gospel speaks.

Applying all of the above to the world in which we live, we can say this: It is only in God and in light of God that we rightly know man. Any "self-knowledge" that restricts man to the empirical and the tangible fails to engage with man's true depth. Man knows himself only when he learns to understand himself in light of God, and he knows others only when he sees the mystery of God in them. For the shepherd in Jesus' service, this means that he has no right to bind men to himself, to his own little “I”. The mutual knowing that binds him to the "sheep" entrusted to his care must have a different goal: It must enable them to lead one another into God, toward God; it must enable them to encounter each other in the communion formed around knowing and loving God. The shepherd in Jesus' service must always lead beyond himself in order to enable others to find their full freedom; and therefore he must always go beyond himself into unity with Jesus and with the Trinitarian God.

Jesus' own "I" is always opened into "being with" the Father; he is never alone, but is forever receiving himself from and giving himself back to the Father. "My teaching is not mine"; his "I" is opened up into the Trinity. Those who come to know him "see" the Father; they enter into this communion of his with the Father. It is precisely this transcendent dialogue, which encounter with Jesus involves, that once more reveals to us the true Shepherd, who does not take possession of us, but leads us to the freedom of our being by leading us into communion with God and by giving his own life.

Let us turn to the last principal motif of the shepherd discourse: the motif of unity. The shepherd discourse in Ezekiel emphasizes this motif: "The word of the LORD came to me: 'Son of Man, take a stick and write on it, "For Judah, and the children of Israel associated with him"; then take another stick and write upon it, "For Joseph (the stick of Ephraim) and all the house of Israel associated with him"; and join them together into one stick, that they may become one in your hand. . . . "Thus says the Lord Goo: Behold, I will take the people of Israel from the nations ... and I will make them one nation in the land, upon the mountains of Israel ... And they shall be no longer two nations, and no longer divided into two kingdoms"'" (Ezek 37:15-17, 21f). God is the Shepherd who reunites divided and scattered Israel into a single people.

Jesus' shepherd discourse takes up this vision, while very decidedly enlarging the scope of the promise: "I have other sheep, that are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will heed my voice. So there shall be one flock, one Shepherd" (Jn 10:16). Jesus the Shepherd is sent not only to gather the scattered sheep of the house of Israel, but to gather together all "the children of God who are scattered abroad" an n:52). In this sense, Jesus' promise that there will be one Shepherd and one flock is equivalent to the risen Lord's missionary command in Matthew's Gospel: "Go therefore and make all nations my disciples" (Mt 28:19); the same idea appears again in the Acts of the Apostles, where the risen Lord says: "You shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth" (Acts 1:8).

This brings to light the inner reason for this universal mission: There is only one Shepherd. The Logos who became man in Jesus is the Shepherd of all men, for all have been created through the one Word; however scattered they may be, yet as coming from him and bound toward him they are one. However widely scattered they are, all people can become one through the true Shepherd, the Logos who became man in order to lay down his life and so to give life in abundance (cf Jn 10:10).

From very early on - the evidence goes back to the third century-the vision of the shepherd became a typical image of the Christian world. In the surrounding culture, the Christian people encountered the figure of a man carrying a sheep, which to an overstressed urban society expressed the popular dream of the simple life. But the Christian people were immediately able to reinterpret this figure in light of Scripture. Psalm 23 is an example that comes to mind directly: "The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want; he makes me lie down in green pastures .... Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil. ... Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD for ever." They recognized Christ as the Good Shepherd who leads us through life's dark valleys; the Shepherd who himself walked through the valley of the shadow of death; the Shepherd who also knows the way through the night of death and does not abandon me in this final solitude, but leads me out of this valley of death into the green pastures of life, to the place of "light, happiness and peace" (Roman Canon). Clement of Alexandria expressed this trust in the Shepherd's guidance in verses that convey something of the hope and confidence felt by the early Church in the midst of frequent sufferings and constant persecutions: "Lead, holy Shepherd, your spiritual sheep: Lead, king, your pure children. Christ's footsteps are the way to heaven" (Paedogogus, III, 12, 101; Van der Meer, Men­schensohn, p. 23).

But naturally, Christians were also reminded of the parable of the shepherd who follows after the lost sheep, lifts it onto his shoulders, and brings it home, as well as the shepherd discourse of John's Gospel. For the Church Fathers, the two texts flowed into each other. The Shepherd who sets off to seek the lost sheep is the eternal Word himself, and the sheep that he lovingly carries home on his shoulders is humanity, the human existence that he took upon himself In his Incarnation and Cross he brings home the stray sheep, humanity; he brings me home, too. The incarnate Logos is the true "sheep-bearer"-the Shepherd who follows after us through the thorns and deserts of our life. Carried on his shoulders, we come home. He gave his life for us. He himself is life.