Your accuser is Moses, on whom you have set your hope.
FIRST READING
(Exodus 32.7-14)
After the Lord God had finished giving the tablets of the covenant
to Moses on Mount Sinai,
7 the Lord said to Moses,
“Go down at once!
Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt,
have acted perversely;
8 they have been quick
to turn aside from the way that I commanded them;
they have cast for themselves an image of a calf,
and have worshipped it and sacrificed to it, and said,
‘These are your gods, O Israel,
who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’”
9 The Lord said to Moses,
“I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are.
10 Now let me alone,
so that my wrath may burn hot against them
and I may consume them;
and of you I will make a great nation.”
11 But Moses implored the Lord his God, and said,
“O Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people,
whom you brought out of the land of Egypt
with great power and with a mighty hand?
12 Why should the Egyptians say,
‘It was with evil intent
that he brought them out to kill them in the mountains,
and to consume them from the face of the earth’
Turn from your fierce wrath;
change your mind and do not bring disaster on your people.
13 Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants,
how you swore to them by your own self,
saying to them,
‘I will multiply your descendants like the stars of heaven,
and all this land
that I have promised I will give to your descendants,
and they shall inherit it forever.’”
14 And the Lord changed his mind about the disaster
that he planned to bring on his people.
RESPONSORIAL PSALM
(Psalm 106.19-20, 21-22, 23)
(R.4a)
Response: Lord, remember us, for the love you bear your people.
19 Our ancestors made a calf at Horeb
and worshipped a cast image.
20 They exchanged the glory of God
for the image of an ox that eats grass.
21 They forgot God, their Saviour,
who had done great things in Egypt,
22 wondrous works in the land of Ham,
and awesome deeds by the Red Sea.
23 Therefore God said he would destroy them—
had not Moses, his chosen one,
stood in the breach before him,
to turn away his wrath from destroying them.
GOSPEL
(John 5.18, 31-47)
18 The Jewish leaders were seeking to kill Jesus,
because he was not only breaking the sabbath,
but was also calling God his own Father,
thereby making himself equal to God.
Jesus said to them:
31 “If I testify about myself, my testimony is not true.
32 There is another who testifies on my behalf,
and I know that his testimony to me is true.
33 “You sent messengers to John, and he testified to the truth.
34 Not that I accept such human testimony,
but I say these things so that you may be saved.
35 He was a burning and shining lamp,
and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light.
36 But I have a testimony greater than John’s.
The works that the Father has given me to complete,
the very works that I am doing,
testify on my behalf that the Father has sent me.
37 And the Father who sent me has himself testified on my behalf.
You have never heard his voice or seen his form,
38 and you do not have his word abiding in you,
because you do not believe him whom he has sent.
39 “You search the scriptures
because you think that in them you have eternal life;
and it is they that testify on my behalf.
40 Yet you refuse to come to me to have life.
41 I do not accept glory from human beings.
42 But I know that you do not have the love of God in you.
43 I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not accept me;
if another comes in his own name, you will accept him.
44 “How can you believe when you accept glory from one another
and do not seek the glory
that comes from the one who alone is God?
45 Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father;
your accuser is Moses,
on whom you have set your hope.
46 If you believed Moses, you would believe me,
for he wrote about me.
47 But if you do not believe what he wrote,
how will you believe what I say?”
