Saturday of the Fourth Week of Lent -- April 9, 2011
John 7:40 – 53
On hearing his words, some of the people said, “Surely this man is the Prophet.”
Others said, “He is the Messiah.”
Still others asked, “How can the Messiah come from Galilee? Does not Scripture say that the Messiah will come from David’s descendants and from Bethlehem, the town where David lived?” Thus the people were divided because of Jesus. Some wanted to seize him, but no one laid a hand on him.
Finally the temple guards went back to the chief priests and the Pharisees, who asked them, “Why didn’t you bring him in?”
“No one ever spoke the way this man does,” the guards replied.
“You mean he has deceived you also?” the Pharisees retorted. “Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed in him? No! But this mob that knows nothing of the law—there is a curse on them.”
Nicodemus, who had gone to Jesus earlier and who was one of their own number, asked, “Does our law condemn a man without first hearing him to find out what he has been doing?”
They replied, “Are you from Galilee, too? Look into it, and you will find that a prophet does not come out of Galilee.”
Then they all went home.
This passage is characterized by discourse related to the various perceptions people had about Jesus. “Who is he?” was the basic question, and people had all sorts of responses. Those various responses were based on the words he spoke, where he was born, and what place he considered his hometown.
The various responses were also filtered through the expectations of those making the responses . . . their expectations of a prophet, for example . . . or what they conceived the Messiah should look like . . . or how they read and understood the Law.
Think about these two ways of judging who Jesus was. The first is based on outer criteria, those things that were characteristic of Jesus that the person could not alter. The outer criteria, that is the words of Jesus, his birthplace, his hometown, and other factors in his life are what they are. A person encountering Jesus could not change them. Certainly, a person could be mistaken about some of this outer information – for example, believing that he was born in Galilee and not Bethlehem – but the outer facts of Jesus could not be changed.
The second way of judging the person of Jesus was based on what I would call inner criteria, that is, the inner lens in every human person through which information from the outer world is filtered. This inner lens is made up of my prejudices and biases, the way I think the world is ordered, and the frameworks or expectations I carry with me and apply to events in the outer world.
In this passage, for instance, this second way of judging who Jesus was is not rooted in the actual facts of his life and mission, but rather in the way I – or any person – expected him to be in the world, what I believe Messiah should look like, what I believe the Law says, the way I expect the world to be patterned.
As you can see, most of our inner filters are thoroughly I-centered.
Within the United States government, I’m hearing a lot of political discourse that is frankly obscene, Democrats and Republicans who act and talk as if their personal principles are more important than human life. As a group, politicians often seem to be so disconnected from the lives of the people they represent that they easily filter decisions through their personal lens and then damn the consequences.
You might hear a political figure say, “I will not budge on this principle!” even when their principle causes great harm or suffering to those impacted by it. It is a real danger when even our “leaders” live such small, I-centered lives that they cannot see the larger frameworks that would invite their constituents into well-being.
These small, I-centered filters keep us separated from other persons and from larger Truth.
A major part of spiritual transformation is the transformation of this inner filter, the slow altering of this “I-centeredness.”
By the end of the Gospel reading, those engaged in the discourse about Jesus’ identity all go home. One translation says, “Then each went to his/her own home.” That’s pretty much the way it goes. As a spiritual symbol in the text, it speaks a word to the way these persons were divided from each other, and even alienated from each other.
The picture given by the end of the reading is that each is now alone, within the walls of his or her home, quoting their own Scriptures, believing their own set of beliefs, and isolated from others and from any Truth that might invite them to more expansive living.
In many ways it paints a pathetic picture of divided life, but also an altogether accurate picture of how many of us live.
On hearing his words, some of the people said, “Surely this man is the Prophet.”
Others said, “He is the Messiah.”
Still others asked, “How can the Messiah come from Galilee? Does not Scripture say that the Messiah will come from David’s descendants and from Bethlehem, the town where David lived?” Thus the people were divided because of Jesus. Some wanted to seize him, but no one laid a hand on him.
Finally the temple guards went back to the chief priests and the Pharisees, who asked them, “Why didn’t you bring him in?”
“No one ever spoke the way this man does,” the guards replied.
“You mean he has deceived you also?” the Pharisees retorted. “Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed in him? No! But this mob that knows nothing of the law—there is a curse on them.”
Nicodemus, who had gone to Jesus earlier and who was one of their own number, asked, “Does our law condemn a man without first hearing him to find out what he has been doing?”
They replied, “Are you from Galilee, too? Look into it, and you will find that a prophet does not come out of Galilee.”
Then they all went home.
This passage is characterized by discourse related to the various perceptions people had about Jesus. “Who is he?” was the basic question, and people had all sorts of responses. Those various responses were based on the words he spoke, where he was born, and what place he considered his hometown.
The various responses were also filtered through the expectations of those making the responses . . . their expectations of a prophet, for example . . . or what they conceived the Messiah should look like . . . or how they read and understood the Law.
Think about these two ways of judging who Jesus was. The first is based on outer criteria, those things that were characteristic of Jesus that the person could not alter. The outer criteria, that is the words of Jesus, his birthplace, his hometown, and other factors in his life are what they are. A person encountering Jesus could not change them. Certainly, a person could be mistaken about some of this outer information – for example, believing that he was born in Galilee and not Bethlehem – but the outer facts of Jesus could not be changed.
The second way of judging the person of Jesus was based on what I would call inner criteria, that is, the inner lens in every human person through which information from the outer world is filtered. This inner lens is made up of my prejudices and biases, the way I think the world is ordered, and the frameworks or expectations I carry with me and apply to events in the outer world.
In this passage, for instance, this second way of judging who Jesus was is not rooted in the actual facts of his life and mission, but rather in the way I – or any person – expected him to be in the world, what I believe Messiah should look like, what I believe the Law says, the way I expect the world to be patterned.
As you can see, most of our inner filters are thoroughly I-centered.
Within the United States government, I’m hearing a lot of political discourse that is frankly obscene, Democrats and Republicans who act and talk as if their personal principles are more important than human life. As a group, politicians often seem to be so disconnected from the lives of the people they represent that they easily filter decisions through their personal lens and then damn the consequences.
You might hear a political figure say, “I will not budge on this principle!” even when their principle causes great harm or suffering to those impacted by it. It is a real danger when even our “leaders” live such small, I-centered lives that they cannot see the larger frameworks that would invite their constituents into well-being.
These small, I-centered filters keep us separated from other persons and from larger Truth.
A major part of spiritual transformation is the transformation of this inner filter, the slow altering of this “I-centeredness.”
By the end of the Gospel reading, those engaged in the discourse about Jesus’ identity all go home. One translation says, “Then each went to his/her own home.” That’s pretty much the way it goes. As a spiritual symbol in the text, it speaks a word to the way these persons were divided from each other, and even alienated from each other.
The picture given by the end of the reading is that each is now alone, within the walls of his or her home, quoting their own Scriptures, believing their own set of beliefs, and isolated from others and from any Truth that might invite them to more expansive living.
In many ways it paints a pathetic picture of divided life, but also an altogether accurate picture of how many of us live.
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