Friday, March 28, 2020

John 7:1-2, 10, 25-30

Jesus moved about within Galilee;

he did not wish to travel in Judea, because the Jews were trying to kill him. But the Jewish feast of Tabernacles was near. 

But when his brothers had gone up to the feast, he himself also went up, not openly but as it were in secret. 

Some of the inhabitants of Jerusalem said, “Is he not the one they are trying to kill? And look, he is speaking openly and they say nothing to him. Could the authorities have realized that he is the Christ? But we know where he is from. When the Christ comes, no one will know where he is from.” So Jesus cried out in the temple area as he was teaching and said, “You know me and also know where I am from. Yet I did not come on my own, but the one who sent me, whom you do not know, is true. I know him, because I am from him, and he sent me.” So they tried to arrest him, but no one laid a hand upon him, because his hour had not yet come.

St. John quotes some of the ordinary citizens of Jerusalem: “He is speaking openly and they say nothing to him. Could the authorities have realized that he is the Christ? But we know where he is from. When the Christ comes, no one will know where he is from.”  This stands in sharp contrast to what St. Matthew tells us.  In Matthew 2, 4-5, King Herod asks the chief priests and scribes where “Christ should be born”.  They tell him that he is to be born in Bethlehem, and they quote the Prophet Micah in support.  Why do the people in Jerusalem say they no one will know where the Messiah was to come from?  Perhaps this is merely popular opinion, that no one will know, a sort of urban legend.  Or maybe the people John is quoting belong to a sect that holds this as doctrine.  We might also wonder where they thought Jesus was from.  Since he was known as “Jesus of Nazareth” to many people they could have assumed he was born there.  Did anyone outside of his family know that he had been born in Bethlehem, at this point?  It would seem unlikely.

Jesus uses the occasion to insist that the people do not actually know where he is from: he is from the Father, and they do not know him.  If they did, they would know the Son as well.  “I know him, because I am from him, and he sent me.”  The Son, begotten of the Father from all eternity, knows the Father intimately.  He “comes down” from heaven in order to teach us who the Father is, not as a teacher speaking of what he has learned from other teachers, but as one who is the embrace of this Father, even as he speaks to the folks in Jerusalem.  But they do not want to hear him and they try to arrest him.  Jesus does not make his claims in a void but in the context of the countless miracles he has performed, especially the miracles he has performed in the temple area, where he is speaking in the Gospel reading today.  If Jesus was committing the blasphemy that he was accused of, making himself equal to God, then God would not enable him to perform these miracles.  They are signs, witnesses, that God the Father validates the claims of his Son.

To know the Father, we must know Jesus, and we can find him in our tabernacles now, even if we cannot see at present on our altars.