NOTES for Joh 7:1-36

This is probably one of the strangest dialogues in the Gospel! It seems that the Jews simply do not understand what Jesus is talking about, while He Himself responds not to their words but says things that seem completely irrelevant. Yet if we consider the statements of the people and of Jesus separately, their logical coherence immediately becomes apparent. They are simply conducting the conversation—if it can be called a conversation at all—in different directions. The Lord speaks of His mission: to bring people the word about the Father, for He Himself is the Word of the Father, while the crowd’s remarks reveal its complete lack of understanding. At times it seems that this situation repeats itself again and again: Christ speaks to us through the Gospel, while we answer Him about something entirely different. To some extent, this is natural, for we belong to different worlds: He is “from above,” while we are “from below”; He speaks of what we have not seen, but He has. This is not a lecture; it is testimony. It can be grasped only through the love and faithfulness of disciples who, though they do not yet fully understand or perfectly believe, sense that Jesus speaks the words of eternal life and do not wish to leave Him.