We know the old question, if a tree falls in the woods and nobody's around to hear it, does it make a sound?
Somewhat remotely along that line: if a magnet isn't near any other metal, is it magnetic?
However you might answer that one, let's go further: can the magnet approach, say, a pile of iron shavings without sparking a reaction?
Does it have to "try," or "decide," or "switch" itself on, or will its simply being what it is do the job?
John 7:3-4. The Feast of Booths is approaching in Jerusalem and Jesus' brothers are urging him to go there in order to make, as we might say in today's jargon, his big splash, mount the world stage, take Jerusalem by storm as the New Man in Charge.
And the gospel writer perceptively comments that they were doing so because "they didn't believe in him."
Now isn't that counter-intuitive!
No modern press agents or PR team or campaign managers would ever egg their guy or gal on to a bold public debut because they DIDN'T believe in him or her. Only if they were totally sold on their rising star.
But Jesus' brothers didn't believe in him. Why then would they urge him on to what would be a catastrophe if, indeed, Jesus wasn't really the Messiah? Naturally, we think, well, they were hedging their bets, testing him, supposing that the best that could happen was, Jesus took command in Jerusalem and they'd come out looking like kingmakers, while the worst was, Jesus would meet catastrophe and ruin and, if so, they could deny they ever had anything to do with his crazy ideas. No harm done...to them at least.
But I'm far from sure about that. To me it all comes down to what, really, it meant that they didn't "believe" in Jesus. In what WAY didn't they believe? They believed he existed, that he was their brother, and I dare say they knew him well enough that there was no doubt in their minds of his powers and authenticity. I feel sure they believed SOMETHING about him, and that their urging to go take Jerusalem by storm wasn't just some cynical dare with near certainty of an ultimate debacle.
But WHAT they believed about him wasn't really believing in HIM.
Not in what Jesus was, why he was, how his meaning on earth would be consummated, where he was "going" in all this, nor, apparently, were they very interested in stopping to reassess their assumptions. They had an agenda, an agenda that precluded faith, belief, in the sense that the gospel writer means when he says they didn't "believe."
The brothers' urgings are entirely in the same spirit as the enthusiasm of the crowds earlier who were ready to sieze Jesus and make him king, prompting Jesus to abandon the crowds. Those crowds were similarly all for Jesus, in their way, but their way was diametrically opposed to everything Jesus was here for.
This notion, of misguided perception that isn't actual faith, runs through the opening chapters of John. Through it all, Jesus appears to be the loneliest man on the planet, the loneliest human ever to live, except for his ceaseless pervasive awareness of the Father with him.
Nobody around Jesus gets it, gets him. Not even those who love him the most and come closest to the "faith" that's real faith.
And just think, it's in this context that Jesus' brothers are aggressively counseling Jesus, like cheezy campaign managers, to make sure he shows up at the happening place to grab the spotlight: "Nobody works in secret if he wants to be widely recognized. If you (really) do these things, then go and show yourself to the whole world!" (I cannot help but note with a certain wry amusement: "the whole world," i.e., the relatively larger numbers who'll be in Jerusalem for the holidays--to the brothers, this is like making it big on Broadway as opposed to playing road shows; all human concepts of fame and glory are inevitably big-fish-in-a-small-pond propositions, and "all flesh is as the grass of the field....") To the brothers, winning over Jerusalem is "making it big," the top of the heap.
No wonder the gospel tells us that Jesus didn't seek direction from "men, for he knew what was in them."
The brothers had an agenda. Jesus had a trajectory. Did Jesus even need to "want" to make himself "known," much less "famous"? Did he need a campaign plan--to do what? To die? Did he need a strategy, a platform, a list of talking points? To do what? To get elected to something? To start a revolution? A revolution together with...who? With the "like-minded"? And who would that be?
The loneliest man in the universe had no like-minded, apart from his Father, and no strategy except a trajectory to the cross in supernally sold-out love to the Father's will.
Telling Jesus he needed to go make a splash at the Feast of Booths to get the name recognition and move the campaign forward to victory was like telling a magnet to go hunting for a pile of iron shavings in order to be a magnet. If you think you have to tell a magnet that, you really don't understand what a magnet is. You don't "believe" in it.
That, I think, is how the brothers didn't believe in Jesus. If they had believed in him, they'd have offered no counsel at all but asked, "Where next, Lord?"
Diving off a high dive, you don't stop on the way down to ask for directions. That's trajectory. That's inevitability. You're only going one way. This was Jesus' life. The brothers' advice was like a coach screaming to his diver in mid-air, "Down! Head to the water!" Except in the brothers' case, they didn't even know where the water was. Or what was hidden underneath.
Nobody could. Until it all unfolded.
Only the One who knew from the very start could cry "It is finished!" as the sole voice in the universe who ever knew what "it" was.
