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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