“How long are you going to keep us in suspense?
If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.”
Was the problem that the truth has been unclear? Jesus had explained that he had come from the Father (see for instance John 7:28-29), already assured them that, "if you do not believe that I AM, you will die in your sins" (see John 8:24). His self-identification with the divine name seemed plain enough, and his intention in speaking thus was that those who heard would believe.
Jesus answered them, "I told you and you do not believe."
The way Jesus responded to their questions did not satisfy them because of their limited expectations about what would constitute an answer. Was Jesus a new Davidic come come to overthrow Rome? Or, even if they had in mind the suffering servant from Isaiah, was Jesus that obedient lamb of sacrifice? These were not the questions he was directly answered. Individually they were paradigms too limited to tell the whole story of who he was. Instead, he told them an even more fundamental truth, that he was the unique and only-begotten Son of the Father, that he was somehow one with the Father himself.
The works I do in my Father’s name testify to me.
The works of Jesus proved that the Father had given him his seal of approval. No one could do such immense miraculous good, such massive damage to the kingdom of the evil one if the Father were not working through him. He had spoken enough truth and demonstrated sufficiently the authority he had from his Father for those who would believe to do so.
But you do not believe, because you are not among my sheep.
The sheep were willing to allow Jesus to reinterpret their previous understanding of the Messiah, to be the new interpretive key that made sense out of many disparate Old Testament promises and prophecies. As to what it meant for someone to give them his body and blood as food, what it meant for human being to be one with the Father, they did not comprehend. But they recognized truth in the voice of the one who spoke. They saw goodness in his works. They chose to be docile to the voice that spoke words of eternal life even when those words were initially a source of confusion.
My sheep hear my voice;
I know them, and they follow me.
The Judeans who did not accept him weren't interested in listening. They were interested instead in putting him in some preexisting box, according to their own limited paradigms. Sheep were ultimately those who were willing to let Jesus explode their preconceptions and paradigms. He himself was the living Word. His interpretation was Spirit, whereas all else was mere letter, limited by human limitations, subverted by human weakness. His words gave life, luminous inner logic, to everything the law and the prophets had foretold.
I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish.
If the voice of Jesus could so dynamically infuse life into the letter of Scripture what could he not do for those who followed him? The sheep were those who trusted the voice of the shepherd above all voices, including their own. They were those who surrendered the need to be in charge of their own lives, no longer needing to put themselves first, because of their trust that the Good Shepherd himself would care for them.
No one can take them out of my hand.
If we learn to trust in the voice of Jesus we can become like Barnabas, sons and daughters of encouragement, filled with the Holy Spirit and faith. We can hear and see of the Spirit at work in new and surprising ways without the risk of rejecting it. We will not impose our own limits on the groups to whom the Lord can reveal himself or the ways in which he might choose to manifest himself. We will see above all that which matters most, that the "hand of the Lord was with them".
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