Fr. Stephen:

Okay, so we’ll go ahead and get started here in just a minute and when we do, we’ll be starting in the Gospel According to St. John, chapter 7, verse 37, which is where we left off last time, and this time we were sort of in the middle of a chapter. Couldn’t be helped.

Just to get us caught up quickly to where we are now, we’ve talked before several times about how St. John structures his Gospel around sort of the cycle of Jewish feast days and sort of laid out over three years. And so we’re currently in the middle of another trip that Jesus took from Galilee to Judea, specifically to Jerusalem for a feast, in this case the Feast of Tabernacles, which we talked a little bit about last time. And Jesus went there even though the Pharisees and the other Judean leaders were already not happy with him and were already talking about how they could get rid of Him. We saw he had kind of a confrontation with them again, last time on this occasion and if anything, that solidified their intent to want to kill Him. But from his words and the answers he gave, a number of the people who were there for the feast, who had come from different parts of the Roman world to celebrate the feast, who were hearing Him, were starting to make a little buzz that perhaps this Jesus was in fact the Messiah was the Christ. And hearing that, that just made the Pharisees of the chief priests even more upset and more determined that he needed to go.

And so, right before we left off, Jesus said to them that he would only be with them for a little while longer and then he would return to his Father who sent him and they would look for Him and not be able to find Him. And of course, they not understanding what Jesus says, because we’ve seen this dynamic that the people, the people who are wicked, pretty much anything Jesus says to them, they don’t comprehend. The people who are righteous, who have drawn close to God. They understand what Jesus is saying. They understand who he is. So they, of course, these leaders, don’t understand what he’s saying. They say, “Where is he going to go? Is he going to go to Greece and preach to the synagogues there? That’s why we’re not going to be able to find him?” They have no clue what he’s talking about. Even when he alludes to the fact that they are going to successfully kill him, they don’t follow. So that leads us up to chapter 7, verse 37. So unless anyone has anything left over from last time that they wanted to ask or discuss or debate or exaggerate or anything else, we’ll go ahead and get started in verse 37:

On the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink.”

The way Jewish feasts were structured in their celebration is that there were a number of days leading up to the feast itself, and that’s true to this day. So, for example, Passover is really sort of a weeklong thing, and then the final day is Passover proper. We’re going to see that in the original Holy Week when we get to the end of St. John’s Gospel, that there’s sort of this Passover celebration leading up to the Passover itself. And also that then is the origin of our Holy Week leading up to our Pascha, is that there’s this week building up to it. So he’s been there for the feast of Tabernacles. That’s been sort of the forefeast, sort of the building up to it. So he stands up to make this speech on the last day, meaning on the day itself. So this is going to be the day when the most people are sort of packed into Jerusalem and packed in the Temple area. Jesus has been preaching in the Temple. So on the last day he stands up and it says he cried out, meaning he yelled, he projected. So he’s getting everyone’s attention. This is how he begins. What he has to say is to say, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.” He’s not saying he opened up a concession stand for the crowd there, right? He’s referring back… remember, where we’ve heard this language before was when he was talking to the Samaritan woman, to St. Photini, when he talked about living water. So Jesus is sort of coming back to that theme because the people who are there, what he’s referring to as thirst by way of an analogy, is the people who are there for the feast ostensibly, hopefully are there to worship God, to draw closer to God. This is the thirst he’s talking about.

Now, there are probably a bunch of them there who are just sort of there out of tradition or because their parents dragged them or whatever other reason. It’s a nice excuse to take a vacation to Jerusalem, whatever, or they were going to do some business. But Jesus is speaking to those who are there for that reason. So he’s saying, “If you’re here for that, if that’s why you’re here, then you need to come to me and I’ll fulfill what you’re looking for.”

Interlocutor: Do they understand that?

Fr. Stephen: No, not really. Well, we’ll see some of them do, as usual, in St. John’s Gospel. Some of them do and some of them don’t. It continues:

“He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.

Now, this is one of the interesting things about, and it’s not just Jesus and it’s not just St. John’s Gospel, but all through the New Testament, we’ll see these very common things, which is as the Scripture says, and then they’ll say something that I challenge you to find anywhere in the Old Testament, at least literally.  I mean, Jesus will say at one point, Luke’s Gospel as it is written, the Son of Man will suffer and be crucified and rise again on the third day. Well, if that was spelled out somewhere in the Old Testament, that would have made things a lot clearer for everybody when Jesus came. So saying “as the Scripture says” or “as it is written”, does not necessarily mean, here’s a quote.

Interlocutor: I always thought it did, and that I don’t remember that. [Laughter]

Fr. Stephen: No, it does not necessarily mean a quote. It means that what Jesus is saying is that this is the teaching of Scripture. This is the teaching of Scripture. And so remember the dispute he’s been having with the Pharisees? Part of it has been they keep bringing up Moses. “Well, we follow Moses, we listen to Moses. Moses, we know came from God. We don’t know where you came from.” It’s all about Moses. So what Jesus is really saying is, “Look, if you really study Moses, then you would understand what I’m saying, because what I’m teaching and what Moses was teaching are the same thing.” So Jesus is not here quoting the Scriptures, “Look, here’s my evidence that I’m really the Messiah is, look, here’s what it said in Micah, chapter two, verse three.” He’s saying, “Look, this is the teaching of the Scripture. If you understand the Scriptures, then you’ll get it.” And as Jesus has already said, and He’ll continue to point out to the Pharisees, “If you really understood the Scriptures, you’d understand me. Since you don’t understand me, you don’t understand the Scriptures either.”

Because again, at the root of this for St. John is the same thing. People who have drawn close to God know who Jesus is and can understand the things that Jesus is saying and they can read the Scriptures and understand the Scriptures. The people who aren’t, the people who are wicked can’t understand the Scriptures, can’t understand what he’s saying, it’s like they’re written in a foreign language.

It’s like if you’ve never watched an episode of Doctor Who in your life and you walked into a Doctor Who convention with all the fans, British fans with accents no less, and you listen to them having a conversation, how much of it would you understand? Not much. Because you don’t know anything about and that’s what Jesus is effectively saying to the Pharisees and the chief priests and these leaders, is you don’t know anything about God. And because you don’t know anything about God, when people who know God talk about God, you have no idea what they’re talking about. The scriptures are people who know God talking about God. Jesus, obviously is someone who knows God talking about God. And so that’s gibberish to somebody who doesn’t know God, he doesn’t know who he is.

But this He spoke concerning the Spirit, whom those believing in Him would receive; for the Holy Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.

This is going to become an important theme later on, around chapters 16 and 17 and 18 in St. John’s Gospel. It’s going to be that when Jesus… now notice it says because Jesus had not yet been glorified, not he hadn’t yet been crucified, not he hadn’t yet been risen from the dead, but he had not yet been glorified. Meaning, that’s referring to ascension that’s referring to his ascension back to heaven to the Father and his enthronement in heaven. Because this dynamic, like I said later on, there’s going to be a great deal of detail about this in St. John’s Gospel that when Jesus departs back to heaven, he sends the Spirit to earth, to his disciples afterwards.

And it is through the Spirit that the disciples continue to experience and be in the presence of Christ. It’s through the power of the Spirit. He’s not there physically, but he’s there in the Holy Spirit. And this is, as I said, there’s going to be a lot more to this dynamic later. I’ll say here, and I’m about to unfairly characterize our Western Christian brethren, but why not? They’re not here to argue with me. No, I admit that this is a flawed characterization, but I think there’s some truth to it too, and that’s what I’m going to say. In Roman Catholic thought, when Jesus ascends into heaven, he leaves us a representative, he leaves us a vicar. He appoints St. Peter. He says, “I’m giving my authority to St. Peter. I’m leaving St. Peter in charge.” And he passes it on to his successors.

In Protestant thought, by and large, it’s hard to characterize Protestant thought because it’s so diverse now. But by and large, what unites Protestant thought as Protestant thought is that when Christ ascends into heaven, he leaves us the Scriptures, he leaves us the Bible. And so the Bible is then the way we read about Christ and who he is and what he did.

What the Orthodox Church teaches and what St. John is teaching here, not just here, but as I said, this is going to be expanded and developed in the Gospel, is that when Christ ascends into heaven, he leaves us the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit continues to live and act in the Church. And so through the power of the Spirit, Christ continues to be in our midst. As we confess every liturgy, Christ is still here with us. Christ is not an absentee in the Orthodox Church. He’s not somewhere else, and we have to read a book about him or we have to go and talk to the person who’s his representative so the representative can talk to him. That’s not how it works, that he is still present with us in the power of the Holy Spirit. And so that means in worship, in the sacraments, in prayer, we are directly connected to Christ still.

And this is not just me wanting to characterize Western thought. I really came to this when a very famous evangelical author posted a very now infamous internet blog piece about how every year on Ascension Day, she had abandonment issues. “Why did Jesus go away and leave me?” And I said, “There seems to be a misunderstanding here”, because she was treating it sort of like her father had abandoned her and left his diary or something.

Interlocutor: What was her faith?

Fr. Stephen: She was an Evangelical Protestant. I’m not sure what denomination, but that’s what had occurred. In the sense that there is in our Orthodox faith, there is not in Roman Catholic and Protestant thought and worship practice really this idea that Christ is still with us immediately.

Interlocutor: Because they’ve read this passage, obviously. So they would say that, yes, the Holy Spirit, if you want to consult the Holy Spirit, talk to the pope, or if you want to consult the Holy Spirit, it’s in the Bible. Whereas we would say it’s in your parish, it’s in you.

Fr. Stephen: Yeah. The Holy Spirit is in you. In traditional Protestant thought, the Holy Spirit allows you to understand the Scriptures. The Holy Spirit is there to help you interpret the Scriptures. And then depending on where you are in the Protestant spectrum, that’s viewed in radically different ways. Pentecostals obviously have a very different view of that than Lutherans. But they’re all within that spectrum. And in the Roman Catholic Church, all the grace is mediated down through the chain. The Pope is given grace from the treasury of the merit of the saints and everything which he is then able to extend by him ordaining bishops. Those bishops then gain that the positive grace. They ordain priests. The priests then are able to perform the sacraments and give grace; it’s all mediated down through the chain. And again, it’s not this direct coming to know, we need come to know God the Father in the person of Jesus Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit. This directly trinitarian and immediate access to God and experience of God, which is sort of the core of the Orthodox Christian experience. And I think is the core of what St. John is talking about here and later on when he talks about coming in the Holy Spirit.

And that’s why the Holy Spirit is so, as we’re going to see, the Holy Spirit is much more prominent in St. John’s Gospel than it is in any other Gospel, including Luke, who wrote Acts that talks about Pentecost. But the Holy Spirit is very prominent because St. John wants to make this point that Christianity is not just a group of historical beliefs about things God did at one point in the past that we read about and come to understand in a certain way, but that Christ is still with us. And that the Christ we encounter in the sacraments and worship and prayer. The Christ who we come to know is the same Christ who walked with them and did and said these things. And it’s the same Christ to St. John Chrysostom came to know in 400 AD. All the way through church history.

And this is why in the Orthodox Church, we say that tradition our definition of tradition… in the West, when they talk about tradition, they’re talking about, well, there are some truths that are in the Bible, and then there are some truths that are out there in nature, and then there are some truths that were sort of handed down by word of mouth. And we call those tradition. And that’s not our definition of tradition. Our definition of tradition is the life of the Holy Spirit in the Church who draws the Church to Christ. And since it’s the same Christ, it’s the same Christ in 45 AD, in 400 AD. In 1054, in 1453, all the way in 2017. It’s the same Christ and it’s the same Spirit. And that’s why we call it tradition, because it’s united across time and across space. If you go to an Orthodox church in Kenya or you go to an Orthodox church in Japan, or you go to an Orthodox church in Lafayette, Louisiana, it’s the same Christ, it’s the same Spirit across time and space, all of us to the one Christ. And that understanding comes straight from what St. John is doing here. That’s exactly what St. John is trying to get out when he talks about the importance of the Holy Spirit.

We’ll see when we get to the end. St. John even records this episode of Christ giving the Holy Spirit to the apostles before his ascension. And people say, “Well, why is that? That doesn’t make any sense.” Well, it’s because St. John was going to end his gospels before Acts started. And he wanted to talk about Pentecost because the Holy Spirit and what happened at Pentecost is so central to his theological vision that he’s laying out here that he needed to talk about it, even though he wasn’t going to get to that event in terms of his… but we’ll talk about that more when we get there.

Interlocutor: Okay. In the Old Testament, wasn’t it the Holy Spirit who was leading these… telling the story of God and who he was?

Fr. Stephen: Yes, well, through the prophets. Through the prophets. But in the Old Testament, the difference we see is in the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit comes to certain individuals, sometimes not even for their whole lives. Like the Holy Spirit comes upon Saul and then departs, while he was King of Israel, because of his wickedness. But he comes upon certain prophets and certain…

There’s an episode in the Book of Numbers that we read as part of the Old Testament readings before Pentecost where Moses takes the 70 elders of Israel, sort of the leaders, outside of the camp. And God takes a portion of his Spirit that’s on Moses because Moses is a prophet and places it on the other elders. The elders all start prophesying, well two of the elders were feeling lazy that morning and were still back in the camp, but the Holy Spirit fell on them too, and so they started prophesying in the camp. So Joshua and a couple of other people who are close to Moses went and found and said, “There are these guys prophesying back in the camp. You need to tell them to knock it off. You don’t need the competition they’re going to try and…” And Moses said “No, would that everyone would receive the Holy Spirit prophesy.”

And then in the Book of Joel, he prophesied that exactly that will happen. In latter days, the Holy Spirit will be poured out on all flesh. And that’s the passage in Joel that St. Peter quotes in the Book of Acts when it happens, when Pentecost happens, he preaches a servant basically on that passage in Joel, this that he prophesied has now happened.

So in the Old Testament, what you see is that there are certain individuals who have this direct experience and direct connection to God. And the people sort of experience of God is mediated through them, right? So Moses goes and speaks to God face to face because they’re all scared to because they realize their wickedness and then he comes down the mountain and mediates it to them and his face is still glowing. Remember, they tell him to cover it because they don’t even want to see that.

Whereas in the New Testament, because the Holy Spirit has come upon everyone, it’s now unmediated, it’s now direct. We could all come to know God directly, through the Holy Spirit. And we also see the Holy Spirit as just God’s presence in general in sense of the cloud that fills the tabernacle in the temple where they’re dedicated represent the Holy Spirit, God’s presence. So if we have God’s presence in us, that means there’s no separation anymore.

Interlocutor: But right now it hasn’t happened yet.

Fr. Stephen: It hasn’t happened yet because Christ is not… they still have Christ. They have Christ right in front of them, they can reach over and touch him. Christ is God, right? So they have the presence of God right there with Him when he returns to the Father. That’s when the Holy Spirit comes.

Interlocutor 2: It’s interesting that up until the point that they received the Holy Spirit, even the apostles are having a whole lot of trouble understanding what Jesus means, and we see them as radically changed people after they receive the Holy Spirit.

Fr. Stephen: Yes. And that’s related to another prophetic element from the Old Testament in Jeremiah 31 and some of the other prophets where it talks about the new covenant. The old covenant was the covenant with Moses. There’s going to be this new covenant, and we refer to that every time we celebrate the Eucharist, right? “This is the new covenant in my blood,” which has Christ initiates that new covenant. And one of the main differences we see in the prophets is God says to his people that in the past he had commanded them to be holy and commanded them to be righteous, and it hadn’t worked because they were weak and they were sinful, and so it didn’t work. And so he says, “In the new Covenant, I’m going to come to you and I’m going to make you holy. I’m going to make you righteous.” So it goes from external to internal.

And so when we get into the Book of Acts, which is next after John, when we get into the Book of Acts around Pentecost, we’re going to talk about that a lot, because a lot of the things that happened right after Pentecost are a result of this. The Holy Spirit coming up on all flesh means that now all flesh is clean, for example. And that’s what’s behind when St. Peter goes to Cornelius’s house, the Roman centurion, and it’s, “Oh, he’s a Jew, he can’t go into a centurion’s house.” And St. Peter’s not sure. And he has that vision of the animals coming down from heaven and the sheet, all the stuff you’re not supposed to eat, reptiles and everything, pigs and all this. And God says, “Take and eat.” He says, “I can’t eat any of that stuff. It’s unclean.” And God says, “Do not call unclean what I have made clean.” So he’s pointing to that transition. If the Holy Spirit has come upon all flesh, then now all flesh has been made clean. And so that’s the fundamental transition there.

And so, that’s part of why we see when the Holy Spirit comes upon them, they’re transformed, because it’s no longer them struggling, right? And God uses all kinds of imagery in the Old Testament regarding that same idea. That he’ll take away their heart of stone and give them heart of flesh. You know, he’ll circumcise their hearts rather than their body. That idea of external to internal, it won’t just be about external obedience, but it’ll be about internal transformation. That’s a shift. And that’s not to say nobody experienced internal transformation of the old covenant, but they’re these individuals here and there, whereas in the new covenant, because of what Christ has done, it’s everyone, everyone has that access to God.

Therefore many from the crowd, when they heard this saying, said, “Truly this is the Prophet.” Others said, “This is the Christ.”

Now, when you see that the Prophet, they’re not just saying, “Hey, this guy must be a prophet. He sounds like somebody who comes from God.” The Prophet is referring back to the Book of Deuteronomy, right? This is the prophet like Moses that’s prophesied at the end of Deuteronomy. Others say the Christ, the Messiah, Mashiach, which is seen as sort of a king, like King David. Why would you have these two different things? Well, remember, different groups of Jews at this time accept different parts of what we call the Old Testament as scriptures. There was no canon of the Old Testament at this time in history. So there’s a big segment, including the Sadducees, who only accept the Torah, who only accept the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, as scripture. Well, if that’s all you accept, then your view of the Messiah is going to be based on what? Well, the end of the Book of Deuteronomy, which is the last book of your Bible, effectively, talks about a prophet like Moses.

So these people who encounter Jesus, who kind of understand what he’s saying, who are in that group who are looking at the Torah, they say, “Oh, this must be that prophet.” The ones who have a little larger view of the scriptures that includes the history they’re looking at like Second Chronicles, Second Kings, they’re saying, “Oh, there’s going to be a king who is going to reign on David’s throne forever, the Messiah, the Anointed one, that must be who this is.” But the idea is the same behind both. These are the people who understand what Jesus is saying and notice understand it in light of the Scriptures, remember Jesus said, as the Scripture says, they’re interpreting what Jesus said. Yes, this is what the scriptures say. So they understand Christ and they understand the Scriptures over against the Pharisees, who understand neither, despite having said so.

Interlocutor: I had always thought when it says this is the prophet, that those were people who’d gotten it wrong. But they aren’t really people who’ve gotten it wrong, they just don’t…

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, they’re working from a different perspective. Remember the response of St Photini, the Samaritan woman, wasn’t, “Oh, this is the King of Israel.” Because that’s not in her paradigm. Her paradigm for who the Messiah figure was going to be was going to be a teacher who was going to teach everything. And she said,

“Look, he taught me everything. He told me everything I did. This must be the teacher.” So they’re understanding that in terms of their own messianic expectation, but they’re all identifying Christ as being this figure.

But some said, “Will the Christ come out of Galilee?”

“Yeah, wait a minute, I don’t remember anything about it.” Now notice again here we have two different views of the Scriptures, right? Jesus says, as the scripture says and doesn’t give a quote, says this is what scripture teaches. We have some people saying, “Yeah, this is the person who the scriptures promised.” But now we have some other people going, “You can’t show me in my Bible where it says that the Messiah is going to come from Galilee. So I’m not buying it.” They’re the first fundamentalists right there.

“Has not the Scripture said that the Christ comes from the seed of David and from the town of Bethlehem, where David was?”

So they go and they throw out their quote. “I got a proof text that tells me where the Messiah is going to be born and it isn’t Galilee. It’s Bethlehem.”

So there was a division among the people because of Him.

So the two people divide. Notice both of them are appealing to scripture but one of them understands scripture because they know who God is and they know who Christ is. The other group is what? Proof-texting. the other group is reading. They know a lot about the Scriptures but they don’t understand. Yeah, they don’t understand what they’re reading. Just like the Pharisees before with this “Well we believe Moses because…”

Now some of them wanted to take Him, but no one laid hands on Him.

So this isn’t just sort of an intellectual theological dispute, right? I don’t know. “Hmm, I don’t believe that’s where the Messiah is from.” In some kind of, over tea, one afternoon discussing who this Jesus might be, the ones who are opposed to him are wanting to do violence to him.

Interlocutor: Well, isn’t there a great fear of false Messiahs?

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, there had been a lot of them and there were going to be a lot more.

Interlocutor: Yeah, whether he said it himself or not. If people are claiming that this guy is the Messiah and he’s not, then he’s dangerous.

Fr. Stephen: Yes, because already and it’s going to get worse after this obviously in AD. 70 and in the Bar Kokhba rebellion at the beginning of the 2nd century. But basically, when you have someone who sets himself up as the Messiah, their version of the Messiah remembered is an anti-Roman revolutionary, and Rome was aware that they thought the Messiah was that. So, Rome was wont to stomp out the Messiahs and Rome didn’t send in a couple of detectives to go and try and track down this Jesus and place him under arrest and give him a fair trial. Rome came in and killed the leader, as many of his followers as they could find, and anyone else who happened to be in the neighborhood that day because they didn’t have time to sort things out, right? And as far as they were concerned, remember, Judeans are not Roman citizens. So legally, in the Roman Empire, they are non-persona. That’s their legal status. In Latin, they are non-persons. So they are not considered to be human beings in the same sense as a Roman citizen. They’re considered to be like cattle or sheep. So from their perspective, it’s like, “Okay, the dog turned rabid, we’ve got to go put it down. And anybody else who he might have infected, you’ve just got to put them all down.” And so they would just come in and exterminate, crucify, kill dozens of men and women, children. They didn’t care, because to them, the Judeans weren’t men, women and children. They weren’t just these trouble making beasts that happened to be on Roman land, and it would be too much trouble and expense to evict them all. And we needed someone to work the fields after all, to do the jobs we Romans don’t want to do, so we’ll just let them hang around and do that, but if they get out of line, that’s it.

So, yes, the people who didn’t believe that someone was the Messiah were not happy about messianic movements starting because it was going to come down on them, too. It’s going to come down on everyone, and especially if you’re in a crowded city during a feast. I know I’ve mentioned before that during a Passover several years before this, because Christ made reference to it at one point, there was an attempt at an uprising. When there were all those people in the city, it looked like a riot might break out. And so Pilate had 150 random people picked up off the streets, men, women and children. Just 150 people picked up off the streets and crucified along the roads leading into the city of Jerusalem, so that everyone who was coming into the city would see them all there and make the point, this is what happens if you try and cause trouble in my city during the feast. So Pilate’s still being governor, the last thing anybody there wants is… now if they actually believe Jesus was a messiah, that would be different because they think, well, if there’s a fight between him and Pilate and the Romans, he’ll win.

But if you don’t think he’s a messiah, then it’s just a troublemaker. On two counts. There’s the political element there, there’s also the blasphemy element of someone claiming to be the messiah when they’re not claiming religious authority that they don’t really have. So, yeah, that’s why it’s such a serious issue, right? That’s why it’s sort of a life and death issue where they kill someone. You might wonder, why are they so angry? Why are they trying to kill him? Why don’t they just tell them to buzz off, just put the word out, stay away from this guy.

But it’s a serious issue on those two counts. On the issue of, this is going to make the Romans angry on the one hand, and this is going to make God angry on the other hand. And we don’t want God or the Romans angry at us because we have nothing to do with it. And the best way to show that is for us to get rid of them. Because then God and the Romans will know we’re on their side, we don’t like him either. So, “They wanted to take Him, but no one laid hands on Him.”

Then the officers came to the chief priests and Pharisees, who said to them, “Why have you not brought Him?”

Remember, they sent these temple guards to go get him, right? Well, they come back to the chief priests and the Pharisees, and they don’t have Jesus with them.

The officers answered, “No man ever spoke like this Man!”

So they don’t… notice, The guards don’t say, “Well, we got kind of scared because he’s got a big crowd following him, and we didn’t want a riot to break out. We didn’t want to have to fight and we didn’t want to fight in the temple.” None of that. “Well, he said some things right.”

And this is important with what John’s saying here. These people were sent to get him end up getting converted, essentially, by Jesus. And we’re going to see in the Book of Acts. This happens all the time with St. Paul. They’ll put him with a couple of Roman soldiers. And so he just starts preaching the gospel to them. But even these officers, but now notice who are these officers? Who are these temple guards? These are just common people. So we have this juxtaposition again between the rulers who are dead set on getting rid of Jesus, and the common people, including their own guard.

Interlocutor: These temple guards are not a caste, they’re just people with a job.

Fr. Stephen: Right. I mean, they were from the Tribe of the Levites insofar as that could be determined at this point in history, which was not always completely clear, but other than that it wasn’t like the Swiss Guard in the Vatican or anything. They were just sort of people from that tribe. That was their duty, because remember, there’s a tribe of the Levites, and then within the tribe of the Levites, there are specific priestly families that have the priesthood and the high priesthood, who are supposed to, the right people aren’t priests at this time of history, but who are supposed to. And then the rest of the Levites. You’ll see a lot in the Old Testament. The priests and the Levites. The rest of the Levites who work from those priestly families did sort of all the other jobs around the temple the cleaning up, the guarding.

A lot of the church fathers will make analogies between bishops and high priests. Presbyteries and priests. Or priests and priests. And Levites and deacons. And deacons and subdeacons. Because traditionally in the church, deacons and subdeacons did all those other jobs. They lift the candles, they took care of the lamps, they were the doorkeeper, all the other things. It was the same kind of thing. The Levites did all those other things. And one of those things was to be a guard.

Interlocutor: Why don’t we have guards now to do all those things? [Laughter]

Fr. Stephen: Well, I could talk to the bishop and get you made a sub-deacon, if you’re volunteering.

Interlocutor: No, no. [Laughter]

Fr. Stephen: Oh OK. So they begin to be converted.

Then the Pharisees answered them, “Are you also deceived?”

Because, again, from the Pharisees’ point of view, this guy’s just treachery. He’s tricking everybody. “Ugh, they tricked you too!”

“Have any of the rulers or the Pharisees believed in Him?”

Now, notice the arrogance there. “We’re the smart people, after all, right? Do you see any of us believing you? What do you dummies know? Why are you letting them trick you?”

“But this crowd that does not know the law is accursed.”

The herd out there, those common people, uneducated boobs, they don’t know anything about the Scriptures. They don’t know anything about the law. And so they’re falling after them, and they’re cursed. They’re falling for it. And remember the idea of them being accursed. It goes back to, again, Deuteronomy 28 to 30, where God says, “Today, I’m setting before you life and death, blessings and curses. And if you follow my law and you obey it, then here are the blessings you will receive if you draw close to me.” God says when you do not, that’s because he knows what’s coming when you do not hear is what’s going to happen to you. And he describes all the curses that are going to befall them. We’ve got to remember, it’s an agrarian economy. They’re all farmers, so the curses are the sky above you will be like iron in the ground will be like bronze, meaning you’re not going to grow anything, you’re not going to get any rain, and everything will become difficult.

So what they’re saying when they say they’re accursed is they’re not just cursing the crowd. They’re saying they don’t know the law, they’re chasing after him, and they’re going to end up coming under God’s condemnation because of it. And they’re saying to the guards, essentially, and you’re going to go the same way if you… dummies, right?

Nicodemus, (he who came to Jesus by night, being one of them) said to them,“Does our law judge a man before it hears him and knows what he is doing?”

And again, he’s still not yet coming out and directly arguing, but he’s kind of throwing a little something in there, right? He says, “Well, you’re talking about the law, right? Does our law say you condemn someone to death before you give them some kind of hearing?” Which of course, it doesn’t. So he kind of tried to pull them back.

They answered and said to him, “Are you also from Galilee? Search and look, for no prophet has arisen out of Galilee.”

There you go, right? “Once again, look. Search and look. Go ahead, show me, show me, there in the scriptures. One prophet from Galilee. You can’t okay, see, I win.”

And everyone went to his own house.

So they’re not happy. But they gave up, right? They didn’t send the guards back. They all go home. They take their ball and they go home because they’re fed up.

Beginning of chapter 8, verse 1:

But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.

The Mount of Olives, remember, is right outside Jerusalem. So Jesus leaves the city, they all go home and pout. Jesus goes out of the city to the Mount of Olives.

Now early in the morning He came again into the temple, and all the people came to Him; and He sat down and taught them.

This is a pattern that all the Gospel writers have. They usually only talk about it because, remember, they only talk about the last time Jesus went to Jerusalem, where St. John has several times Jesus went to Jerusalem. But in St. Matthew and St. Mark and St. Luke’s Gospels, when Jesus does come to Jerusalem, you see this pattern where he and the disciples go and they stay on the Mount of Olives in the evening and sleep there. And then during the day, they come back into the city and go to the temple.

Interlocutor: So they’re sleeping under the stars.

Fr. Stephen: Yes. And so St. John is showing the same dynamic that this was Jesus custom every time he went to Jerusalem. Not just not just that last time. And there are several reasons for that. But one of the main ones is that they don’t have any money. However, Jesus says foxes have holes in the birds that desert a man his door to lay his head, right? I mean, they’re traveling. So we’ve seen cases and we see cases like specifically where someone will invite them into his home or they’ll stay somewhere. And we’ve seen when they’re in Galilee, he’s generally staying with Simon Peter’s family in his home in Capernaum.

But when they go to Jerusalem for one of these feasts and the whole place is packed with people, when you got a lot of folks, rents go up. So they’re staying on the Mount of Olives and then coming… So he goes out, rests, sleeps, comes back in the next day to the temple. And after all that’s been going on the last couple days, people come back, “Oh, he’s back again. Part three.”

Interlocutor: This time they sit down to listen. A minute ago, he was shouting to people to get their attention. Now he’s got their attention, everybody’s sitting down.

Fr. Stephen: Well, he’s sitting down. They’re not sitting. This is something in the ancient world which is the opposite of what we do today. So it’s important that we know that that’s how it worked in the ancient world, not just in Judea, but I mean, the Greeks, the Romans. This is how it works in our modern world. When you go to a class, as you’re intimately familiar, the person who’s teaching is standing up in the front and the people who are listening, the students, are sitting, generally. The ancient world is the exact opposite. The fact that you were seated meant that you had authority and people would stand to listen to you as a show of respect. So in the ancient world, the teacher would sit and everyone else would be standing as a show of his authority.

This still exists in the church surrounding our hierarchy, our bishops, because that’s why we have cathedra, we have bishop’s thrones in churches, because the bishop sits during the service. And it’s the Orthodox custom. If a bishop walked into the room right now, we would all, what? Stand up as a show of respect. So that tradition has continued, but that goes all the way back to the ancient world.

So what St. John is showing us by this image and this is now taking on sort of a formal relationship. This isn’t just Jesus sort of yelling things to passers-by anymore in the crowd, but these people are becoming his disciples now. They’re coming to hear what he has to say. He’s sitting to teach them, and they’re acknowledging his authority.