No One Ever Spoke Like This Man

It was autumn, and the Feast of Tents had come round — the week when everybody in Jerusalem built little shelters out of branches on their roofs and slept in them, to remember the forty years their people lived in tents in the wilderness. Halfway through the week he walked into the temple and started teaching. The people could not work it out. “How does this man know all this? He never studied anywhere.” And he said, “What I teach is not mine. It belongs to the one who sent me. If anybody really wants to do what God wants, he will find out for himself whether this teaching comes from God or out of my own head. A man who speaks out of his own head wants to be admired. The one looking for the honor of the one who sent him is telling the truth, and there is nothing crooked in him. And then, out of nowhere: “Did Moses not give you the law? And not one of you keeps it. Why are you trying to kill me?” “You have a demon! Who is trying to kill you?” Most of that crowd had come up from the country and had no idea what was going on. “I did one piece of work, and you are all still astonished at it. Moses gave you the sign that a boy belongs to God’s people, on his eighth day; and if that day falls on a Sabbath, you do it anyway, so the law of Moses will not be broken. So why are you furious with me for making a whole man well on a Sabbath? Stop judging by how a thing looks. Judge it rightly.”

Some of the Jerusalem people, who knew what the council said behind closed doors, began to whisper. “Isn’t this the man they are trying to kill? And there he is, out in the open, and nobody stops him. Have the rulers decided he really is the Christ? But we know where this one comes from; when the Christ comes, nobody knows where he is from.” And Jesus, still teaching, called out across the courtyard: “Oh, you know me, and you know where I am from. But I did not come from myself. The one who sent me is real, and you do not know him. I know him, because I am from him.” They wanted to grab him, and no hand touched him, because his hour had not come. And many in the crowd believed him, and said, “When the Christ comes, will he do more signs than this man has done?” The Pharisees heard it going round, and they and the chief priests sent the temple police to arrest him. And Jesus said, with the police standing there, “I am with you a little while longer, and then I am going to the one who sent me. You will look for me and you will not find me, and where I am, you cannot come.”

Then came the last day, the great day of the feast. All week the priests had carried water from the pool of Siloam in a golden jug and poured it out at the altar. On that day Jesus stood up and shouted: “If anyone is thirsty — let him come to me, and drink. Whoever trusts me, as the Scripture said, rivers of living water will run out of the middle of him.” He was talking about the Spirit, which the ones who trusted him were going to be given later, and which had not come yet. And the crowd came apart in pieces. Some said, “This really is the prophet.” Some said, “He is the Christ.” And others said, “The Christ does not come out of Galilee, surely. Doesn’t the Scripture say he comes from David’s family, from Bethlehem, David’s village?” Some of them wanted to seize him. Nobody laid a finger on him.

And in the room where the chief priests and Pharisees waited, the police came back — with nobody. “Why haven’t you brought him?” They had been sent to arrest a man and had ended up listening to him instead. “No one ever spoke like this man.” That did not go down well. “So you have been taken in too? Has one single ruler believed in him, or one single Pharisee? It is only this crowd, who know nothing about the law — and they are cursed.” Then one man spoke up: Nicodemus, who had come to Jesus at night — and one of them, on their own council. “Does our law condemn a man before it has heard him and found out what he is doing?” “Are you from Galilee too? Search and see: no prophet comes out of Galilee.” And that was the end of the meeting, and everybody went home.

In the morning he was back in the temple, and he said, “I am the light of the world. Anybody who follows me will never walk about in the dark. He will have the light of life.” And they came straight back at him. “You are speaking for yourself. What you say does not count.” “Even if I speak for myself it counts, because I know where I came from and where I am going, and you have no idea. Your own law says that when two speak the same thing it counts: I speak for myself, and the Father who sent me speaks for me.” “Where is this father of yours?” “You do not know me, and you do not know my Father. If you knew me, you would know my Father too.” He said all this beside the treasury boxes, where anybody could have laid a hand on him, and nobody did.

Then he said, “I am going away, and you will look for me, and you will die in your sin. Where I am going, you cannot come.” And they asked each other whether he meant to kill himself. “You are from below; I am from above. You belong to this world; I do not. That is why I said you will die in your sins — because unless you trust that I am, you will die in your sins.” They had no idea he was talking about the Father. And he said, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am, and that I do nothing out of my own head — I say what the Father taught me. And the one who sent me has not left me on my own, because I always do what pleases him.” And while he was saying it, a great many people believed him.

So he turned to the ones who had believed him, and said, “If you stay in what I have told you, you are really my followers. And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” And that was the word that started the fight. “We are Abraham’s family. We have never been anybody’s slaves. What do you mean, we will be set free?” “I tell you the truth: everybody who keeps on doing wrong is a slave of the wrong. And a slave does not stay in the house forever; a son stays forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will really be free. “Our father is Abraham.” “If you were Abraham’s children you would do what Abraham did. But here you are, trying to kill a man who told you the truth he heard from God. Abraham never did that. You are doing what your father does.” “We are not somebody’s shameful children. We have one Father, and it is God.” “If God were your Father you would love me, because I came out from God, and here I am. Why can you not understand a word I say? Because you cannot bear to listen. You come from your father the Accuser, and what he wants is what you want. He was a murderer from the beginning and never stood in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he tells a lie he speaks his own language, because he is a liar, and lying began with him. Whoever belongs to God listens to God’s words. That is why you do not listen: you do not belong to God.”

And then they said the worst thing they could think of. “Are we not right? You are a Samaritan and you have a demon.” “I do not have a demon. I honor my Father, and you dishonor me. I am not after honor for myself; there is one who wants it for me, and he is the judge. I tell you the truth: whoever keeps my word will never see death.” That finished them. “Now we know you have a demon. Abraham died, and the prophets died. And you say that whoever keeps your word will never taste death. Are you greater than our father Abraham, who died? Who do you think you are?” “If I make myself great, my greatness is nothing. It is my Father who makes me great — the one you call your God, and you have never known him. I know him, and I keep his word. Your father Abraham was glad that he would see my day. And he saw it, and he was glad.” They stared at him. “You are not even fifty years old, and you have seen Abraham?” And Jesus said, “I tell you the truth. Before Abraham was born — I am.” I am is the name God gave Moses out of the burning bush, and every man in that courtyard had known it since he was a boy. They picked up stones off the temple floor to throw at him. But he was hidden, and walked out of the temple.