John 7:37-52
One of the oddities of the people of God is what we get stuck on. In this passage, the people of God are more stuck on the idea that the Messiah, the prophet, is from Galilee, than the proclamation that those who come to Jesus shall have their thirst met, and that out of them will flow streams of living water.
What Jesus is declaring is a fundamental change to the world. What the people are focused on is the person, not the message, and not even the person, but the location the person is from. As much as I’d like to say we’ve moved beyond that, we clearly haven’t. We still focus on the person, or their point of origin, more than their message.
All through this passage is the sense that Jesus is saying something new, something that has never been said before, and that Jesus is something new. Yet that newness is a threat. The leaders would rather retreat to what has worked before, what they already know. Is that just their response to Jesus, or is it ours as well?
