A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint John. Jesus went about in Galilee. He would not go about in Judea because the Jews sought to kill him. Now the Jewish feast of tabernacles was at hand. But after his brethren had gone up, that is gone from Galilee up to Jerusalem for the feast, then Jesus also went up, but he did not go up publicly.
He went up in private. He did not go up with his disciples. Some of the people of Jerusalem therefore said, is not this the man whom they are seeking to kill? And here he is speaking openly, and they say nothing to him. Can it be that the authorities really know that this is the Christ?
Yet we know where this man comes from, but when the Christ appears, no one will know where he comes from. So Jesus proclaimed as he taught in the temple. Notice, there wasn't anything secret about it. You know me, he said, and you know where I come from, but I have not come of my own accord. He who sent me is true, and him you do not know.
I know him, for I come from him, for he has sent me. And so they sought to arrest Jesus, but no one laid hands on him because his hour had not yet come. And this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen.
Day after day as we approach Holy Week, the church is selecting these texts which are so obviously pertinent to the big questions that we ask about Christ and we should ask about him. We shouldn't sit back and be static, passive, apathetic. If Christ means anything, he means everything. And those words are not they are not idly spoken. Christ made no compromise.
He wants everything. He wants our total dedicated self. Nothing short of it. And anyone who answers that invitation certainly is justified in saying, am I acting silly? Is this a great absurdity?
So it's we are perfectly in order to ask questions. Now day after day, the church is selecting these texts which give us a picture of what Christ's contemporaries thought of him. And as I've said many times you're going to get bored with my saying it. This is the best kind of evidence. If you ask who or what is Jesus Christ, there are many ways of trying to answer that question.
But one of the ways of answering it to get at the basis and the the I would say the most reliable answer is to say, well, what did Christ contemporaries think of him? Why are they anxious to kill him? Well, there again, the Moody's were were very complex, wasn't single. But the ostensible charge against Christ was that he blasphemed, that he made himself equal to God. That's why they wanted to destroy him.
As I say, that was the ostensible, the legal cause. There were plenty of other reasons. But they and notice, he is not an unknown. The evidence that we have had that we have in the three and the four gospels especially in the synoptics and and take a text like today out of Saint John how he was recognized, how he was a problem to the people who said look if if if our leaders, the scribes and the pharisees, if they think that Jesus, this man, is such an awful character, then why aren't they do something doing something about it? He was not an unknown at this time.
You are not talking about the unknown carpenter from up in Nazareth who's now down in the glorious capital in Jerusalem. And lo and behold you, his teaching in the temple, not on some street corner. And they are seeking to destroy him and have been doing it. No secret. And so our blessed lord isn't just some vagrant who wanders down from those far northern agricultural boondocks and now finds himself in the capital and is some kind of a great demagogue.
Oh, no. You can't eliminate that. You cannot dismiss Christ that way. He is well known. And the question is, why aren't you doing something about this criminal if he's so criminal as you say he is?
And we're told by Saint John that they didn't do anything because his time had not yet come. Now we know that they did try to do it. In one case they took him to the the the edge of a cliff and we're gonna throw him over the cliff. They made attempts upon his life to get rid of him. Wasn't just theoretical.
But now Saint John says his time had not yet come. You see, in other words, now Saint John introduces us into the whole panorama into the whole vast historical picture of the prophecy. Notice that what we've heard this morning from the book of wisdom Over the centuries, the promise of the Messiah. Here Saint John is saying that whatever is going to happen to him isn't going to happen simply because of his enemies. His hour has not yet come.
His enemies aren't going to choose the hour. In a certain sense, I say repeat that, in a certain sense, our Lord's enemies are the instruments of God. That's not a very original statement on my part, but the point is it's true. Who is in the who's in the driver's seat? Christ's enemies?
No. Our blessed Lord is. My time has not yet come. And when the time comes, notice when we we go back to the last supper, we think of the garden, we think of where he's taken a a captive, when he's taken into custody of the law, of the Jewish law. We we think of his being turned over or brought into the Roman courts because only the Romans could decree the death penalty.
In all of this, one of the great things is who is in command? Who's calling the shots? And it's very obvious that our lord is in command. Not my will, but thine be done. He's speaking to his father.
And when the time comes for his passion he submits. He did not walk away from it, he walked into it of his own free will. Other instances he did walk away, but not when the time had come and he is master of the situation. And so again the church is doing this to give firmness to our faith, to bring home to us a answer to the question, who or what is Jesus Christ? And the answer is, he is the son of God, the Messiah.
In the name of the father, of the son, and of the holy spirit. Amen.