Last Sunday the Gospel reading from John reported on a dramatic action taken by the Creator of all. While Jesus is teaching the crowd during the Festival of Passover, a voice from heaven speaks. Jesus hears the actual words and knows that it is the voice of the Father in heaven. The crowd is uncertain what they have heard: thunder? an angel? The audible intervention of the Creator of all is for the crowd’s benefit, Jesus says, so that they may know that he is indeed the promised Messiah.
But as Jesus reveals what the immediate future holds for the Messiah, the crowd becomes confused, fearful, and irrate. The picture Jesus paints is not what the crowd believed and expected the Messiah to be and do. Jesus slips away and is hidden from them.
One of the challenges which each person will have to wrestle with is, do we welcome Jesus into our life on his terms, or must He fit into the box which we have built for our saviour to occupy?
Bible Reading: John 12:27-36