My time has not yet come, but your time is always ready. The world cannot hate you, but it hates Me because I testify of it that its works are evil

 After these things Jesus walked in Galilee; for He did not want to walk in Judea, because the Jews sought to kill Him.  Now the Jews' Feast of Tabernacles was at hand.  His brothers therefore said to Him, "Depart from here and go into Judea, that Your disciples also may see the works that You are doing.  For no one does anything in secret while he himself seeks to be known openly.  If You do these things, show Yourself to the world."  For even His brothers did not believe in Him.  Then Jesus said to them, "My time has not yet come, but your time is always ready.  The world cannot hate you, but it hates Me because I testify of it that its works are evil.  You go up to this feast.  I am not yet going up to this feast, for My time has not yet fully come."  When He had said these things to them, He remained in Galilee.

But when His brothers had gone up, then He also went up to the feast, not openly, but as it were in secret.  Then the Jews sought Him at the feast, and said, "Where is He?"  And there was much complaining among the people concerning Him.  Some said, "He is good"; others said, "No, on the contrary, He deceives the people."  However, no one spoke openly of Him for fear of the Jews.

- John 7:1-13

Yesterday we read that many of Christ's disciples, when they heard His teaching on His flesh and blood, said, "This is a hard saying; who can understand it?"  When Jesus knew in Himself that His disciples complained about this, He said to them, "Does this offend you?  What then if you should see the Son of Man ascend where He was before?  It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing.  The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life.  But there are some of you who do not believe."  For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were who did not believe, and who would betray Him.  And he said, "Therefore I have said to you that no one cane come to Me unless it has been granted to him by My Father."  From that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more.  Then Jesus said to the twelve, "Do you also want to go away?"  But Simon Peter answered Him, "Lord, to whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life.  Also we have come to believe and know that You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."  Jesus answered them, "Did I not choose you, the twelve, and one of you is a devil?"  He spoke of Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon, for it was he who would betray Him, being one of the twelve.

 After these things Jesus walked in Galilee; for He did not want to walk in Judea, because the Jews sought to kill Him.  John's Gospel has just given us the report of events that occurred during the second Passover Festival in Jesus' Ministry (chapter 6).  By this time, the leadership in Jerusalem seeks to kill Him.  My study bible reminds us that in John's Gospel, the term the Jews is used as a political term, to refer to the leadership and not to the people.  Jesus and His followers are devout Jews.

Now the Jews' Feast of Tabernacles was at hand.  The following section of John's Gospel (7:1-10:21) entails Christ's time in Jerusalem spent at the Feast of Tabernacles.  The entire section covers eight days, the duration of the Feast.  My study bible remarks that at this festival during the last year of Christ's earthly life, He taught in the temple and attracted a great deal of public attention.  As we will read, some thought Him mad (verse 20), others believed that He was the Messiah (vv. 31, 40), and yet others (among them, the Sadducees and Pharisees) thought Him to be a threat (vv.32, 45-52).  The Feast of Tabernacles (in Hebrew Succoth or Sukkot) is an eight-day autumn harvest festival.  It commemorates the time when Israel wandered in the wilderness of Sinai, and the people lived in tents, also called tabernacles, from the Greek.  Together with Passover and the Old Testament Pentecost (also called the Feast of Weeks), this was one of the three most important festivals of the ancient Jews.  This festival included many sacrifices and celebrations (Leviticus 23:33-43).  By the time of Christ, my study bible says, the final day of this feast also included drawing water from the pool of Siloam to be mixed with wine and poured at the foot of the altar, both as purification and remembrance of the water flowing from the rock struck by Moses (Exodus 17:1-7).  It also included the lighting of the great lamps (menorah) in the outer court of the temple.  Jesus will draw upon images from all of these elements of the festival in His teachings and sermons during this time.

His brothers therefore said to Him, "Depart from here and go into Judea, that Your disciples also may see the works that You are doing.  For no one does anything in secret while he himself seeks to be known openly.  If You do these things, show Yourself to the world."  For even His brothers did not believe in Him.  Then Jesus said to them, "My time has not yet come, but your time is always ready.  The world cannot hate you, but it hates Me because I testify of it that its works are evil.  You go up to this feast.  I am not yet going up to this feast, for My time has not yet fully come."  When He had said these things to them, He remained in Galilee.  In the common parlance of the region (and across the Middle East today), brothers can be used to mean cousins and other extended family.  These "brothers" of Jesus are likely either cousins or step-brothers, children of Joseph by an earlier marriage.  The Gospel makes it clear how little support or faith Jesus really has at this point, particularly from extended family and those of His hometown.  His time will be the time of His Passion, when He goes to the Cross, death, and Resurrection.

But when His brothers had gone up, then He also went up to the feast, not openly, but as it were in secret.  Then the Jews sought Him at the feast, and said, "Where is He?"  And there was much complaining among the people concerning Him.  Some said, "He is good"; others said, "No, on the contrary, He deceives the people."  However, no one spoke openly of Him for fear of the Jews.  Not openly, my study bible says, means that Jesus doesn't go to Jerusalem with a grand, public entrance, as He would do on Palm Sunday (12:12-16).  The Gospel gives us the political atmosphere of fear and intrigue, with the violence of the leadership thinly hidden in the background.  Jesus is sought at the feast by the leadership, and many among the people complain about Him.  The people are divided:  some say He is good, and others that He deceives.  But all are in fear of the leaders, and so no one speaks openly.

John's Gospel is almost like a film noir version of the events of Christ's ministry, if I may be so bold as to use that term.  The reason I use that term is because we can see, laid out for us without mitigating softness, is all the motivations and conflicting impulses and desires of the people who make up the Gospel.  The central figure is Christ Himself, about whom rumors swirl, hostile action is plotted to destroy Him, followers struggle to keep up with what He teaches them, and stumbling blocks abound to the faith which He declares and the identity He reveals.  It is particularly in John's Gospel that we are given motivations in the heart, and Christ's full wisdom that includes awareness of deception, betrayal, and lack of good faith.  All of the Gospels give us Christ's condemnation of the hypocrisy of the leadership, they tell of the betrayal that will come even from one of the twelve, and they do not flinch in telling us about the evil and violence that will befall this most innocent of all human beings.  But John gives us a kind of step-by-step incursion of the cynicism of Christ's own extended family, the ridicule He faces, the struggle as many leave Him for His "hard saying" about His body and blood (in yesterday's reading, above).  Our faith does not ask us to believe in fairy tales.  It gives us the full and clear version of the struggle for faith, of Christ's mission into the world in the flesh of His Incarnation.  It lays out the clear facts of betrayal, and it teaches us that victory is not always evident -- and certainly not to the blind nor the willfully ignorant on matters of faith.  We are not misled about the work of evil in the world, and the effects of selfish impulse on human beings.  Against these things we struggle, and more.  As St. Paul will say, "For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places" (Ephesians 6:12).  John's Gospel suggests the images of film noir in its emphasis on darkness and light, and its clear understanding of the struggles that would come to the early Church and the persecutions that would follow.  But amidst that stark reality, we are also given the greatest transcendence of any literature in the world.  Christ assures us, twice already, that it is the Father who works in us to bring us to faith in Christ (6:44-45, 65).  The disciples, in their faith, and even eventually in their own stumbling (such as Peter's denials of Christ during His trial), come to the full enlightenment of understanding, and go on to their own heroic ministries carrying the faith to others.  Despite all the obstacles, the power of the living word will go out to the known world within a generation.  And it is John's Gospel that gives us Jesus' words and teachings on love, unparalleled in their depth of revelation of the real nature of God and the personal intimacy of our lives with God.  It is in John's Gospel that the Lord calls the faithful His friends and declares His willingness to go to death for His love for them (15:13).  It is John's Gospel that tells us that the saving mission of Christ is for the life of the world (3:17).  This Gospel speaks of the victory of the light, and the darkness that cannot and does not comprehend nor overcome it.  All in all, we are called, through the very rigorous eyes-wide-open nature of what is written and revealed here, to a transcendent capacity for love, for faith, for truth.  It is as if Christ's very confidence in us is only strengthened in the truth of the violence of Crucifixion, the easy hatred of the mob, the evidence of misleading and self-betraying passions, the delusion of manipulation and betrayal of the good, the terrible fear of death  These things all remain all-too-truly with us.  It is Christ who calls us to our potentials in Him, through the faith He offers and our capacity for participation in Father, Son, and Spirit through His saving ministry and acts.  Let us pay attention and heed that call, no matter what the circumstances and what we see around us.