Today’s Scripture Readings

Gospel Reading

NRSV

Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him. But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what he had done. So the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the council, and said, ‘What are we to do? This man is performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation.’ But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, ‘You know nothing at all! You do not understand that it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed.’ He did not say this on his own, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus was about to die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but to gather into one the dispersed children of God. So from that day on they planned to put him to death. Jesus therefore no longer walked about openly among the Jews, but went from there to a town called Ephraim in the region near the wilderness; and he remained there with the disciples. Now the Passover of the Jews was near, and many went up from the country to Jerusalem before the Passover to purify themselves. They were looking for Jesus and were asking one another as they stood in the temple, ‘What do you think? Surely he will not come to the festival, will he?’

During the long reigns of David and Solomon, the twelve tribes of Israel were united as one people. But with the death of Solomon in the mid tenth century, they split into two kingdoms – the Northern Kingdom with ten tribes and the Southern Kingdom with two. When the Assyrian invasion came in the late ninth century, the Northern Kingdom was swept away leaving the much smaller Southern Kingdom gathered in and around Jerusalem, its numbers swelled by the northern refugees fleeing south. When the Babylonian invasion came in the early sixth century, the Southern Kingdom also fell as its leaders were all taken into exile. During the exile, the prophet Ezekiel foresees a future when the twelve tribes will come home and be united once again as one people.

In the Gospel, the high priest Caiaphas prophesies “that Jesus was about to die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but to gather into one the scattered children of God” (John 11:51-52). Scattering is never the work of God. The real God is the one who gathers all human beings into one, and he does this supremely by the blood of the crucified Lord.