John 7:1-2, 10, 25-30 One Does Not Live on Bread Alone

Have you ever known anyone to crash a party or wedding?  In 2009 Tareq and Michaele Salahi were reported to have crashed a White House party.  The  party crashing scandal was in newspapers and media broadcasts worldwide.  People wondered how they could have just walked into the White House, others simply wondered at it all. 

The events in today's Gospel elicited a similar reaction to the Jews of his time when he entered Jerusalem.  They wondered if the authorities accepted him a Christ, and what their response should be.  Note that the Jews had been trying to have him killed for blasphemy for saying that he was the Son of God and equal to God. 

Jesus shows us two things in this Gospel story.  First, that he, although the Son of Man, he came not to replace the Law, but to fulfill it.  He shows us this by his travelling to Jerusalem for the Festival of Tabernacles, known as Sukkot.  It is the third of three great feasts and required Jewish men to make the pilgrimage to the Temple at Jerusalem where main celebration was held in the sanctuary, or tabernacle (dwelling place of God) where the celebration of the remembrance of the escape from slavery for the Israelites was recounted, the entire festival iterating the dependence on God.
Jesus is here to be with God the Father, in communion with all these people, in his Father's house.  He is celebrating with them the freedom from slavery.  His time has not yet come, and soon he will be saving them from a different kind of slavery, that of sin.  It is interesting too that he, the Lord Jesus Christ, is within the tabernacle here, not only in the physical one erected by the people, but also that comprised of the faithful.

The second thing that Jesus does is to show that not only is he obedient to the Father, but that the Father has appointed times for all things.  Jesus' time to fulfill the Father's will through his death is not yet come.  Jesus continues to choose to do the Father's will, just as we all have that freedom of choice.  For Jesus to be at Sukkot causes much talk, much wonder at who he is.  Perhaps we should be that way too, not in a negative way, but in a awe-filled way.