To listen or to hear?

After saying this, [Jesus] remained in Galilee. But after his brothers had gone up to the feast, then he also went up, not publicly but in private. The Jews were looking for him at the feast, and saying, “Where is he?” And there was much muttering about him among the people. While some said, “He is a good man,” others said, “No, he is leading the people astray.” Yet for fear of the Jews no one spoke openly of him. (John’s first century eyewitness biography of Jesus: Chapter 7: 9-24)

At the time of this incident Jerusalem would have been teeming with people. It was the annual week-long feast of Booths (tents). Jesus wasn’t there. The feast recalled the time when, about 1,400 years earlier, the Lord God of Israel (as revealed in the Bible’s Old Testament) accompanied the Israelites in the wilderness. The Lord God dwelt in a “Tent of Meeting” and was visibly present as a pillar of fire by night and a pillar of cloud by day. The situation changed. Jesus went, incognito, to Jerusalem to the feast of Booths. He heard his name repeatedly discussed - but not openly – the people all feared the Jerusalem seniors. “Where is he?” “He is a good man.” “No, he is leading the people astray.” About the middle of the feast Jesus went up into the temple and began teaching. The Jews therefore marveled, saying, “How is it that this man has learning, when he has never studied?”
Incognito, Jesus teaches in the vast temple complex. That gives rise to the Jews having a strong desire to know from where his teaching had come. He had not studied with them – or at all. His teaching was something else.	.
So Jesus answered them, “My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me. If anyone’s will is to do God’s will, that one will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority. The one who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory; but the one who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true, and in him there is no falsehood. Has not Moses given you the law? Yet none of you keeps the law. Why are you seeking to kill me?” From where did his teaching originate? “My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me.” He claimed no merit whatsoever. Unlike some. Why were they so intrigued but unenlightened? “If anyone’s will is to do God’s will, that one will know whether my teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority.”. Did they “will … to do God’s will”? This was not a collective “will” but an individual one. How could each person in the crowd distinguish between Jesus and all others? “The one who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory; but the one who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true, and in him there is no falsehood.” Beware the person (even today?) who is seeking his own glory. Jesus then begins to drop the incognito. He is the one whom they “are … seeking to kill.” The crowd answered, “You have a demon! Who is seeking to kill you?” Jesus answered them, “I did one work, and you all marvel at it. Moses gave you circumcision (not that it is from Moses, but from the fathers), and you circumcise a man on the Sabbath. If on the Sabbath a man receives circumcision, so that the law of Moses may not be broken, are you angry with me because on the Sabbath I made a man’s whole body well? Do not judge by sight, but judge with right judgment.”
The crowd couldn’t believe it. Kill this man whose teaching is so “other”? Why on earth would they want to do that?	.
“I did one work.” That “work” was the full restoration of a 38-years-crippled man a few weeks earlier. On a Sabbath day. The Jerusalem seniors were incensed about his Sabbath work – it was contrary to law and to their teaching. But they themselves worked on Sabbath days by circumcising male children on that day. Jesus had extended that when he had, on a Sabbath, “made a man’s whole body well.” He said “Do not judge by sight, but judge with right judgment.” Was this teaching from Jesus …wise teaching?

Sinner Syvret

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