Reading: John 5-6, Psalm 105

In today’s reading we come across two more of the big signs that John has framed the first half of his book around. The first sign was turning water to wine at Cana, the second the healing of the royal official’s son. Today we read about a man at the pool Bethesda who cannot walk, and a large crowd with nothing to eat. We have met these sorts of miracles before in Matthew and Mark, and there is no reason not to think John is referring to the same incidents that the previous gospel writers did. However, John offers a different response from Jesus. To each of his famous signs, Jesus receives a challenge. To each challenge he responds the same way: I do nothing of my own will, but by the will of the one who sent me.

In the earliest days of the church, there was debate about who exactly Jesus was and how they were to understand his relationship with God. It was a pretty important issue for those who had never seen Jesus themselves to understand how he related to the whole Hebrew Scriptures and the God they reveal to us. John, as one of the people who spent years walking around with Jesus and listening to him teach, was an authority on these matters. He is going out of his way, as Matthew did, to make sure his readers understand that Jesus wholly proceeds from the God of the Hebrew Scriptures. He does not assume as much as Matthew as to what his readers know, but points in the most straightforward way he can to the fact that Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s plan to bring about a new creation. When he is confronted about his authority, Jesus says he is only being obedient to the Father. When the crowds want to make him their king, he tells them they will have to go one better and eat his body and drink his blood. It is not enough for Jesus to show the way to eternal life. He is the way to eternal life. His great accusation to the Pharisees is you search the Scriptures because you think in them you have eternal life; and it is they who bear witness about me. John has firmly linked Jesus to the Hebrew Scriptures while at the same time ensuring his readers understand that they are all about Jesus.

John’s gospel contains this claim, that Jesus does nothing by his own authority, a bunch of times. It simultaneously contains a bunch of reference to and “hour to come.” During the scene with the Samaritan women, Jesus says the hour is coming, and now is, when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. Here, during his address to the Pharisees, Jesus says the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those hearing will live. This hour will show up again and again in the book of John. We won’t get to what John really means by it for a few more days, but he is clearly leading his readers somewhere.

While he is dropping hints about the hour that is coming and making sure everyone understands that he is the fulfillment of the Hebrew Scriptures, Jesus is also busily offending everyone around him. He tells us the most detailed students of Scripture who ever lived because they don’t understand the Scriptures. He leaves every time people catch on to the fact that he is an authority worth following. He starts talking about eating his body and drinking his blood, which if nothing else is super weird. There is a bunch of things that could be said about those who believe in Jesus because of signs and those who believe because they understand who he is, but I think I’ll just leave that to another time, and talk about the response of the disciples to these offensive statements.

Not offending someone has a great deal of currency in our culture. While there are a great many positives to this, it has led fairly often to a the situation where one does not know what another thinks or believes about just about anything. In an attempt to avoid causing offense, we draw back from plain speech, creating confusion. Jesus is certainly no model of this sort of behavior. He is always kind, but always clear. He leaves no room for disagreement on the core fundamentals of those who would follow him. In one of the most dramatic scenes in the gospels, Jesus has successfully offended a whole crowd away after feeding thousands of people with a few loaves of bread. Then he turns to the disciples and levels a challenge to them. Do you also wish to leave? At this point one might not blame them for saying, “Yes!” Jesus is unpredictable and just a little bit dangerous. Or maybe he is dangerous to be around, since he seems to not mind offending powerful people. But Peter sees right through to the core of the issue. To whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed and have come to know that you are the Holy One of God. This is a Hebrew Scriptures style declaration of dependence. Jesus may be difficult and dangerous, but he is good in the way God is good, so there is no where else to go.