23 April 2024 John 10:22-30
The winter festival that Jesus was in Jerusalem for was Hanukkah. The story of Hanukkah is a celebration of sacrifice, religious purity, and resistance to tyranny. In 168 B.C. Antiochus IV Epiphanes ruled the Seleucid Empire. He fancied himself divine and adopted the sobriquet “Epiphanes,” Antiochus the Revelation. Many of his contemporaries thought him beyond eccentric and referred to him as Antiochus Epimanes (meaning Antiochus the Mad). Enraged at setbacks in his military campaigns in Egypt, Antiochus took out his frustrations on the Jews in Judea, sacking Jerusalem, and brutally desecrating the Temple, even sacrificing a pig to Zeus on the main altar. This sparked the Maccabean Revolt, led by Judas Maccabeus (“Judah the Hammer”), after which the Temple was purified and rededicated. The eight-day celebration of Hanukkah today is a remembrance of that rededication
All that was likely on the minds of the Jews who ambushed Jesus in Solomon’s portico, demanding that he declare whether or not He was the Messiah (John 10:24).
Were they Jewish patriots who hoped Jesus would lead a rebellion against the Romans? Were they planted there by the religious authorities to trap Jesus into saying something blasphemous they could prosecute Him for, or something subversive that the Romans could prosecute Him for? Were they people who were hoping piously for the redemption of Israel? Likely it was a mix of all three, meaning it was another crowd that Jesus couldn’t trust. So He chose His words very carefully. Nowhere in John’s gospel does Jesus say unequivocally that He is the Messiah. Every time he speaks of his true identity, there is plausible deniability that he was claiming divine status. “I and the Father are one” could be a claim to divinity, but it could also be saying merely that He wants what God wants, which is something that everyone should say.
There is risk involved in following Jesus. In Jesus’ day for Jews it was the risk at least of being expelled from the synagogue and being shunned by the community. At worst, for Jews and gentiles it meant punishment, even death. Jesus pointed the crowd around Him to the many signs He had performed – healings, exorcisms, feedings. In our time He points to the literally millions of testimonies to Jesus’ transforming power. Then He expects people to make up their minds. Jesus has power to heal, power to forgive, power to cleanse, power to save – but only for people who will make up their minds to trust Him. That is what he meant when He said time after time, “Your faith has made you well” (cf. for example Mark 5:34). Our access to Jesus and His power begins with trust.
As of this writing, there are students at Ivy League universities chanting genocidal slogans like, “Death to Israel,” the sort of anti-Semitic, genocidal protest that hasn’t been heard outside the Middle East since the Holocaust. They are chanting “Death to America” which is the sort of thing heard from terrorists, and state sponsors of terrorism. It is happening at some of the most distinguished educational institutions in America, and strikes many people as the ranting of people like “Antiochus Epimanes,” Antiochus the Mad. It makes some people yearn for deliverers like “Judah the Hammer,” and makes even more people, who walked away from religion long ago, hope for the kind of purification that only religion can bring.
Deliverance from madness and purification from madness and hate are possible, are available immediately – but only to those who are willing to risk trusting Jesus. It takes divine power to redeem the time. The first step toward that redemption is believing that Jesus is that power.
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