Thursday 5th October
Read John 7:25-27
“At that point some of the people of Jerusalem began to ask, ‘Isn’t this the man they are trying to kill? 26 Here he is, speaking publicly, and they are not saying a word to him. Have the authorities really concluded that he is the Messiah? 27 But we know where this man is from; when the Messiah comes, no one will know where he is from.’” (NIVUK)
What do we really ‘know’ about anything? Are you appropriately sceptical about your own knowledge? We read here some Johannine insight into what the people of Jerusalem thought they knew about Jesus. They are surprised that He has even shown up because they know the authorities are out to get Him. Therefore, they reason, maybe the people in charge have changed their minds about this country hick preacher? They then second-guess that conclusion. Because they ‘know’ where Jesus is from, and their expectation is that when the Messiah arrives it will be suddenly and without backstory. In short, they thought that they knew quite a bit, about what the authorities in Jerusalem thought about Jesus, and about Jesus Himself.
Today the tendency is to think of Jesus as a great teacher and nothing more. People make the same mistake that those in Jerusalem are making here. They think they know who Jesus is and fail to listen to what He actually says. ‘Here he is, speaking publicly…’ (v26) and yet they are not really listening at all. CS Lewis warns people about such an attitude.
“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” (CS Lewis, Mere Christianity)
