In today's Gospel, John 7:1-2, 10, 25-30, we learn that Jesus did not want to go to Judea because the Jews were out to kill him. However, given the fact that his brothers went up for the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles, he also went to the city but in secret. Some people recognized Jesus and raised the question: "Is he not the one they are trying to kill?" Yet no one attempted to seize Jesus. "Could the authorities," the bystanders wondered, "have realized that he is the Christ?" Can't be, they reasoned, because we know where Jesus has come from and, "[w]hen the Christ comes, no one will know where he is from." Jesus, hearing the conversation, cries out: "'You know me and also know where I am from. Yet I did not come on my own, but the one who sent me, whom you do not know, is true. I know him, because I am from him, and he sent me.' So they tried to arrest him, but no one laid a hand upon him, because his hour had not yet come."
"His hour had not yet come." Whatever Jesus did, He did with the Father, as He and the Father are one. "I do nothing except what the Father asks me to do," Jesus says to us in another passage in John. And the time of showing the depth of God's love by the ultimate sacrifice of pouring out His life on the cross had not yet arrived.
Having been baptized unto Jesus' death and having rose to a new life with Christ, we are Christ's ambassadors sent into the world, also, by the Father to reveal the depth of God's love. Like Jesus, we reveal the Father's love by a self-emptying, sacrificial love in our service of others. We reveal who God is by loving others as we love ourselves. God's love radiates through us, also, when we are patient, compassionate, forgiving, and obedient to what the Spirit is asking of us each moment to bring forth he best in others and in ourselves.
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