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 does not answer their words but says things that appear irrelevant. Yet if the statements of the people and of Jesus are considered separately, their logical coherence becomes immediately apparent. They are simply taking the conversation, if it can be called a conversation at all, in different directions. The Lord speaks about His mission: to bring people the word about the Father, for He Himself is the Word of the Father. The crowd’s replies show their complete failure to understand it. Sometimes it seems that this situation is repeated 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 seen. This is not a lecture; it is testimony. And it can be grasped only through the love and faithfulness of disciples who, though they do not yet fully understand or believe perfectly, sense that Jesus speaks the words of eternal life and do not want to leave Him.