Tabernacles

Tabernacles: John 7:14-36

I don't know if this ever happens to you, sometimes I get home from an evening meeting and my wife will be sat watching the TV. Now, if it's Casualty, then it's fairly straightforward. I know basically who everybody is, the plot is fairly predictable and so, if I wanted to, I could pick up what's happening and sit and watch it. If, however, it's an adaptation of a Jane Austin novel that I haven't read then it might take me a bit longer, and a few questions, to work out what's going on and who everybody is.
Sitting down to read this passage made me feel a bit like I was walking into the middle of a story, and quite a complex one at that. There's lots of characters, there's a whole cultural, historical, and religious context that I'm not that familiar with, and there's obviously some more immediate stuff that's been going on that I'm not aware of.

So, what I'd like to do tonight is to go through this passage and fill in some of the background, identify the actors and work out what's going on and what themes we can take and use to shed light on our own lives.

The setting is the Temple in Jerusalem at the time of the feast of the Tabernacles. This is a major, 8 day, festival in the Jewish calendar when the people remembered the tabernacles, or tents, that they lived in the desert following the flight from Israel. What is important for us is that this was a feast of pilgrimage. Lots of Jews from all over the known world had come to Jerusalem for the festival.

This is where the character list gets a bit complicated.

John mentions the Jews, the crowd, the people of Jerusalem, and the Pharisees. This distinction is important. Everybody in this passage is Jewish. Jesus is a Jew, the crowd is made up of Jews, the people of Jerusalem were Jews, the Pharisees were Jews. Yet John still has a group he calls the Jews. It seems to me that this must therefore refer not to all Jews, but to a group of teachers of the law, the priests, the scribes and the pharisees. The experts, the leaders, the pillars of society.

Having filled in some of the background, and got some characters we can start looking at what is happening.

We start with teaching and reaction. Jesus is teaching. We don't know what he is teaching, but we do see that it is provoking a reaction. The experts are impressed, but a bit bemused. In their world, rabbis taught in the name of the rabbi who taught them. If I was a good rabbi, I'd stand up here and teach the things that I had learned from Jackie as my rabbi, and I'd credit her with the teaching. Jesus didn't do that, he taught without crediting any other rabbi. The problem for the hearers was that they didn't have a test for the teaching. They couldn't assess what they thought of it. Because the traditional test for teaching was the source, the name of the rabbi it originally came from. It works the same in Christian circles today. I've just read this book by.... I've just been to New Wine and heard x....

Jesus knows that this is going round in their heads, so he tells them where he gets the things he is teaching. He gets them directly from the one who sent him, from God. And so, there is a simple way of testing it. Resolve to do the will of God. Submit to God's whole counsel and be determined to live by it and you will be able to tell whether or not any given teaching is from God.

To these experts who spent their time talking about the law, its details, and arguing about which rabbi gave the best interpretation of it he challenged them to submit themselves to God's will. He demonstrated that they are not doing this as he accuses them of being part of a plan to kill him, breaking the very laws and teachings that they invested so much time in discussing.

The crowd, listening in, can no longer contain themselves. Remember, these guys weren't from Jerusalem, they've not heard of Jesus before and they don't know the recent history, so they think that Jesus is paranoid.

So Jesus fills in the gaps for them, and for us. On his last visit to Jerusalem he had healed a man, on the Sabbath, and in doing so had upset the experts and religious leaders. He uses this as another example of how these experts talked about the law, but were inconsistent in applying it, and were not judging rightly the intent of the law. They were happy to raise the law of circumcision above that of the Sabbath, but not the opportunity to make a whole person well. They had their tests of teaching, but they were faulty because they had led them to false conclusions about what is really important. Jesus says that more important than who gave the teaching is whether it is right according to the whole counsel of God.

Now the people of Jerusalem chime in. They're not visitors. They've been around the city a while. They were in Jerusalem when Jesus was here last. They remember the fall out from the healing. They are confused. They are confused about two things. Firstly they are confused because their leaders are not doing the thing that they would expect their leaders to do if this Jesus is a false Messiah. If Jesus is a false Messiah the leaders should be stopping him. They're not stopping him, so maybe they've decided he is the Messiah.

But here comes the second confusion. They think that they know where Jesus is from, and there is a widespread belief that the Messiah will just appear, in a puff of purple smoke. They are confused. They are confused because the situation in front of them doesn't fit with what they know.

Jesus speaks into their confusion. He doesn't claim to be the Messiah explicitly, but he does challenge their knowledge. Their understanding is incomplete. They believe that he is from Nazareth (not that he is) but they are missing the point. The important thing is not geographically where he is from, but who sent him. The important thing is that God sent him. God sent him with a specific mission and with direct teaching. All that Jesus is and teaches comes from God. That is the important thing.

We know that it's the important thing, because as soon as Jesus says it, there is a reaction. There is a reaction of opposition, and there is a reaction of faith. Many of the crowd believe in him, because of the evidence that he has given.

The Pharisees, however, decide that things are going to far, and that they are losing authority, so they decide to do what the people of Jerusalem are expecting them to do. They're going to stop this man. But Jesus confounds them. He warns them that he is going before long, that their time is short, and that if they continue to react in the way that they are reacting, they will no longer be able to find him. Not surprisingly they are confused.

In this aspect, we do have an advantage over those who are in the situation, we have the benefit of hindsight. We know about the cross, about Jesus death and his resurrection. We know that Jesus has been raised and is preparing a place for those who believe in him. Those that Jesus is speaking to will not be able to come there, because they do not believe in him. They don't get it, they start wibbling on about Jesus going abroad and, in the confusion, Jesus slips away.

Having entered into this episode, set a long time ago, in a foreign culture, with complex characters, we now have some more work to do. We need to come back out of it, and hold its light up to our own culture and our own character.

As I was thinking about this through the week I was trying to think about how we could avoid falling into the trap that the religious people of Jesus' day found themselves in. They were willing to kill someone for healing a person on the Sabbath. How had they got to such a twisted version of God's will and how do we avoid doing the same?

For Jesus the keys are to commit to God's will and to judge rightly. In some ways, this isn't very practically helpful. The people Jesus was speaking to thought that they were doing God's will, and they thought that they were judging correctly. They were wrong. They were wrong because they did not handle God's word correctly, and they were not in touch with God.

But we can be. Jesus teaching had authority because he had been sent by God and he taught what God had showed him. We, in turn, have been sent by Jesus and, through Jesus, we can be in touch with God, in relationship with God. The possibility of this relationship is opened up by the death and resurrection of Jesus, and the ongoing reality of this relationship is enabled by the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

As we get to grips with what what the Bible teaches about God and God's will and judging rightly, we are not on our own. We do not have to depend on what others tell us, but the Holy Spirit is here, guiding us and opening the word up to our hearts and our hearts to the words of God. Sometimes this is directly, and sometimes it as we work these things through together or through the teaching of others, but the source of the teaching is not the others, but God.

Furthermore, we develop and deepen our relationship with God as we spend time with God in prayer. As we share things that our on our hearts and bring them to God, as we ask God to change us and listen to God, we get to know God's will better and we become more able to judge rightly.

In our postmodern world, which prizes the right of the individual to define their own moral framework, and to decide for themselves what is right for them, it is tempting to retreat to a position of rigidity and legalism. That is where the religious leaders of Jesus' time had got themselves. And the framework that they had built bound them so tightly that they could not see the freedom Jesus bought and it stopped them following him.

We are Jesus followers and it is not God's will that we be bound in legalism, but that as we listen to God's words, are open to God's spirit and spend time with God in prayer we will learn more of God's will and so learn to judge rightly.

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