Saturday in the Fourth Week of Lent, March 16, 2024

John 7, 40-53

Some in the crowd who heard these words of Jesus said, “This is truly the Prophet.” Others said, “This is the Christ.” But others said, “The Christ will not come from Galilee, will he? Does not Scripture say that the Christ will be of David’s family and come from Bethlehem, the village where David lived?” So a division occurred in the crowd because of him. Some of them even wanted to arrest him, but no one laid hands on him. So the guards went to the chief priests and Pharisees, who asked them, “Why did you not bring him?” The guards answered, “Never before has anyone spoken like this man.” So the Pharisees answered them, “Have you also been deceived? Have any of the authorities or the Pharisees believed in him? But this crowd, which does not know the Law, is accursed.” Nicodemus, one of their members who had come to him earlier, said to them, “Does our law condemn a man before it first hears him and finds out what he is doing?” They answered and said to him, “You are not from Galilee also, are you? Look and see that no prophet arises from Galilee.”  Then each went to his own house.

The first part of this Gospel reading describes the confusion and mass of opinions regarding the identity of the Lord Jesus.  We see this reflected in the other Gospels as well, as in Matthew 16, 14, where the Apostles answered him that some people regarded him as John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, or one of the other Prophets.  St. John saw the battle over identifying Jesus as central to salvation.  John is handing on what he himself has seen and heard so that others may have life, but this can only be so if the one he has seen and heard is the Son of God incarnate.  Thus, John begins his Gospel by identifying the Lord: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”  Throughout the rest of his Gospel, he shows this Word in action among the Jews and Gentiles.

“This is truly the Prophet.”  That is, Elijah, whom Malachi promised would come before the end of time.  Elijah performed miracles as well as preached repentance.  “This is the Christ.”  Those who recognized John the Baptist as Elijah would have concluded that Jesus was the Christ, as indeed John himself pointed out.  “The Christ will not come from Galilee, will he?”  Some among the crowd knew and understood Micah 5, 2 as indicating where the Messiah would be born, and the verse says nothing about Galilee, a land depopulated of Jews by the Assyrians hundreds of years before and resettled by them only relatively recently.  “Does not Scripture say that the Christ will be of David’s family and come from Bethlehem, the village where David lived?”  From this we can tell that the Lord did not publicize his ancestry.  We might wonder why not, since it would seem that if he had, more people would have recognized him as the Messiah.  But during his Public Life, the Lord strove to play down that he was “the Messiah” because of the false expectations people had for that figure.  Returning to Matthew 16, after Peter had declared him to be the Son of God, the Lord forbade the Apostles to speak of this to anyone.  He knew that his followers were always on the verge of making him king: “Jesus therefore, when he knew that they would come to take him by force and make him king, fled again into the mountains, himself alone” (John 6, 15).  He had not been sent into the world to restore the kingdom to Israel (cf. Acts 1, 6), but to redeem the world from sin.  “So a division occurred in the crowd because of him.”  The Greek word translated here as “division” does not mean a clean cut, but a ragged one with jagged edges, a “rent”.  It is the basis for our word “schism”.  The people were sharply, even violently, divided about him.  This brings to mind Matthew 10, 34-36: “Do not think that I came to send peace upon earth: I came not to send peace, but the sword. For I came to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man’s enemies shall be they of his own household.”

“Some of them even wanted to arrest him, but no one laid hands on him.”  The Jewish leadership sought to kill him because he challenged their teaching on the Sabbath and also because he spoke of himself as equal to the Father.  Neither the people nor the guards the leadership had sent would touch him, though.  They found themselves more amazed at him than enraged by him.  The leadership, however, had closed their ears to him as later they would close them to St. Stephen: “And they, crying out with a loud voice, stopped their ears” (Acts 7, 56).  With such an attitude they demanded of the guards why they had returned to them empty-handed.  The guards, in their amazement at him, replied: “Never before has anyone spoken like this man.”  The guards so not even seem dazzled by any miracles they may have seen.  His words alone made them hold their peace.  One wonders if any of these guards were later involved in the Lord’s arrest at Gethsemane.  “Have you also been deceived? Have any of the authorities or the Pharisees believed in him?”  The words of the chief priests accord a certain respect to the guards, for the chief priests imply that they were capable of not being deceived.  At the same time, they rebuke them for being “deceived” by the Lord.  We might wonder in what way the chief priests thought the guards were deceived by Jesus.  Deceived into thinking or believing what, exactly?  The Greek word can also mean “led astray”, so perhaps the guards were being accused of being led from the teachings of the Pharisees to the teachings of Jesus.  “But this crowd, which does not know the law, is accursed.”  The guards may be a step above the crowd in their ability to understand, but the crowd, not knowing the Law, was accursed.  But if the crowd did not know the Law, it was the fault of the chief priests, scribes, and Pharisees, and if tue crowd is indeed accursed, so much more so the people who failed in their responsibility to teach them.

“Does our Law condemn a man before it first hears him and finds out what he is doing?”  Nicodemus counters his brother Pharisees by pointing out to them their own lapse in knowing the Law and its procedures for judging a case.  “You are not from Galilee also, are you? Look and see that no prophet arises from Galilee.”  In fact, both Elijah and Elisha came from places that would later be called Galilee, as well as the later Prophet Hosea.  Again, they prove their own ignorance, undermining their claim that others are ignorant.

“Then each went to his own house.”  That is, they each went their way.  They had gathered in order to kill, and now they scatter in their defeat.  We also see that all that held these faithless men together was their hatred of Jesus.  Otherwise, each was devoted to his own interests, which might be in conflict with those of the others.  In addition, we can see them going, each “to his own house” as their destruction, in the way a piece of pottery shatters when dropped on a hard floor.  The pieces go everywhere.  By contrast, those who believe in Jesus Christ are united as members of his Body and belong to his Church, his ecclesia, his “assembly”.