Saturday, Fourth Week of Lent

At the end of the gospel reading, the religious leaders say, ‘Prophets do not come out of Galilee’. Earlier in this gospel of John, Nathanael had asked, ‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?’ Both the statement and the questions reveal a certain prejudice relating to a particular place. There is another example of prejudice in the gospel reading. The religious authorities declare, ‘this rabble knows nothing about the Law – they are damned’. There is a presumption here that that those who have not had a certain kind of religious training are incapable of sound judgement when it comes to the ways of God. It can often be tempting to prejudge someone or some group on the basis of where they come from or their level of education. The opposite to prejudice or pre-judging is to suspend judgement on some individual or group until sufficient evidence can be gathered that enables an informed judgement to be made. This is the attitude displayed by Nicodemus in the gospel reading. Although he was a Pharisee, a member of a group normally hostile to Jesus of Nazareth, he was devoid of prejudice, declaring, ‘surely the Law does not allow us to pass judgement on a man without giving him a hearing and discovering what he is about’. The corrective to prejudice is to give people a hearing, to be open to the presence of truth and goodness in those where we might least expect to find it. Giving people a hearing with a view to really understanding who they are and where they are coming from can head off unnecessary conflict. Such unprejudiced listening is needed today more than ever. As people of faith, especially, we have to be open to the presence of God’s Spirit in those who might appear very different to us. As Jesus declares elsewhere in this gospel of John, ‘the Spirit blows where it chooses’.