Sunday, October 20, 2013

The Galilean in me, the Galilean in you ~ John 4:43-54




John 4:43-54


43 When the two days were over, he went from that place to Galilee 44(for Jesus himself had testified that a prophet has no honour in the prophet’s own country). 45When he came to Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him, since they had seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the festival; for they too had gone to the festival.
46 Then he came again to Cana in Galilee where he had changed the water into wine. Now there was a royal official whose son lay ill in Capernaum. 47When he heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went and begged him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. 48Then Jesus said to him, ‘Unless you* see signs and wonders you will not believe.’ 49The official said to him, ‘Sir, come down before my little boy dies.’ 50Jesus said to him, ‘Go; your son will live.’ The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and started on his way. 51As he was going down, his slaves met him and told him that his child was alive. 52So he asked them the hour when he began to recover, and they said to him, ‘Yesterday at one in the afternoon the fever left him.’ 53The father realized that this was the hour when Jesus had said to him, ‘Your son will live.’ So he himself believed, along with his whole household. 54Now this was the second sign that Jesus did after coming from Judea to Galilee.


               1.      Be wary of the Jesus you think you know and like.


Jesus has just traveled through Samaria – enemy territory where he wasn’t welcomed but had great success and he now has returned to his roots, where he grew up, to his home turf. And the Galileans dig him, John tells us, and welcome him because of what they had seen him do in the temple. See - Galilee was where the revolutionaries hung out. This was where Judas of Galilee led a major revolt against the Romans in A.D. 6 over heavy taxes. So they loved watching Jesus sticking it to the temple authorities believing that system to be burdensome and corrupt – remember the comment by the Samaritan women earlier about which temple to worship at - this was great political fodder and one’s answer quickly determined one’s politics. Their welcome we learn, however, was based upon a profound misunderstanding. They didn’t welcome him because of his message or his own sense at what it meant to be the messiah but because they watched him do something and thought they knew him. 


In response to this boisterous welcome, John makes an ironic aside (or is it sarcastic?) for those who are reading his Gospel on Jesus “a prophet has no honor in his own country”. The Samaritans – the wrong people who worship in the wrong way at the wrong place get it – but his own country, Israel and the area he grew up in Galilee – the right people, who worship in the right way and in the right place, don’t. They miss Jesus entirely.


Later, the Galileans will seek to force him to be the leader they want (6:15) and some of his own disciples in Galilee will take away their support when they hear his message (6:66).


It’s a reminder that faith always has a setting, a geography, a location. This is why John’s sarcastic comment in verse 44 that a “prophet has no honor in his own country” scares me a little bit. This historical situation of welcome and rejection by the Galileans should give us pause and make us wary of ourselves and a Jesus we love to cheer - who supposedly supports all our causes, hates all our enemies, joins all our groups, and loves all our hobbies. This is the Jesus who waves our flag, backs our candidate, graces our t-shirts, and sings our songs – and we need to own up to the fact that in this country we have a “Galilean tendency” to do just that, to believe that Jesus is “ours”. By the way, this is a non-partisan observation – Republican, Tea Party, Democrat, Talk show hosts, soccer mom, business exec., religious, atheist, you, me – we all like to believe that Jesus is our guy and we forget that he was a “prophet” – Illus. Oak Ridge Boys – Would they love him up in Shreveport today? Prophets are rarely likable – they are always calling people to God’s way when that people have already chosen not to follow. 


So we should be skeptical of any Jesus we simply admire, who never leaves us perplexed or even a bit angry. Charles Dickens wrote a book about Jesus in which he appears like a sweet Victorian nanny patting the heads of children while advising them, “Now, children you must be nice to your mummies and daddies.” The writer Dorothy Sayers said that the church has at times quite efficiently turned the Lion of Judah into a fluffy cat perfect for pale priests and pious old ladies. That’s one of the reasons why we need to read the Gospels – not always for information because we will use that information like “signs and wonders” but we need to read them over against ourselves to challenge the Galilean in me and the Galilean in you.  The belief that Jesus is our guy, our dude.  “A prophet has no honor in his own country” and sometimes within his own religion or church.  Maybe this is why repeatedly in the Gospels it’s the outsider who gets it – the woman at the well, the Roman centurion, the leper – they have no illusions. They already know they have no place to stand. To read the Bible against yourself, in other words, is to read it with the understanding that you are a foreigner, a beggar, in the kingdom of God. Another way to think about this would be to read the Gospels always imagining that you are the Jewish rather than Gentile audience.


               2.      The second sign is (be)leaving Jesus with no miracle in sight. 


Out of this celebrity welcome comes a royal official who has not seen Jesus do anything but he has “heard” about him and traveled roughly 20 miles to beg Jesus to heal his son. The verb “begging” is in the imperfect implying continuous action. This is not someone who stands with pride at his title or office, who believes that he can demand anything of Jesus, he is simply desperate.


Then Jesus says to him, "Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe." Okay – you know my pet peeve here about how normal English can really confuse our Bible reading and understanding of the Scriptures – this “you” is not singular but plural. So I want you to take your pen and put a line through the “you.” Okay, since English doesn’t work I’m going to translate this into Texan for you, “all y’all.” Who are the “all y’alls? And what does Jesus mean by “signs and wonders”? 


 “All y’all” are the Galileans but some scholars argue that it could mean all of Israel, particularly given the contrast with Samaria. Basically, the point is that the prophet’s own rarely honor him or her.  “Signs and wonders” in John describe a phenomenon in which the Galileans want Jesus to prove himself with an act of power – one of their own choosing. They demand a visible sign to satisfy their own desires and criteria; they offer a welcome that’s conditional and shallow –do a trick, Jesus, give us an autograph, stand for a picture – they want to prescribe the tests by which divinity must prove itself – a better job, whiter teeth, nicer children, political power, etc. “We’ll believe,” they say, “if you do something for us. Give us what we want.” Jesus understands they don’t want to follow him just admire him – they simply want something from him. Trust and love are held hostage by proof and whim. In the end, they want Jesus to beg. Illus. the girl who wanted me to prove that I was my wife's husband.


But this dad – he knows he doesn’t control anything and he understands that life is on the line for his “little boy.” And Jesus says, “Go; your son will live.” The order is critical. And he believed and THEN went on his way. Do you get it? He has seen nothing, is given no assurance, offered no proof, provided no evidence. Jesus reveals the awful truth that “true faith,” or any faith, for that matter, isn’t safe and can’t be engineered by a powerful miracle but is illustrated by a willingness to “go” when there is no miracle in sight. Jesus’ miracles always demand something from us: seeking him out, reaching out to touch, washing in a pool, standing up, they are always orchestrated acts where we are called to respond BEFORE the miracles has taken place. Illus. - There was a heated exchange at Yale Divinity School between an Orthodox theologian and a seminary student. The talk had been on the development of the Christian creeds and a student asked, “What can one do, when one finds it impossible to affirm certain tenets of the Creed?” The theologian responded, “Well, just keep saying it. It’s not hard to do. With a little effort you might learn it by heart. You keep saying it even when you have difficulty. It will come to you eventually.”  The student quipped, “How can I with integrity affirm a creed in which I do not believe?” And the theologian replied, “It’s not your creed, it’s our creed.” Faith is not merely assent but the willingness to keep walking even when you doubt, recognizing that you never walk alone – in our story the slave comes but it still requires belief and hearing without seeing. In this context, doubt makes a lot more sense. Doubt is not necessarily an active suspicion but a sober recognition that you understand what’s at stake even as you walk. By the way which one are you? The official or the slave?


The ones who don’t get it want to “see,” vs. 45 but the one who does get it “heard,” vs. 47 – and that one who never actually sees the miracle believes. The second sign – I would argue – is not the healing of the little boy per se. The second sign was a father’s willingness to trust Jesus’ character, his words, his heart, with no miracle in sight. 


Some of you have done just that – you have heard Jesus and went with no evidence, no proof, no net, no visible guarantees other than Jesus’ words. You haven’t made it home, yet, to see.


You need to remember one of Jesus' final blessings in the Gospel of John: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

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