Day 21 • The Week of Joy

Scripture Readings:
Psalm 89:1-4, 19-26
Judges 13:2-24
John 7:40-52

I think we often take for granted how followers of Jesus have always been divided over who he is exactly. Even in the gospels, his disciples, who literally saw him in the flesh, watched him perform miracles and heard him preach countless times in his ministry, yet we are told over and over how they still didn’t fully understand who he was.

One of the more powerful examples of this is when James and John ask to be on Jesus’ left and right when he “comes into your glory,” only to have Jesus respond, “you don’t know what you are asking” (Mark 10:35-45). “Coming into glory” meant a cross for Jesus but a throne for James and John. They wanted to be like Jesus’ vice president and secretary of defense when he overthrew Rome. I imagine them both standing at the foot of the cross, seeing who was hanging on Jesus’ right and left, only to finally realize “he was right. We really didn’t know what we were asking.”

Our reading from John 7:40-52 paints a bigger picture of this theme. In John’s gospel, the question about Jesus’ true identity is central to the entire book. Unlike the other three gospels, John is writing to a largely Gentile and Greek audience. Where Matthew’s audience is largely Jewish, which causes him to focus on genealogy at the beginning, John’s origin story for Jesus begins philosophically, with logos, or “the Word.” John is using language his audience would be familiar with to convey the depths and fullness of Jesus’ identity.

The tapestry of Jesus that John is painting through his description right from the first chapter is so intricately layered with meaning. He not only connects Jesus’ nature both humanity and the cosmic and eternal identity of God, but he connects Jesus’ identity to the traits of wisdom and knowledge found all throughout the Old Testament.

For example, the Greek word “Logos” that John ascribes to Jesus is often translated as “word,” but it has a broader definition that indicates the depths of one's inward depths being expressed. To put it another way, Jesus is the deepest and truest expression of God’s inward being. Also, the Greek word for Logos parallels the Jewish understanding of wisdom. Both Jesus and wisdom, which is personified as a woman throughout the Old Testament, have been with God since the beginning (Proverbs 8:22). Both Jesus and wisdom speak to God’s own people and are consistently rejected by God’s own people (John 1:11; Proverbs 1:29-31). For John, Jesus and wisdom share an identity.

John skillfully builds on this theme through the narrative of being “born of water and spirit,” which occurs throughout his gospel, most notably in his conversation with Nicodemus (3:4-5). In John 7:38, right before our passage today, it is even more explicit, in the Greek, that is. In English, it is often translated as Jesus saying, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” However, the Greek points to Jesus as the source of living water, and it flows from his “koilia,” which is the Greek word for womb. Being born of water and spirit is freely offered by Jesus, who, according to John, is God’s truest expression and wisdom. Such an incredibly rich and powerful description.

Yet, in our passage, we see how everyone seems divided over who Jesus is. Some believed he was the messiah, while others disagreed because they said he came from Galilee rather than Bethlehem, which is where the messiah is supposed to come from. Some even wanted to arrest Jesus for what they thought was a false claim, but the temple police were divided as well.

The central theme of our passage today is why they were divided over Jesus. To some, Jesus’ identity was good news to them. He embodied living water, bringing healing, deliverance, mercy, and justice. Yet to others, like the religious leaders, he embodied a threat to their power. It was as true then as it is today: religious and political gatekeepers do not like their power threatened. Jesus wasn’t approved by them, so his identity isn’t legitimate. Anyone who believes him is “deceived” and should have their opinions thrown out, even if you were one of them, like Nicodemus (7:52).

Why was Jesus a threat to their power? Because he kept including who they thought should be excluded. He kept healing those who they thought were untouchable. He kept relationships with those they thought were unclean. They prided themselves on being experts in the law, yet they were more concerned with exercising it to protect their own power, while Jesus used his power to embody the law and protect the most vulnerable.

As I am sure you’ve concluded by now, this has deep relevance for the divisions we are seeing in Christianity today over who Jesus is. Is Jesus a messiah for the excluded, the unlovable, the broken, and the poor? Or is Jesus an authoritarian, concerned with enforcing God’s law and protecting power and control for only his followers? Is Jesus one who compels us to listen to different opinions and beliefs? Or is Jesus the one who compels us to cast out any opinion we don’t agree with as if they are just “deceived?”

For me, as I read this passage and John’s gospel as a whole, I couldn’t help but notice how cosmic, eternal, and expansive Jesus' identity is. Jesus is the one who was with God from the beginning, the truest expression of God, and the expression of all wisdom for all time. That tFor m me says that Jesus is far greater than I could ever fathom. So, the moment I start deciding who is in and who is outside the bounds of his grace, the moment I start using him to protect my own power as a Christian, that’s the moment I can be sure I’ve minimized and distorted the greatness of Jesus and just reduced him into being a tool for my own control. I don’t want to be a gatekeeper. I want to be a gate opener, clearing the way for people to get to the living water of Jesus.

Reflection Steps:

John paints such an incredible picture of Jesus as the truest expression of God’s own being. Yet, many people can be so divided over who Jesus is and what God is trying to express through him. I want to invite you to reflect on how Jesus’ identity shapes your perspective of him coming into the world at Christmas. Does John’s perspective change yours in any way? How might John’s expression of Jesus help us as we navigate the divisions of our own time today?