An Unusual Life
A Study in the Life of Jesus
St. Michael’s Home Group Program
Week 13:Coming to the Party(Chris Luyt)
John 7:1-23
Reflection
Jesus’ teaching on His being the Bread of Life was probably the most difficult teaching for His followers to accept. He said, ‘I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you” (John 6:53). Of course, Jesus was speaking figuratively –in a sense- but the intensity, the awkwardness, the cost involved in the metaphor was still too much for most of His followers to accept.
Jesus was very popular when He was doing what everyone around Him wanted Him to do (like a feel-good spiritual vending machine), but the moment He began to address the cost involved in authentic spiritual transformation (transformation that changes us from living by the world’s fear and corruption to living with pure and courageous selflessness for the people that are the victims of that corruption), His followers began to get cold feet.
In His teaching on His own flesh and blood (symbolizing His imminent death - His self-sacrifice) Jesus had reached the climax of not only His ministry but of the very purpose of His incarnation – to expose the deep post-fall hostility that had come to define the very people that God had created for Himself in love.
This is why, in our reading today, Jesus tells his disciples (who had for all intents and purposes just abandoned Him in His mission) that the world ‘cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify that what it does is evil” (John 7:7).
In our passage we have a monumental stand-off between the Lord of the universe and the world that ‘lies in the lap of the evil one’. Jesus refuses to join the party – the religious party designed to rubber-stamp the very hostility that would leave Him bleeding to death from His torturously torn flesh for all heaven and earth to witness. This is the only response to God’s love that corrupted human beings -and even religious human beings- are capable of.
The stand-off ends when God, in His infinite maturity, lay’s down His self-defense and journeys into the heart of the city that ironically becomes a chief symbol of human brutality (John 7:9-14 cf. John 10:17-18).
It is important that we grasp the significance of John’s statement that the Jews were amazed at Jesus’ teaching because He had no formal schooling (John 7:15). Jesus was not just another clever teacher forged after a particular philosophical school. Jesus affirms that His teachings about human reality and the need for salvation by means of divine love and truth alone were nothing short of a revelation of the very heart of the living God of the universe (John 7:28-29).
Jesus confronts the religious hypocrisy and murderous intentions of the political and religious leaders (Luke 7:19) for whose benefit (and their followers’) the systems of the world were rigged. The crowd accuses Him of being possessed – or mentally unstable and paranoid in psychological terms. Jesus makes one last attempt to realign their priorities – He has come to heal the lost and broken and not to falsify them with religious or political externalism (Luke 7:23-24). The fulfilment of Jesus’ prophetic foresight had been put into motion, some put their faith in Him, the rest began to plot how they could kill Him. His brutal death by crucifixion would become the final evidence of the darkness that had gripped the heart of humankind, but it would also stand as the ultimate evidence, written in blood, so to speak, of the extent of God’s love for His fallen people. Despite everything, God had in fact come to the party.
Application
- Read Mark 14:32-42; Luke 22:41-44 & Mark 15:33-39
- How do you behave when people ‘don’t come to your party’? Write down a few ways in which your selfish expectations of others and your demands upon them have led you to hurt them deeply – to ‘crucify’ them.
- What do these additional readings teach us about the full extent of the cost involved for God to change His mind and come to the human party?
- How is this applied to us personally when we affirm our willingness to eat Jesus flesh and drink His blood at the Eucharist and to become living sacrifices for those He sends us to in the world?
- In Jesus’ own words to His closest disciples: “You do not want to leave too, do you” (John 6:67).
Closing Prayer
Lord, help me to remain steadfast in my faith and faithful to you in serving others. Forgive me when I ‘put my hand to the plough’ and then turn back because of the cost involved in loving broken people back to wholeness. Thank-you, Jesus, that out of all the religious teachers and gods worshipped around the world, that you followed through and gave everything –every last drop of blood- to show me that you love me and that you are prepared to risk everything to bring me back to wholeness. No wonder there is ‘no other name under heaven given by which man can be saved’. Help me to resist the world’s temptation to harden my heart and live for myself in fear and selfish bitterness. Help me to remain vulnerable like you did and show others the way to authentic spiritual life. Amen
Notes
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