I grew up in a relatively small rural town in Iowa in the 1970s and 80s. When I think of my childhood experiences, it was pretty awesome. I had a great family, there was always food on the table, and I could ride my bike anyplace in town because I always felt safe. After I moved away to college and to a larger city, my view of the world began to expand. After college, I traveled for work and started to see more of the world and experience much more that my small Iowa town had ever offered. As I look back on my childhood I still feel a great fondness, but I also realize the biases that encultured me during my formative years. Nearly everyone in my town was white, German, and Catholic. To me, this was the norm and I rarely experienced anyone different from me and the point of view that my hometown experiences provided.

After reading today’s Gospel I couldn’t help but relate my small town Iowa experience with that of the Jews. We all get comfortable with our own experiences. They are familiar, they are safe, and they are predictable. That was me in my town, and that was the Jews in their town, too. The biases of our lived experience are pretty awesome – until someone comes along and shows us that they are not. “The Jews picked up rocks to stone Jesus” because he was not like them. He was doing and saying things that were not aligned with their “usual storyline” and because of that he was a threat to their comfortable and predictable way of life.

The part of the story, however, that grabs my attention most is when Jesus says to the Jews, “If I do not perform my Father’s works, do not believe me; but if I perform them, even if you do not believe me, believe the works…” It makes me think of the many times in my life that my biases get in the way of seeing the truth. Sometimes, if I hear the words that confirm my own biases, I am willing to make exceptions for actions that I would not normally approve of. In other times I fail to see the good actions that I normally approve of because they are accompanied by words that do not agree with my biases. This is what I saw in the Jews from John’s Gospel and this is what is easy to see in our society today – particularly in politics. As long as the words confirm what I already believe to be true, the appalling actions can be forgiven. In the case of the Jews, the good actions of Jesus did not matter because his message was inconsistent with the party-line of the Jews. Their biases did not allow them to see the truth.

I am still white, German, and Catholic. And, the biases that came along with growing up in that small town in Iowa are still somewhere inside me. But, what I hope to learn from the Gospel today is that I need to recognize those biases – especially those that block my ability to see the truth so that I’m not the one picking up those rocks.