John 7:1-13, Additional Thoughts

Jesus was not very impressive. In fact, he got it wrong much of the time. The whole resurrection was a big deal. It’s good that he pulled that off. But he could have been so much better overall if he had had a publicist, someone to make the most of his shining moments. He needed a top-quality PR person to get the most mileage out of the miracles, the wise and exceedingly counter-cultural teaching, and the relationships. Jesus was great, but could have been so much more.

This passage in John 7 is a case in point. He’s in Galilee, the northern part of Israel, and it is time for the Festival of Booths, which happens in what would be October on our calendar. Jews would go to Jerusalem in the south and re-enact the wilderness wanderings when Moses led the nation out of Egypt and into the Sinai desert for 40 years.

During the Festival of Booths, the nation converged on the capital city. Jesus’ miracles would gain no traction in Galilee. He needed to be seen where the people were.

His brothers told him as much. They probably heard Jesus when he gave the Sermon on the Mount. So they heard him say, “Let your light shine before others, so they may see your good works” (Matthew 5:16). They knew no one was seeing his good works in Capernaum or Nazareth. Jesus needed to be in the south, in Judea, in Jerusalem.

Last week, I talked about the good relations between Jesus and his brothers, that seem to be a part of the story in John’s gospel that is missing in the others. That good family feeling started to break down when Jesus invaded the temple wildly as reported in the chapter two. Further erosion of his relations with his relations came as his brothers realized he wasn’t trying to make the family look good. Jesus’ mission was not to provide social success for his earthly family. His mission was to seek out and save the lost and to bring glory to God.

Turning the page to John 7, we see the relationship has become tense. His brothers confront him. “Go to Judea,” they say, “so that your disciples also may see the works you are doing; for no one who wants to be widely known acts in secret. If you do these things, show yourself to the world” (v.4).

Maybe, they had a point. Jesus fed a crowd of thousands by the Sea of Galilee. His disciple, Philip, told him six months wages would not be enough to give each person in the crowd even a little bread. Jesus fed them all. The throng was so full of bread and fish, there were 12 baskets of leftovers (John 6:13).

The story of such a miracle would surely travel to Jerusalem. People would be talking about Jesus. They would remember the incident of a few years back where he turned over the money changing tables and drove animals out of the temple. Some might remember the miraculous healing in Jerusalem. A man had been a complete invalid for 38 years and Jesus gave him health, including the ability to walk. People remembered such stories and put two and two together. All over Israel people spoke about and wondered about Jesus.

If he could transport such a massive miracle, the feeding of 5000, from Galilee to Jerusalem; the talk of it would go all the way to Rome. People with real power notice Jesus. He’d be known everywhere. His brothers said, go to Jerusalem. Show yourself to the world.

“The world,” Jesus said in response, “hates me because I testify against it” (John 7:7).

Sometimes, it’s easy to see the rub. Where the tension lies is obvious. Jesus’ brothers say, “Show yourself to the world.” Work your miracles, impress people, do good, and gain a name. Jesus will have none of it. Not only he does not care about impressing the world, he sets him self in opposition to the world. The world hates him because he judges it.

We are drawn back to John chapter 1, where Jesus is the eternal word who leaves the eternal Heavens to enter the confines of our finite, time-locked world. “He was in the world and the world came into being through him; yet, the world did not know him” (John 1:10).

His brothers, unnamed in John 7, don’t know anything about his pre-existence at the beginning. They know they have seen miracles. He’s unlike anyone else. But the miracles are not enough to inspire them to listen when he teaches about God. Even in Jesus’ presence, his brothers are still worried about what the world thinks. They want him to either conform or do something so massively impressive that the world will have to conform. When and more importantly if, Jesus does that – some super miracle – then his brothers will buy in and follow him. Until then, he needs to put up or shut up.

Jesus cares about what the world thinks, but not because he wants to be liked. Jesus cares about how wrongly the world thinks about God. When John says, ‘the world,’ here, he means the people of the world – people who are fallen, lost in sin, separated from God. Jesus testifies against the world, drawing the world’s hatred, because he tells the truth. He speaks judgment. People don’t want to hear that by their own choices, they are cut off from God, cut off from eternal life. It’s as true now as it was then.

At this point, we might be tempted to set the choices. Are we with Jesus’ brothers, seeking the accolades and acceptance of the world? Or are we with Jesus, affirming his judgment of sin? We nod approvingly when he says that the world hates him because he testifies against it. Are with Jesus or with his brothers?

This is church, the church of Jesus Christ. So the answer is obvious. We have to take Jesus’ side in this family dispute. The world really is a terribly corrupted place. With Jesus we testify against the it.

Of course that’s the answer, but we better make sure we understand everything before we jump on board with Jesus. His is a lonely path. He said as much to his brothers. “The world cannot hate you, but it hates me” (7:7).

So they went to Jerusalem without him. The Festival of Booths was incredibly important, especially for Jewish men. Jesus was cut-off from family. They were doing what brothers did together – traveling to the city and bonding as they walked the many miles, celebrating there together for many days, and coming home again - together. Jesus missed all that. He missed the relation-building that took place.

If we say, “Well, Jesus didn’t need them, he had his perfect relationship with the Father,” then we are missing Jesus’ humanity. The Word became flesh. Jesus was fully human and humans are at a loss when cut off from the most important relationships. In the garden before he was arrested, Jesus told his disciples how much he needed their companionship (Mark 15:33-34). To follow God’s lead and turn against his brothers was to accept social ostracism. It was very lonely for Jesus.

I have friends who follow Jesus and who are from non-Christian families. One friend, whose parents are Buddhist, has told me of lying in bed at night, weeping because he wanted his family to share the joy of Jesus and the celebration of baptism with him. But they will not and in fact they oppose his decision to express his love for God. For him to walk the way of Jesus is to walk a lonely path.

If we sit in church, together with 100 or so Christian friends, and courageously say, “Yes, the world is corrupt and with Jesus we testify against it,” we need to know there will be days ahead when our friends are not with us. The time comes when we are called to speak out against cruelty and injustice, and the time comes when we have to choose to not participate in something. Making a stand is a part of our testimony against sin. In those moments, we pass up something inviting, something fun, and something everyone else is into. We pass it up because we are following the Jesus who refused to work miracles for the sake of popularity. We speak Jesus’ words against sin and we become unpopular, unloved, and on the outside.

There’s more. When we join with Jesus in testifying against sin and against injustice in the world and against immorality in the world (and if we testify against one we better testify against both), it is crucial that we remember something else said about the world in the Gospel of John.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through Him” (John 3:16-17).

Why does the world need saving? Because it is a mess. I won’t go into specific examples. We could each pick our favorite sin set whether it be related to some immorality or injustice. There’s so much bad in the world it is quite easy for preachers to rail against it. There’s enough sin to preach against 52 Sundays out of the year. Overdoing it in damning sin ignores the good in the world both in God’s creation and in human culture, which does a lot of things right. The bottom line is John 3:17 says Jesus came to save the world because God loves the world. God’s plan for us is salvation, not condemnation.

When we come to John 7 and read Jesus saying “I testify against the world,” and we shout “O Me too,” we have to remember John 3. Following our Master we know our testimony against sin is for the sake of love that the world would come to see Jesus, believe in Him, and be saved.

Rejecting popularity and testifying against sin is the right thing to do. We are called to live a testimony of righteousness. We have to keep in mind that living in truth leads to very scary, very lonely moments far from the safe confines of church were we stand up for what’s right without support from anyone around us. The only thing bolstering us in those moments is the still small voice of the Holy Spirit. To follow Jesus is to walk a lonely path.

Followers of Jesus love the world. Our testimony is not a triumphant “I am bound for Heaven and you can go to Hell.” Our testimony is love and prayer for the meanest most criminal people we know because God loves them. Jesus came that they might believe in Him and be saved. His message of salvation is our counter-cultural, love-filled testimony and our dogged willingness to walk alongside people not that we might be accepted, but that we might show Jesus to them.

Ironically, after Jesus told his brothers he would not go and impress the temple hierarchy in Jerusalem with miracles, he went, secretly. Once there, his love for sinners spilled out. He said, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water’” (John 7:37-38).

Even more ironically, Jesus eventually did exactly what his brothers wanted him to do. He went to Jerusalem and performed a most spectacular miracle on the most public of stages. He was crucified on a Roman cross. He died for the very sins of the people of the world that he testified against. His judgment was for the sake of salvation.

And his brothers, James, Jude and the rest, believed.

He didn’t go in chapter 7 for the Festival of Booths because it wasn’t God’s time and he wasn’t out to impress anybody. Jesus consistently lived God’s plan for his life and Jesus consistently loved with the love of God.

We are called to do the same. We are called to reject popularity and acceptance and instead in Jesus’ name, speak the courageous truth about sin in the world. That call is tough to answer. But he walks with us. And only walking with Jesus can one meet God, be filled with the Holy Spirit, and receive peace that passes all understanding.

We are called to walk the lonely path. We are called to speak the Gospel truth that the world might see Jesus, believe, and be saved.

John 7:1-13, Jesus and Opposition to the Gospel

If church fails, who wins? If the church is gone completely, who benefits? These questions draw a Christian into consideration of who might oppose the spread of the Gospel of Jesus in the world. Who are the opponents of Jesus and His followers, and how do these opponents operate?

John 7:1 says, “Jesus did not wish to go about in Judea because the Jews were looking for an opportunity to kill him.” Two thousand years of violent anti-Semitism force Bible readers to be very careful with passages like this one. When we read the “the Jews,” we have to understand what we are reading. Where the author of John, (the fourth evangelist) says, “the Jews,” he’s referring to the temple leaders in Jerusalem circa 28 C.E. Jesus was Jewish. All his original disciples were Jewish. Most of the people in the crowds were Jews. And so too were those who opposed him. Stating these facts helps clarify what is said (and is not said) in the fourth Gospel when it says “the Jews.”

The leaders wanted to kill Jesus. I believe the fourth evangelist is accurate in reporting this. I think, and history bears this out, there was in fact a movement to kill Jesus and it ultimately succeeded. However, this account from John benefits Christians today in how the story of Jesus being pursued by the authorities is told. The method of telling the story, what is highlighted and how it is framed, reveals much for us as we follow Jesus in our lives in the 21^st century world.

Many Bible readers and scholars believe John was finally compiled by the Christian community in the city of Ephesus around 90AD. The church or grouping of churches possibly traces their roots back to the Apostle John. Whether what is in John’s Gospel or in the three Johanine epistles or in Revelation was originally written by the apostle cannot be determined. But it is likely that the same community produced in final form all five of these New Testament books, and it is possible that the writers of these books received much of their material from those who knew the apostle personally.

What is more pressing for our reading of how the gospel renders the story of Jesus is the situation in Ephesus in the last decade of the first century. If the composition of the Johanine literature coincides with the reign of Roman Emperor Domitian (81-96), then these Biblical writings were brought together by a church under severe persecution. Rome under Domitian did in fact persecute, exile, and execute people for worshiping Jesus and failing to pronounce Domitian as Lord.

Where the fourth evangelist writes “the Jews” (for example John 7:1, 11, 13), he is referring to Jewish leaders who were out to get Jesus in 28AD. But perhaps, he was also referring to Jews in 90AD who believed in Jesus but insisted that all who become Christians adhere to kosher food laws, undergo circumcision, and observe Sabbath. These Judaizers (see Act 15:1; Galatians 3) did not accept Jesus as perfect fulfillment of the law and the prophets, and they did not accept his death and resurrection as sufficient for righteousness. They believed Jesus was Messiah and they believed he rose from death, but they corrupted the Gospel by imposing restrictions that the early church (see Act 10-11, 15) had removed.

The tension John cites between Jesus and Jewish authorities in Jesus’ time also existed between Jesus’ church and Jewish missionaries in the 90’s. John is using a circumstance from Jesus’ ministry to speak to his own situation.

A second correspondence from roughly 28 AD to roughly 90 AD is a phrase also in John 7:1, “[they] were looking for an opportunity to kill him.” No doubt, Jesus’ life was threatened. Again, history shows that threat became reality in the crucifixion. How much influence the Jewish leaders in Jesus’ day had can be debated. What no one refutes is that Jesus died on a Roman cross at the decision of Roman governor Pilate. The threat of death Jesus faced also became reality for Jesus’ followers shortly after Pentecost (Acts 11:58; 12:2), and again at the end of the century where believers died at the hand of Domitian’s government.

I believe in reading John 7, the members of the Johanine churches in Ephesus in 90AD would clearly see their own life experience and faith experience. The Ephesians church was probably a blend of Jewish, Greek, Asian, and Roman believers. They probably experienced much conflict with some Jews who insisted on keeping Levitical ritual. These Easter Christians resisted the call back to Sabbath observance, and their unwillingness to submit to Judaism let to a divide between them and the Jewish missionaries.

Furthermore, in reading John 7, they would see their own story in seeing Jesus’ careful avoidance of the murderous intentions of the authorities. Jesus had to attend the Festival of booths covertly (John 7:10). Surely, 1^st century Ephesian Christians had to also be secretive to avoid situations that would force them to either renounce Christ or die a martyr’s death. At the same time, they, like Jesus had to engage the cultural world around them in order to carry on daily life and also in order to be a witness that nonbelievers might come to know Jesus and believe and have life in his name (John 20:31).

A third point of correspondence from 28AD to 90 was Jesus twice repeated phrase, “my time has not yet come” (7:6, 8). This sentiment is also heard from Jesus when his mother asks him to intervene in Cana (2:4). The idea in the fourth Gospel is that Jesus is always in control of things. When he says “my time has not yet come,” he means his time of crucifixion. The Gospel of Mark presents a Jesus with limited knowledge (13:32). He didn’t know the time of the final judgment. In John’s Gospel, the narrator and Jesus both seem to have unlimited knowledge. Jesus knows what’s coming before it comes in the fourth gospel. And the narrator is looking back on events and thus has the advantage of hindsight.

It is important to see the effect this would have on the original Johanine readers. If those communities were truly persecuted to the point of death, they need to trust an omnipotent God who, in the big picture, had everything in control. They needed to know that Jesus was more powerful than Domitian even if Jesus submitted, for God’s purposes, to a Roman cross. In John, Jesus says, “For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father" (10:17-18). The Ephesians Christians could die martyrs’ deaths because their Lord Jesus had done so also. But, in the resurrection, he showed, paradoxically that his nonresistance actually led to victory over death, not submission to it. Subsequently, believers in 90AD could hold their ground in their confession, “Jesus is Lord,” and they knew their Lord would provide them with resurrection and eternal life.

The other Gospel writers probably believed in Jesus’ knowledge, authority, and power just as the fourth evangelist did. But, it is emphasized more in John because it spoke directly to the needs of the audience for which it was written. Ephesian Christians butted heads with Jews, were persecuted by the authorities, and were waiting for Jesus to act. They knew in the Gospel “Jesus’ time,” referred to his crucifixion and resurrection. But from their vantage point, 60-70 years after those events, they also waited for “his time,” the Second Coming and the Final Judgment. It had not yet come, though they longed for it, because it was not yet the appropriate time.

Thus we see why the fourth evangelist used three phrases in John chapter 7 the way he used them. “The Jews” (7:1), “looking for an opportunity to kill him” (7:1), and “My time has not yet come” (7:6, 8) each show how the Gospel narrative continued to speak in the life of the late first century church.

How doe the countercultural stance of Jesus speak in the 21^st century church?

(1) Churches must be aware of the enemy. Sin is the ultimate enemy and sin confronts the church when forces in the world act as obstacles to the church’s work of sharing Jesus. Forces in the world can include oppressive governments that restrict evangelistic activity; dominant competing religions that rhetorically attack Christians and try to win nonbelievers to other faiths; ideologies like consumerism, relativism, and individualism that are antithetical to evangelical Christian faith; and, pseudo-Christians who pose as believers but use a Christian façade to advance an un-Christian agenda (like Westboro Baptist Church). The enemy is not “the Jews.” The enemy is the group with power that opposes the advance of Jesus and His Kingdom.

(2) Church must be away of how the enemy kills the church. Jesus was threatened by leaders in Jerusalem who wanted him dead for their own political reasons. He was also tempted by his own brothers who like Satan (Matthew 4:5ff) wanted him to show what he could do at the temple. The Ephesian Church of 90AD was tempted to compromise their allegiance to Jesus by proclaiming that “Domitian is Lord.” Many died because they refused such a compromise. Today, at least in America, the church is killed by relativism and apathy. Relativism suggests that Jesus is one among many gods and that the Christian faith is one expression of religious belief that is no more or no less valid than any other. Apathy is the tendency of Christians to think the call of Christ isn’t a very urgent call. We confess Jesus and go to heaven when we die and between now and then, how we live is inconsequential. That’s apathy and the exact opposite of how the Gospel calls believers to live.

(3) The church of Jesus in Christ in 2011 must recognize the unique call of living between the times – in a time of expectation. Yes, Jesus, died and rose again. Yes, he is coming back to call all who believe in Him into His eternal Heaven to live in the New Earth where the home of God is with people (Revelation 21:1-3). Yes, that day is coming. But we do not know when, and so we accept what the Ephesians believers had to accept nearly 2000 years ago. His time has not yet come. While we wait, we worship the Lord and we share his love and his message of salvation with a lost and hurting world just as our predecessors in the faith have done.

In conclusion, I see the context in which the fourth gospel was compiled as a community of bold faith that challenges 21^st century American middle class Christians. They were able to live in the midst of persecution and to produce John, 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd John, and Revelation because those early believers relied on Jesus. We cannot rely on the security we enjoy as Americans. It ensures that we can vote, speak freely, and live in freedom. But our status as U.S. citizens is no protection against sin and no guarantee of eternal life. Nor is being an American in anyway the same thing as being in partnership with the Lord Jesus. We have to look to Him for our security, our calling, and our purpose in life. And we have to live lives that follow wherever He leads as well as living on His time table.

Doing this may at times set us at odds with the culture around us. If we find that we are doing our best to follow Jesus, and the harder we try, the more we are opposed, then it probably means we are doing something right. The affirmation of the surrounding culture is not our goal. We want to follow Jesus in all things.

AMEN