the peril of relevance
Noel K. Anderson
First Presbyterian Church of Upland
Text: John 7: 1-13 New Revised Standard
1 After this Jesus went about in Galilee. He did not wish to go about in Judea because the Jews were looking for an opportunity to kill him. 2 Now the Jewish festival of Booths was near. 3 So his brothers said to him, “Leave here and go to Judea so that your disciples also may see the works you are doing; 4 for no one who wants to be widely known acts in secret. If you do these things, show yourself to the world.” 5 (For not even his brothers believed in him.) 6 Jesus said to them, “My time has not yet come, but your time is always here. 7 The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify against it that its works are evil. 8 Go to the festival yourselves. I am not going to this festival, for my time has not yet fully come.” 9 After saying this, he remained in Galilee. 10 But after his brothers had gone to the festival, then he also went, not publicly but as it were in secret. 11 The Jews were looking for him at the festival and saying, “Where is he?” 12 And there was considerable complaining about him among the crowds. While some were saying, “He is a good man,” others were saying, “No, he is deceiving the crowd.” 13 Yet no one would speak openly about him for fear of the Jews. †
atmosphere
Jesus in a Hostile World
Last week, we heard Jesus revealed as the Bread of Life, the bread that comes down from Heaven. As we move into chapters 7-8, Jesus operates under a cloud of conflict. There is no calm solemnity of private discourse or exposition of doctrine before a dignified body; instead, the air is thick and crowded with controversy. Jesus encounters people one by one, face to face, and the controversial tone is sharp and sustained.
Jesus and his disciples are back in Capernaum, their home base in Galilee. But even at home, there is no comfort. There are, as it were, contracts out on Jesus’ life. People want him dead, and this atmosphere of darkness and hostility hangs like a dark cloud over everything that happens. The world hates Jesus and is out to have him canceled.
We need not be surprised; the world is still a canceling, condemning place. We know this environment of conflict and hostility because we’re living it, albeit in a different form.
Feast of Booths
Still Wandering in SINai
Passover may have been the most solemn and important of Jewish festivals, recalling the salvation of Israel from slavery in Egypt. Still, Sukkoth, the Feast of Booths, was the favorite festival. It is the harvest festival. The people remember the years of wandering in the wilderness and thank God for his care. They build humble dwellings—booths or tabernacles—attached to their homes. They take meals alfresco and camp outside in the cooling nights of October. The summer heat is past, and there is plenty of food to go around.
This was Israel’s favorite party. We can understand this quickly enough. What Christian could dispute that Easter is the most important holiday of the year in terms of our faith and salvation, but is it our favorite? No--that’s Christmas by a long shot. Honestly, plenty of Christians enjoy Super Bowl Sunday more than Easter, right?
We should see a level of irony in this particular Feast of Booths, for here is Israel, gathered in celebration of its own identity and heritage, remembering how their forbears wandered in the desert. The manna fell from heaven, and they thanked God, who led them by a pillar of fire and gave them water from the rock. The irony is that we see something they do not; namely, that they are still wandering lost in the wilderness—they’ve just turned it into a holiday.
With bread on the outdoor table and cups filled with wine, they recollect the past: “Hey, look at us—we’re wandering in the wilderness!” It is still their spirit 1300 years later. They are still lost, wandering, and waiting for God to save them from their sins.
By the way, the word Sin means wandering. To sin literally means to be lost, off the right path, wandering. The place where the Jews wandered is called the wilderness of Sin, which is in part where the word comes from. Today we call it Sinai.
And so Israel celebrates its wandering—you could say it celebrates its sin. As such, Sukkoth—the Feast of Booths is a big Sin Pride Parade. They were lost, they grumbled and murmured, and would have voted to go back to Egypt ten times out of ten if anyone had asked.
Brotherly Advice
With Brothers like these….
So next, Jesus’ “brothers” tell him he’s wasting his time up here in Galilee. If he’s serious about success, he should go down to Jerusalem and make a name for himself. Who are these guys—these brothers? We’re not sure. They may have included half-brothers, cousins, or perhaps even uncles. It could be as broad as “male relatives,” but I think it may be something else; namely, the Jewish brethren of the Capernaum synagogue—a fraternity of fishermen—the Capernaum Board of Trustees. Whatever its exact composition, it was a force to be reckoned with.
They think they know something about the world that Jesus doesn’t. They shower him with their advice:
- •“You gotta network if you wanna get ahead!”
- •“Get your name out there; get some exposure!”
- •“You must get a website and flood the socials—TikTok is especially hot right now.”
- •“Really, Jesus, how can you be so amazing at teaching and healing and yet know absolutely nothing about success?”
- •“Get yourself down to the Feast, man! You gotta market your brand!”
Like a smarmy, Hollywood public relations firm, the brothers seem eager to help him, but as the text tells us, they didn’t get it. They misperceived him and his mission. They knew the worldly way of doing things, but not God’s way, which is a theme throughout John’s Gospel.
Jesus says, “My time has not come, but your time is always here.” The time for Jesus’ self-revelation does not unfold according to worldly times and calendars, but only when the Father says so. Jesus continues in verse 7:
The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify against it that its works are evil.
Jesus does not shrink from telling the world how messed up it is. It seems to me that this is part of the ongoing calling of the Church as well. We, too, continue to address a world that hates Jesus and doesn’t want to be told it is either wrong or sinful—wandering and lost without knowing the right path.
John Calvin puts it this way:
He means that the Gospel cannot be preached aright without summoning the whole world as guilty to the judgment seat of God.
Jesus doesn’t have to pick and choose who is righteous and who is not because the whole world is wandering, lost, and in Sin.
Timing matters
Jesus waits, but then goes
Jesus tells his brothers that he doesn’t intend to “work” this festival. “Go to the festival yourselves,” he says, which almost has the ring of “Mind your own business,” and well it should.
He waits for them all to leave before he goes down to Jerusalem so he can do so on his own terms, rather than as they might expect him to do. I get this somewhat. I speak as a pastor (because I don’t know anything else), and sometimes I like to be in church as a mere worshiper. I can never do that in my own church, but when I’m on vacation or working out of town on a Sunday, I get to pop into other churches. Do I want people to know I’m a visiting pastor? Absolutely not! I’d get too much of the wrong kind of attention. I want to just check it out, get a feel for the lay of the land, and see how others do things and see what it feels like.
Jesus wants to go to Jerusalem on his own terms for his own reasons, which is enough for us to know.
Jerusalem split
Jesus the Judge is the Divider of Humankind
The Jewish people were looking for him at the Festival. Why? Because there was every worldly reason that he would be there. He was thirty-ish, healthy, and the talk of the town throughout Israel. “Where is he?” the people asked. Some believed him to be the Messiah; others thought him a phony. Some want to make him king; others want him dead. He divides Israel, but then again, he is their true judge.
Division, discord, and hostility are in the air. What did Jesus do for people to be so against him? A quick reminder:
- •He causes chaos and havoc by clearing the Temple
- •He says he has the same authority as God
- •He says he, the Son, and the Father God are as one
- •He claims to have authority to judge as God judges
- •He claims to have prophetic authority
- •He claims more authority than Moses and the Law
- •He heals on the Sabbath
- •He claims to be able to give life to the dead
- •He calls himself the “Bread of Heaven” and the “Bread of Life”
- •And says salvation requires that we eat his flesh and drink his blood
And some would have said, “Do we really need to hear anything else?”
Gathered in their booths as they feasted, they talked about Jesus, and Jesus divided them. Most beautifully, John tells us that they “grumbled and murmured” about him. They are exactly where they were 1300 years before—wandering in the wilderness, neither knowing nor following their Lord.
In private, they spoke their true minds, but in public, they said nothing. Don’t we know this? Aren’t there things you might think or say at your own table or among your most trusted friends only but would never say aloud and certainly never put in print? I think we all do.
Integrity pole
Integrity versus Harmony/Selling Out
Jesus, unlike his people, has integrity. Jesus has perfect integrity; the rest of us merely have our moments. We should think of integrity as a spectrum. At one end is integrity—standing up for the truth, unswervingly, without compromise or regard oneself, serving the greater good, and knowing that sometimes the crowd is wrong—and at the other end is (putting it positively) harmony—getting along with others, compromising, accommodating, being team players, etc. Integrity can be the opposite of harmony, but it is also the opposite of selling out.
Old TestamentIsrael sinned whenever it compromised, and it seems their compromises always involved idol worship.
“These Canaanites don’t know the Lord! They don’t know any better, so let’s just allow them to have some idols so we can get along and keep the conversation going.” This becomes, “Yeah, we have idols in our house—they were gifts from the Canaanites—but we think the Lord is above such things; He doesn’t really care about such things.”
It was multiculturally sensitive, diversity-positive, and served the harmony of different people groups, but it was also selling out. All the prophets said it: “You’re throwing God under the bus to serve your own interests. Your faith is false, and you have no integrity.”
The Jewish people ate, drank, and celebrated how great it was to be a wandering, foolish, God-beloved people. As they celebrate, God in the flesh comes to them, offering them the salvation they’ve longed for and prayed for over the centuries—and they say, “Who are you to disrupt our God’s People Pride celebration?”
An illustration: So we are finally visited by people from another planet. Among other things, we ask them, “Do you know the Lord? Do you know anything about Jesus?” They say, “Yeah, of course—he visits us regularly--every few years! The last time he came, we gave him a big box of chocolates, which he seemed to like. So tell us, what did you give him last time he was here?”
All of this translates not against Judaism itself but the Church. We, too, are God’s beloved people—his Elect—and we should wonder if Jesus were to bodily show up in the middle of a service, would we fall and worship him or feel some resentment over the interruption? As with the Feast of Booths, the Church can become prideful and celebrate itself instead of its Lord.
“Attractional”
The Peril of Relevance
The Church lives in a balancing act between integrity and selling out. We either listen to Christ, or we listen to his brothers who tell us to sell ourselves in order to succeed. We must consider what we lose when we seek to become more “attractive” to outsiders. What is the problem with the so-called attractional church?
Some seem to see the church as a giant spider web designed to lure in visitors and outsiders, hoping that some of them may stick. The so-called Seeker church buries anything and everything unattractive about Christianity that might turn off potential new converts. You know, all that stuff about sex, obedience, and giving your life away.
But when a church becomes relevant to a world that hates Christ, it sells out. The true Church is sold out for Christ alone; it stands as close to the integrity end of the spectrum as possible: sacrificing all the things of this world: every other club, allegiance, or worldly loyalty. In Luke 14, Jesus says:
“Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.”
Christianity and the world mix like oil and water—you can’t have both, and no one can serve two masters.
The call to faith is a hard sell. It may meet us where we are, but it makes no promises to leave us as we are. On the contrary, to come to Christ is to surrender all and die to self and self-interest. To surrender means that you and I seek to preserve nothing of ourselves or our world—we present ourselves to be unmade and remade—and the pious heart longs and desires to be remade as only Christ may make us.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer says it well: “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” That is the polar opposite of seeker-friendly and attractional, but that is the real stuff. In coming to Christ, we all make choices to follow him rather than the world that hates him.
This world is all about pleasing the crowds, seeking popularity and self-promotion, and being liked instead of hated. Jumping ahead a little to John 15:
“If the world hates you, be aware that it hated me before it hated you. If you belong to the world, the world loves you as its own. Because you do not belong to the world—for I have chosen you out of the world—the world hates you.” [John 15: 18-19a]
The Church must choose whether it seeks to be loved by the world that hates Christ or loving Christ, be hated by the world.
Final Judgment
Christ sees the heart of each person
The final word on integrity could have come from Jesus’ brothers. “It’s not what you know; it’s whom you know.” And that is true for salvation. What we know matters far less than whom we know. But even this is problematic, for it’s not our knowing God that matters; it’s God knowing us.
To say, “I know Jesus” means nothing. Even the demons know Jesus. What matters is that Jesus knows you and me.
“Not all who cry ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven” [Matthew 7: 21a]
Do you know the Lord? More importantly, does He know you? The Lord judges the heart—he sees the inner truth that the world can never see. Do you really know him? Does he really know you?
If asked, “Do you know the Lord?” Let our answer be:
“I don’t know anyone or anything else!”
And when asked, “Does the Lord know you?” may our answer be:
“Yes—like nobody’s business!” †
Questions
- When is the feast of tabernacles and what was its purpose?
- Why did Jesus’ brothers challenge Jesus?
- What does Jesus mean by “right time”?
- How could the festival crowds have interpreted Jesus’ actions if he had done what his brothers urged him to do?
- Why does the world “hate” Jesus? ( Jesus says “I am the light of the world”..what does light reveal)
- What are some of the dark places in our lives that the light of Jesus would reveal?
- How are we sometimes deceived into living and acting according to the principles of the world rather than the radically different way that Jesus demonstrates?
- Imagine Jesus in our world, how would the world receive him? Consider social media, polarization and lack of trust?
- How do you think you would receive Jesus?
- What would be the challenges to believing that Jesus is from God?