The Gospel of John – Part Eight
John 7:37-39 and 8:12
Head – What Do We Need to Know About This Passage
Jesus is in Jerusalem for The Feast of Tabernacles, which celebrated how God guided Israel during their wilderness wandering, appearing to them as pillar of cloud by day and pillar of fire by night, and how God provided water for them in the desert. During this holiday festival, Jesus stands up in the Temple and proclaims that if anyone is thirsty, they should come to him and drink. Later, during this same festival, he says, “I am the light of the world.” Jesus is claiming to be the guiding light of God and the gift of life-giving water.
Some of the people hear Jesus and believe him, while others are offended by him. Some even seek to kill him for making such claims about himself.
Heart – The Personal Connection.
The human race is wandering in a desert place. It is a harsh and uncertain terrain, and we do not know how long this journey will last. Have you been to desert, or other harsh terrain? Thanks to modern technology, such as highways, you can drive out to areas like this. You can visit Death Valley, California, the Bad Lands of South Dakota, or the Yukon Territory at the cross point of Alaska and Canada.
Stacy and I visited the crossing point into the Yukon Territory on our last visit to Alaska. We rode to the summit point in a nice bus. We got out at the top and took a picture. It was all quite pleasant. But the trip would have been quite different if we had been making it on foot, or, if we had intended to stay and live in the Yukon Territory. That would have required much different preparation.
During the Klondike Gold Rush, an estimated 100,000 prospectors crossed into north-western Canada, between the years 1896 and 1899. In addition to all their mining gear, and everything else they would need to survive in the frozen wild, the Canadian government required the prospectors to carry in a thousand pounds of food, most of which they would have to buy from merchants in places Skagway. Many thought that the government was being unfair to make such a requirement. But, what many of these prospectors could not understand is that without at least 3 lbs. of food a day, they would have no chance of survival. You have to think about the wilderness in different way when you are planning on staying.
Additionally, one has to follow the advice of reliable guides when one is going into the wilderness. If you get lost in the woods in a place like Tennessee, the best thing to do is to pick a direction and keep walking. Eventually, you will come to highway or some houses. If you do that in place like the Yukon Territory, you will walk until you dehydrate from heat, freeze to death from the cold, or starve to death, if you do run into a wild animal who wants to eat you first. The Inuit people knew the dangers of losing the path, and so they would construct inukshuks to mark the way for confused travelers. These stone people, would point out the right direction at spots were the path was hard to make out.
When Jesus stands up at the Temple on The Feast of Tabernacles, he is making a claim about himself that goes deeper than a religious festival. He is telling us how to stay spiritually alive and healthy in climate where life can be drained away by the harsh environment. We stay healthy by developing a deep dependence on him. He is also trying to show us how not to get lost in the wilderness, by looking to him. Friends, I don’t know how long this wilderness journey is going to last for the human race. I had personally expected the 21st century to be a much easier path than the one we are on. But Jesus promised to do the journey with us. Faith does not make life easy. It makes life possible.
Hands – The Practical Application
Jesus – Fully Human and Fully God
Many people are calling the 21st century the great existential crisis. It is a crisis of meaning where people are not sure of what life means or what it means to be human. It is one of the reasons why hedonism is running rampant, and people are throwing off every constraint of morality and culture. How can this even be called counter-cultural revolution, when nearly everyone is giving way to un-inhibited indulgence, caring noting about the long term consequences on our physical or mental health, our families and institutions, to say nothing of our spiritual health. I am not condemning the people of our world. What people are doing when they overindulge in materialism, alchohol, sex, and extreme behavior is a behavior called self-medicating, and it has been taken to the extremes in our day because people are scared, and they’re sad, and they’re angry, and they’re numb, and they are not sure that there is any hope of finding meaning in all of this chaos and madness.
The Gospel of John, more than any of the other three Gospels, is clear that Jesus is fully man and fully God. That means, he not only shows us what God is like, but he also shows us what it means to be human. In Jesus, God is on fully display. In Jesus, humanity, in its healthiest form and most whole, is also on display. He is the place of sanity in the midst of a treacherous wilderness. He is the place of wholeness and repose.
But make no mistake, not everyone can or will accept this. Some will hear this message and think it utter nonsense or worse. Others may even be offended by it. How can Jesus be the answer? But he is. And one can see that or one cannot. If you cannot, I cast no judgment upon you. I wish you well in the wilderness. I pray that you can find spiritual and emotional food to keep you sane, to keep you from wasting away in the harsh climate. I wish you well and hope you find meaning by which to navigate this world. But, I have decided to follow Jesus as my guide through this wilderness and to depend on him when the environment threatens to undo me and lay me waste. Make no mistake about what I am saying. Faith in Jesus does not make this life easy. No sir, no ma’am. Faith in Jesus makes life possible.