A Handcarved Crucifix in the Monastery Dining Room

March 11,2005

Jesus Jn 7:1-2, 10, 25-30

Jesus moved about within Galilee; he did not wish to travel in Judea,
because the Jews were trying to kill him. But the Jewish feast of Tabernacles was near.

But when his brothers had gone up to the feast, he himself also went up, not openly but as it were in secret.

Some of the inhabitants of Jerusalem said, "Is he not the one they are trying to kill? And look, he is speaking openly and they say nothing to him. Could the authorities have realized that he is the Christ? But we know where he is from. When the Christ comes, no one will know where he is from." So Jesus cried out in the temple area as he was teaching and said, "You know me and also know where I am from. Yet I did not come on my own, but the one who sent me, whom you do not know, is true. I know him, because I am from him, and he sent me." So they tried to arrest him, but no one laid a hand upon him, because his hour had not yet come.

The time had not yet come for Jesus to suffer on the cross. Jesus proclaims that he is from God who sent him. For the Jews this was a great heresy and they would like to have arrested him but although they tried they did not. Jesus had gone secretly to the feast but while there he began teaching in the temple. He could not keep secret the knowledge of God that he had knowing that to share it would put him through suffering. This reading relates to the concept of providence which has to do with things happening in God's time not the time of the worldly. The part of the concept that I have a hard time understanding is if God can set or control the unfolding of the time of things which makes sense and is in step with nature, why then can the things that are evil or bad not be stopped. I know that this is not a simple question. I know that some of the evil in the world is a part of the free will of humankind. Yet there is so much to ponder and in this reading today. Jesus comes in secret to the feast, then teaches in public and the temple people try to arrest him but can not because his time has not yet come. The meaning of our time having come or the proper time and season for things is what I will carry with me today and meditate on.