John 8:31-42 “If God were your Father, you would love me"

“If God were your Father, you would love me," Jesus says in today's Gospel. 

How upset the Jews must have been when Jesus said that to them.  They had lived their entire lives worshipping God just as Abraham had taught them, but now Jesus is challenging their very beliefs that they truly love God.  Just because the follow what Abraham had laid out for them in faith does not mean that it is much more than a shell of religion.  You can't just walk blindly in faith, Jesus is urging them to consider.  To have faith, you must be a full participant, not just an observer. 

In our modern culture it is not uncommon to see people jumping from religion to religion, waiting for God to reach out to them and seize them with that sense of "this is it" this is the true faith.  How many people turn away from all faiths finally believing that there is no God because they haven't met him on a personal level up close to the point that all doubts and uncertainties were miraculously vanished.  It doesn't work like that.  The fact that they were searching in the first place suggests that the Spirit moved within them causing them to seek God within the confines of religion.  However, they didn't necessarily put for the effort to meet God where he called them.  They choose to watch, to be passive.  It is a choice.  That their spiritual needs were not met is not surprising.  Perhaps we need to speak to them as Jesus spoke to the Jews, calling them into a deeper reflection on their own intimacy with God.  Asking whether they put forth the effort for the journey and are trying to meet God, or are waiting for God to do everything for them?

 Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in today's first reading are prime examples of men of deep faith, who not only follow the precepts of the Law, but have such an intimate relationship with the Lord, with Truth itself that Nebuchadnezzar comments of the three men he's had thrown into the fire, "I see four men unfettered and unhurt, walking in the fire, and the fourth looks like a son of God."  Relationships take effort.  Our relationship with God is not different.  Is God truly our Father?  Do we truly Jesus?  When we are thrown into the fiery furnace that life offers, whom will the Father place at our side?