John 7:10-36

Jesus at the Festival

The “Sin of the World” in Operation

John 7:10-13     Climate of Fear

Which “Jews”?

Against a sad background of historical Anti-Semitism, it is important that modern readers approach the text with discernment. When the text refers to “the Jews”, it does not refer to the Jewish people as a whole. In fact, all the participants in the story were Jews, Jesus and the disciples included, as were many, if not most, of the believers in the community of the Beloved Disciple. In the Gospel, “the Jews” generally refers to the Jewish establishment opposed to Jesus, and, by extension, to those mainstream Jews later responsible for expelling the Christian Jews from synagogues in the Diaspora.

While Jesus in his own time, and his committed disciples with him, undoubtedly lived under constant threat of danger, the people in general did not live in clear fear of each other or their Jewish authorities. The Gospel reflected the later experience of people at the time when the Gospel was being composed. Then, prospective Jewish believers in Jesus had reason to fear the Jews, namely, the Pharisee enforcers who exercised the power of ostracism.

John 7:14-31     Confronting Group Conservatism

Minds Closed to Truth

A common assumption of any closed system is that it controls the sources of true knowledge which, in turn, cannot be accessed other than through the means determined by the system. Jesus had never been a disciple within the system.

The dialogue (or, rather, the on-going controversy) between Jesus and the Jews had begun. In this early part of the discussion, the Jews in question were, mainly, the common people, those crowding the Temple area, some of whom were still honestly trying to make up their minds about the identity and relevance of Jesus. 

Though told in narrative form and involving Jesus and his contemporaries, the Gospel in fact sought to deepen and strengthen the faith journey of the members of the Christian community for whom it was written: that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name [20:31]. The issues would not be so much those actually challenging the historical Jesus, as those facing the small community that was struggling to maintain its identity and to deepen its faith.

The first issue to arise was the teaching of Jesus. In this Gospel, Jesus gave no explicit teaching about the Kingdom of God or about moral behaviour in the Kingdom. His teaching focussed on his origin from the Father, his identity, and his relevance to the experience of eternal life and salvation.

The dialogue would refer again and again to the origin of Jesus: Jesus came from the Father; he was sent by the Father; and, through his person and action, he revealed the Father to the world. The faithful community had come to believe in Jesus. However, they had great difficulty trying to convince their brothers and sisters of this truth about Jesus. They could make the claim, but how could they prove it? Jesus’ resurrection, his going to the Father, confirmed their faith. But resurrection was impossible to prove to others who did not wish to be challenged. For the casual Jew, the Christian community’s claims about Jesus were unbelievable, indeed, unthinkable.

To Jesus’ mind, the way beyond the unbelievable to faith demanded an openness to seek and to do the will of God. It called people to move beyond the comfortable certainties enshrined in the system and to allow themselves to be challenged by the unfamiliar.

For all their concern about Jesus’ teaching, they themselves failed to take note of the law. Nor had they reflected explicitly on the question of Jesus’ credibility.

When Jesus had healed the crippled man in Jerusalem on the Sabbath, the Jewish establishment accused him of violating the Law of Moses. Jesus rebutted that claim by appealing to the mind of God, the ultimate author of the Law. Now, he turned the accusation back on them. His accusation addressed both the practical issue of their inconsistency regarding their observance of the letter of the law, and, particularly, their failure, or immaturity, to move beyond the letter to discover and to observe the law’s spirit. Closed systems are not self-critical: they need their familiar certainties.

It is normal for closed systems to demonise internal dissidents or opponents in order to avoid any need for self-criticism.

The crowd may have been ignorant of the earlier decision of the priestly establishment to kill Jesus. Whatever about that, they did not hear, or listen to, his charge.

The virulence of the crowd’s accusation of Jesus as having a demon sounds surprising and offensive to modern readers of the Gospel. In the culture, the comment inferred that persons had lost control of their faculties (not unlike, in contemporary parlance, to claim that somebody was “on drugs” or drunk). The accusation was a normal and expected way to discredit opponents.

Jesus had raised the crucial question: Why do you seek to kill me? Perhaps, the modern reader, knowing the final outcome of the Gospel, takes it for granted that Jesus was killed, and that the killing was, somehow, inevitable, without pursuing the significant question: Why? Why did Jesus’ audience not hear his question, but immediately brand him as having a demon? Why, on the one hand, do they proudly see themselves as custodians of their law and tradition, and, on the other hand, blithely ignore their law and seek to kill a man without trial? The answer to the question is important – important for the modern reader, because the answer lies deep in the human psyche, not just of this particular little group of Jews of the first century AD, but of every person. What is behind the violence lurking in every human heart? And what blinds people to that violence?

Ignoring their attempt to discount his message by denigrating him, Jesus proceeded to illustrate their selectivity regarding their law.

In the earlier discussion that followed the healing of the crippled man [chapter 5], Jesus had defended his action by citing the action of God, who gave life, took life and passed judgment on the Sabbath. Now, he called on the precedent of Moses. The illustration Jesus used carried weight in the Jewish religious world of his contemporaries; but, apparently, not to ears that would not hear and to minds that were closed. To reach the obvious conclusion, they would have had to acknowledge their mistake. Possibly, they feared that to admit to one change in their understanding of the law might lead to the frightening possibility of more. They had no satisfactory answer. So they said nothing.

Jesus appealed to their just judgment, a judgment attuned to the deeper values and ways of God. He saw that capacity for judgment as possible to those whose sensitivity had been honed by their continuing search to discover and to do the will of God [verse 17]. Consistently, the crowd would fail to engage with the deeper truth to which Jesus was alluding. They clung to the comforting and familiar without seeking to listen to the deeper meanings and implications of Jesus’ claims. They were closed to the way of self-criticism, even in the interests of growth and discovery of truth. The problem was not just theirs; it is a universal problem.

Is This the Christ?

The ironical question of some introduced a discussion about whether Jesus might be the Christ/Messiah. The term had arisen earlier in relation to the Baptist [1.20] and, again, in Jesus’ dialogue with the Samaritan woman [4.25-26]. This was the first time, however, that it had entered into discussion with the Jews. It was an important issue for the evangelist, whose reason for composing his narrative had been to convince his community of Jewish believers that Jesus fulfilled, indeed, the role of Christ/Messiah foretold in their Scriptures [20:31]. Their conviction would have been one of the points of contention with their mainstream Jewish opponents.

Though it had no scriptural background, one popular understanding at the time was that the Messiah would appear from some unknown location. [That was particularly the belief of Samaritans.  It is highly probable that some members of the Beloved Disciple's community were of Samaritan origin.  It is helpful to remember that the Gospel was written precisely to strengthen the faith of all the members of that community.]

In response to their wondering, Jesus shouted out. The one who had come up to the festival privately [verse 10], was obviously not content to remain so. His response was boldly and unequivocally to reaffirm his identity as the one sent by God. However his claim might sound, his personal integrity and “wholeness” could not be contested: Jesus was the human revelation of the mystery of God. His challenge could not be avoided: Do not pass judgment simply on appearances.  Judge justly.

The Impact of Jesus’ Integrity

Jesus’ contemporaries experienced at first hand his personal integrity and witnessed some of the signs he performed, all of which challenged their comfortable assumptions. The later Christian community, in their confrontations with their fellow Jews, could not call on that witness: Jesus was no longer with them. The basis of their own conviction had been their personal prayerful experience of their risen Lord, made possible by the action of the Spirit of Jesus. To convince their contemporaries, who had no personal experience of the risen Lord either, they could offer only the witness of the own changed, Spirit-filled lives. As Christians today seek to lead their generation to Jesus, they, too, can arouse the interest of others primarily by the attraction of their Spirit-filled lives.

For the Gospel’s readers, the issue was not simply the fact of Jesus’ signs but their message and meaning. That was what the Disciple sought to encourage his community to ponder.

John 7:32-36     Leaders’ Recourse to Violence

The response of the Jewish leadership was to exercise power. If his arguments could not be answered, at least, he could be silenced.

The narrative continued. This time, rather than refer to his origin in God, Jesus referred to this future destiny with God. He had already [5.18] experienced the reaction of the establishment, and well knew they would get rid of him. The argument would have been quite irrelevant to Jesus’ contemporaries, who had no anticipation of such an outcome. It made sense, however, to the Gospel’s audience, the little community of firm believers in his resurrection, whose very identity was based on their own personal relationship to the risen Jesus.

The Jews’ question about Jesus’ going to the Diaspora in the Greek world was a wonderful instance of irony. It was precisely in this Greek Diaspora that the Christian community was living and engaging with their Jewish opponents.

Next >> John 7:37-44