Gospel of John: Lesson 6:
Chapters 9, 10
Bible
Study, 14 April, 2013
Faith Mennonite Church,
Twin Cities, MN
Lesson 6: Restoring the Light / The Good Shepherd
J. Vernon McGee
opens Chapter 8 with an interesting observation, “The Lord has been giving His discourse on the Light of the World. Because He claimed that He is Go0d, the Jews
wanted to kill Him. Jesus “hid” Himself
as He went out of the temple, going through the midst of them” … It was a
miracle that He could escape this angry mob.
His time had not yet come, and so they could not lay their hands on
Him.”
The observation is
indirect. Jesus is the Light of the
World, yet, just as God had been forced to hide the full Truth and brilliance
of His glory from Moses, so too, we find that Jesus has had to “hide” his
light.
This brings to
mind an apocryphal story from the life of Menno Simons. While journeying between congregations in northern
Germany, the Emperor’s guards stopped the coach conveying Simons and his wife
Gertrude between towns.
“Who is inside the
carriage?” demanded the imperial guard.
“We are looking for the meddlesome troublemaker Menno Simons. Is he inside this coach?”
In an effort to
disguise himself, Simons had taken a seat beside the driver. In this the Lord’s Will was shown for thusly
the driver could turn to the guards and truthfully reply, “In truth, Menno
Simons is not inside this coach.”
Simons was the
father and Gertrude the mother of the Mennonite faith. He was not an evangelist. God had appointed others such as the Philipps
brothers, David Joris and Hans Denck to that task. Simons was the pastoral head and it was
essential at that time that he remain alive and free to maintain the church and
thus able to adjudicate the many squabbles and disagreements that were already
tattering at the seams of the new faith culture.
Chapter 8 closes
with Christ similarly having to hide himself from the Jewish mob. The mob had no interest in Truth or God’s
plan, the mob had a political agenda all of their own … and their plan was not
in accordance with the will of God or an accurate perception of Truth. So Christ hid himself.
This story also
brings to mind that age-old hymn of Easter – He Could Have Called Ten-Thousand Angels. We focus at Easter on the fact that Christ
could have called forth legions of angels to save Himself from the Cross and
the mob. Similarly, here to Christ could
have called forth an angelic bodyguard, but Christ was no Rockstar Diva, he did
not require a Heavenly entourage.
Instead of forcing the issue and unmasking His glory and power to the
mob, He withdrew and kept quietly to His disciples. (Similarly, Simons traveled not with an armed
guard of his own but rather trusted and accepted that it was God who had
blinded the soldiers to his presence beside the driver.)
In the age of
televised Evangelism and the harsh rhetoric of certain teachers from Jerry
Falwell and Pat Roberts to Westboro Baptist Church, Christ’s humility is a
counterintuitive lesson. As we learned
in Mennonite Bible school, true Faith is not trying to bend God’s Will to our
desires, our glory or even our understanding.
Rather, true Faith is bending our will, our desire and even our
understanding to God’s Will. This is a
component of galessenheit.
McGee sees less
duplicity on the part of Christ. To
McGee, Christ is not hiding himself so much as he is giving the people over to
their blindness.
In Chapter 9,
despite the need for security, Christ begins to take corrective action. In Chapter 9, we find Christ blatantly and
symbolically healing a blind man.
McGee’s key verse
is verse 9, “For judgment I am come into
this world, that they which see not might see; and that they which see might be
made blind.”
Warren Wiersbe
points out that “Our Lord performed
miracles in order to meet human needs.
But he also used those miracles as a “launching pad” for a message
conveying spiritual truth.”(cont...)
