Friday of the 4th Week in Lent 2026
When we hear the quotation from our first reading, we might shiver.
The Book of Wisdom, a deuterocanonical scripture from the first century before
Christ, has a number of lines that remind us of nobody but Jesus. “The wicked
said among themselves, thinking not aright: ‘ let us beset the just one, because
he is obnoxious to us; he sets himself against our doings, reproaches us for
transgressions of the law, and charges us with violations of our training.” Especially
in the Gospel of John, the three-year battle between Jesus and the Pharisees echoes
the whole reading from Wisdom. Jesus is the sore-beset just man.
The psalmist knows that plots against righteous people are
not uncommon. Many years ago I memorized the line “many are the troubles of the
just, but out of them all the Lord delivers them. He watches over all his
bones; not one of them shall be broken.”
God gave Moses that instruction about
the Paschal lamb, a foreshadowing of Christ, in both Exodus and Numbers. Not
breaking the lamb’s bones was fundamental to the Passover sacrifice. It meant
that the sacrifice would be total and unblemished in any way, just as Jesus did
in His offering to the Father. But Jesus’s sacrificial offering is symbolized
in the breaking of the bread that we practice in every Eucharist. He, the God-man,
was broken—killed—for our salvation. His heart was broken open by the Roman
soldier’s spear, and His precious blood was poured out to remit our sins.
John’s Gospel records that in the year before Jesus gave up
His life to rescue us, Jesus moved about in His safe space, Galilee, and
avoided Judea because the Jews there were set on killing Him. And John adds, “but
the Jewish feast of Tabernacles was near.” This was one of three feasts that
Torah specifies for every Jewish man to go up to the Temple for worship. So
Jesus obeyed the Law, but went up, not in a great procession, to draw
attention, but “secretly.”
You see, during the Feast of Booths, the Levitical priests
each day drew water from the Siloam pool in southern Jerusalem and processed
into the Temple, where they poured it out as a libation near the altar of
sacrifice. In that same week, giant candelabras burned in the Court of Women
and illuminated the whole Temple area. So Jesus used those rituals to teach,
and that week was likely the setting for His saying that out of the believer
would come springs of living water, and His claim that He, Jesus, was the Light
of the world.
The officials during that time tried to have Jesus arrested, but the arresting officers told the priests and Pharisees, “nobody ever spoke like this man.” Moreover, Nicodemus, a member of the ruling body, spoke in His
favor, so He remained free until His hour had come. We will see more of that
after next week, and Palm Sunday. Let’s use the time until then to ask God to
shore up our faith and help us offer our own troubles and suffering with Christ.
