It Was Winter

A cold wind blows through the stone columns of the temple. People wrap their cloaks tighter. And a crowd closes in around one man, demanding an answer.

John's gospel gives us a detail that the others do not. It says: it was winter. Jesus is in Jerusalem for the Feast of Dedication. Jewish families celebrated it every year for eight days in the cold, dark part of the year, lighting lamps and remembering how God's temple had been rescued and rededicated, about two hundred years before. Today we know it as Hanukkah. Jesus is walking in the temple, in Solomon's Colonnade, a long covered walkway along the eastern side of the temple courts, with a roof to shelter people from the wind and rain. And as he walks, people gather round him.

They hem him in. “How long do you make us to doubt? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.” They want a yes or a no. Jesus answers, “I told you, and you did not believe. The works that I do in my Father's name, they bear witness of me.” He has healed the sick, opened blind eyes, fed the hungry. Those things speak for themselves. “But you do not believe, because you are not of my sheep.” Just before this, Jesus had been talking about himself as the good shepherd, who knows his sheep by name and lays down his life for them.

Then Jesus describes the people who do belong to him. “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” A shepherd in those days did not drive sheep from behind. He walked ahead and called, and his sheep knew his voice and followed. “And I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.” Picture a small lamb held safe in a strong shepherd's hand. No wolf, no thief, no storm can grab it away.

And then Jesus goes further. “My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all, and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand.” The sheep are held in two hands, the Son's and the Father's. And then Jesus says six words that shake everyone standing there. “I and my Father are one.” In the middle of a festival that celebrated God's presence returning to his temple, Jesus stands in that temple and speaks of being one with the Father. The crowd understands exactly how big a claim this is. John tells us that immediately afterwards they picked up stones. But Jesus' time had not yet come, and he escaped from them.

The Feast of Dedication remembered real events. In one hundred and sixty-seven BC the Greek king Antiochus the Fourth defiled the temple in Jerusalem. Judas Maccabeus and his followers fought back, and in one hundred and sixty-four BC they cleansed the temple and dedicated a new altar, with eight days of celebration. The First Book of Maccabees records it. And the Jewish historian Josephus, writing in the first century, says the festival was called Lights.

It was winter. You can read it in John chapter ten, verses twenty-two to thirty. At a festival of lights in the darkest time of year, the one John calls the light of the world walked in the temple and promised to hold his sheep safe. Christmas, too, comes in winter for much of the world, and celebrates the light that came into the darkness. So here is a question to carry with you. Jesus said no one can snatch his sheep out of his hand. When do you most need to remember that you are safe with him?