Homilies on John, Homily 68

“The people answered Him, We have heard from the Law that Christ remains forever; so how can You say, The Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man?” [1.] Deceit is weak and easy to detect, even when its surface is coated with ten thousand colors. Just as people who whitewash decaying walls cannot make them sound by plastering them, those who lie are easily exposed, as happened here with the Jews. For when Christ said to them, “If I am lifted up, I will draw all people to Me,” one of them said, “We have heard from the Law that Christ remains forever; so how can You say that the Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man?” So even they knew that Christ was an Immortal One and had life without end. And therefore they also knew what He meant, for Scripture often mentions the Passion and the Resurrection together. Isaiah, for example, puts them together when he says, “He was led like a sheep to the slaughter” ( Isa. liii. 7 ), and in everything that follows. David also connects these two things in the second Psalm and in many other places. The Patriarch too, after saying, “He lay down, He crouched like a lion,” adds, “And like a lion’s cub, who will raise Him up?” ( Gen. xlix. 9.) He shows both the Passion and the Resurrection at once. But when these men thought they were silencing Him and showing that He was not the Christ, their very statement acknowledged that the Christ remains forever. And notice their dishonesty: they did not say, “We have heard that Christ neither suffers nor is crucified,” but that “He remains forever.” Yet even the objection they did make had no real force, for the Passion did not stand in the way of His Immortality. From this we can see that they understood many of the disputed points and deliberately went wrong. Since He had spoken about death before, when they now heard the words “be lifted up,” they guessed that He was referring to death. Then they said, “Who is this Son of Man?” This too was deceitful. One of them says, “Please do not think we are saying this about You. Do not claim that we oppose You out of hostility, for look, we do not know whom You are speaking about, and still we state our opinion.” What, then, does Christ do? To silence them and show that the Passion does not prevent Him from remaining forever, He says, Ver. 35. “The light,” He says, “is with you for a little while longer.” He means that His death was a departure, for the sun’s light is not destroyed; it withdraws for a while and then appears again. “Walk while you have the light.” What period is He speaking about here? The whole of this present life, or the time before the Crucifixion? I think He means both, because through His indescribable loving kindness, many believed even after the Crucifixion. He says these things to urge them toward faith, as He did before when He said, “I am with you for a little while longer.” ( c. vii. 33.) “Anyone who walks in darkness does not know where he is going.” How many things, for example, do the Jews do even now without knowing what they are doing, walking as though they were in darkness? They think they are going the right way when they are going the opposite way: keeping the Sabbath, observing the Law and the rules about food, yet not knowing where they are going. That is why He said, Ver. 36. “Walk in the light, so that you may become children of the light.” That is, “My children.” Yet at the beginning the Evangelist says, “Were born, not of bloods, nor of the will of the flesh, but of God” ( c. i. 13 ); that is, of the Father. Here, however, He Himself is said to beget them, so that you may understand that the activity of the Father and the Son is One. “After Jesus had said these things,” He left them and hid Himself. Why does He now “hide Himself”? They had not picked up stones against Him or blasphemed Him as they had before. Why, then, did He hide Himself? Walking within people’s hearts, He knew that their anger was fierce even though they said nothing. He knew it was boiling and murderous, and He did not wait for it to break out into action, but hid Himself to calm their hostility. Notice how the Evangelist has pointed to this feeling: he immediately adds, Ver. 37. “Though He had done so many miracles, they did not believe in Him.” [2.] What does “so many” mean? All the miracles the Evangelist has left out. This is also clear from what follows. For after He had withdrawn and yielded, and then returned to them, He speaks to them humbly, saying, “Anyone who believes in Me believes not in Me, but in Him who sent Me.” ( Ver. 44.) Notice what He does. He begins with humble, modest expressions and refers to the Father. Then He raises the level of His language again, and when He sees that they are enraged, He withdraws. Then He returns to them and again begins with humble words. And where has He done this? Rather, where has He not done it? Look, for example, at what He says at the beginning: “As I hear, I judge.” ( c. v. 30.) Then, in a more exalted tone, “As the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so the Son also gives life to whomever He wills” ( c. v. 21 ); and again, “I do not judge you; there is another who judges.” Then He withdraws again. Then, when He comes to Galilee, He says, “Do not work for the food that perishes” ( c. vi. 27 ); and after saying great things about Himself—that He came down from Heaven and that He gives eternal life—He withdraws again. He also comes during the Feast of Tabernacles and does the same thing. You can see Him continually varying His teaching in this way: by His presence, by His absence, by humble language, and by exalted language. He did this here too. “Though He had done so many miracles,” it says, “they did not believe in Him.” Ver. 38. “So that the saying of Isaiah might be fulfilled, which he spoke: Lord, who has believed our report, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” And again, Ver. 39–41. “They could not believe,” it says, “because Isaiah said, You will hear with your ears and not understand. He said these things when he saw His glory and spoke of Him.” Here again, notice that “because” and “spoke” refer to what happened, not to the cause of their unbelief. They did not fail to believe “because” Isaiah spoke; rather, he spoke because they were not going to believe. Why, then, does the Evangelist not express it that way, instead of making the unbelief follow from the prophecy rather than the prophecy from the unbelief? And farther on he states this very thing even more strongly: “Therefore they could not believe, because Isaiah said.” In this way he wants to establish, through many proofs, that Scripture is unfailingly true and that what Isaiah foretold happened exactly as he said. To prevent anyone from saying, “Why did Christ come? Did He not know that they would pay no attention to Him?” he brings in the Prophets, who also knew this. But He came so that they would have no excuse for their sin. For what the Prophet foretold, he foretold as certain to happen, since if it had not been certain to happen, he could not have foretold it. And it was certain to happen because these men were incurable. And if “they could not” is used in place of “they would not,” do not be surprised, for He also says elsewhere, “Let anyone who is able to accept it accept it.” ( Matt. xix. 12.) So in many places He speaks of choice as ability. Again, “The world cannot hate you, but it hates Me.” ( c. vii. 7.) You can even observe this in ordinary conversation, as when someone says, “I cannot love this or that person,” describing the force of his will in terms of ability. And again, “This or that person cannot be a good man.” And what does the Prophet say? “If the Ethiopian changes his skin, or the leopard his spots, this people too will be able to do good, having learned evil.” ( Jer. xiii. 23 , LXX.) He does not say that practicing virtue is impossible for them, but that because they are unwilling, they are therefore unable. And by what he says, the Evangelist means that it was impossible for the Prophet to lie; yet that did not make it impossible for them to believe. For even if they had believed, it was possible for him to remain truthful, since he would not have prophesied these things if they had been going to believe. “Why, then,” someone says, “did he not say so?” Because Scripture has certain expressions of this kind, and we need to allow for its ways of speaking. “He said these things when he saw His glory.” Whose glory? The Father’s. How, then, does John speak of the Son, and Paul of the Spirit? They say this to show that the Dignity is one, without confusing the Persons. For what belongs to the Father belongs to the Son also, and what belongs to the Son belongs to the Spirit. Yet God spoke many things through Angels, and no one says, “as the Angel said.” What do they say instead? “As God said.” For what God said through the ministry of Angels would be God’s; yet that does not mean that what belongs to God belongs to the Angels also. But in this passage the words are said to belong to the Spirit. “And spoke of Him.” What did he say? “I saw the Lord sitting on a high throne” ( Isa. vi. 1 ), and what follows. So by “glory” there he means that vision: the smoke, the hearing of inexpressible Mysteries, the sight of the Seraphim, and the lightning that leaped from the throne, which those powers could not look at. “And spoke of Him.” What did he say? That he heard a voice saying, “Whom shall I send? Who will go? And I said, Here I am, send me. And He said, You will hear with your ears and not understand, and you will see and see, yet not perceive.” ( Isa. vi. 8, 10.) For, Ver. 40. “He has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, so that they would not at any time see with their eyes and understand with their heart.” Here again another question arises, but it disappears if we consider it properly. Just as the sun dazzles weak eyes, though the cause is not in its own nature, so it is with those who pay no attention to God’s words. Thus, in Pharaoh’s case, He is said to have hardened his heart, and the same is true of all who resist God’s words. This is a particular way Scripture speaks, as in “He gave them over to a depraved mind” ( Rom. i. 28 ), and “He allotted them to the nations,” meaning that He allowed them, permitted them, to go. The writer does not present God here as doing these things Himself, but shows that they happened through the wickedness of others. For when God abandons us, we are handed over to the devil, and when we are handed over in this way, we suffer ten thousand terrible things. To terrify the listener, then, the writer says, “He hardened” and “gave over.” For to show that He neither hands us over nor even leaves us unless we will it, listen to what He says: “Do your sins not separate Me from you?” ( Isa. lix. 2 , LXX.). And again, “Those who go far away from You will perish.” ( Ps. lxxiii. 27 , LXX.) And Hosea says, “You have forgotten the law of your God, and I will also forget you” ( Hos. iv. 6 , LXX.); and He Himself also says in the Gospels, “How often I wanted to gather your children—and you were unwilling.” ( Luke xiii. 34.) Isaiah also says again, “I came, and there was no one; I called, and there was no one to listen.” ( Isa. l. 2 , LXX.) He says these things to show that we are the first to abandon Him and become the causes of our own ruin. For God has no desire to leave us or punish us, and even when He punishes us, He does it unwillingly. “I do not desire,” He says, “the death of a sinner, but rather that he should turn and live.” ( Ezek. xviii. 32 , LXX.) Christ also mourns over the destruction of Jerusalem, just as we mourn over our friends. [3.] Knowing this, let us do everything we can to keep from moving away from God. Let us hold firmly to caring for our souls and loving one another. Let us not tear apart our own limbs (for that is what people do when they are insane and out of their minds), but the more hostility we see in anyone, the more kindness we should show them. For we often see many people whose bodies suffer from difficult or incurable diseases, and we do not stop applying remedies. What is worse than gout in the foot or hand? Should we therefore cut off the limbs? Not at all. Instead, we use every means to give the sufferer some comfort, since we cannot get rid of the disease. Let us do the same for our brothers and sisters. Even if their disease is incurable, let us continue caring for them, and let us bear one another’s burdens. In this way we will fulfill the law of Christ and obtain the good things He has promised, through the grace and loving kindness of our Lord Jesus Christ, with whom may the Father and the Holy Spirit have glory forever and ever. Amen.