As a Communist I find that my comrades and I are frequently criticised by ultra-leftists for being too timid, too reformist and not sounding the rallying cry of immediate revolution at every opportunity. We answer that we must respond to the material realities of what is happening and what we might be expected to do to move events forward. Heroic defeats are of no use to the working class.
At first reading, this Scriptural passage suggests a similar and major hesitation on the part of Jesus. It sits in the middle of an extended wave of market research conducted by Him as to who folks think He is. In Chapter 6, his self-description as the Bread of Life polarises opinions; Peter gets it but the Gospel also reports that many disciples have had enough and walk away. In the rest of Chapter 7, His references to the promise of living water and His references to being the Messiah again produces acceptance, ridicule and anger in equal measure.
So it is probably not surprising, from a purely human perspective, that Jesus appears reluctant to go the Temple to celebrate the festival as his followers had urged him. More baffling, is His subsequent decision to travel to Judea incognito, seemingly sneakily listening in to what the people were saying about His claims.
I think what we see here is different concepts of time and hence the Kingdom. For Jesus’ remaining disciples, locked into chronological time, it was all about the now and making great statements in the present, however unprepared people might be to really hear them – and so respond.
For Jesus, divinely inspired, time was measured in terms of Creation’s proximity to and readiness for the Kingdom. In John 7, we see Jesus acutely aware that his audiences’ hearts are by and large far away from the Kingdom and who He really is. More work and words are needed to bring them closer.
We, therefore, must temper our impatience with how slowly God’s will seems to us to be working out. But we musn’t just sit back. Indeed, Jesus’s followers continued with their determination to go to the Temple.
As V I Lenin wrote “there are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.”
All will be fine in God’s own time.