Jesus, plainly
by Emma Strelan
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How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly (John 10:24).
Sometimes, I feel I’ve spent up to this point in my (short) life waiting for God to reveal himself properly to me. Once I’ve got the right amount of knowledge from reading the Bible and have been to enough church services, it will all click into place. I’ll know for sure who Jesus is, and I won’t be able to question God’s truth any longer. Twenty-one years in, and it still hasn’t fully clicked.
Honestly, I have genuinely found myself asking God, ‘How long will you keep me in suspense? Can’t you just show me plainly who you are?’
Yet, at the same time, when I read this passage in John, I want to scoff at the Pharisees questioning Jesus and think, ‘You idiots, can’t you see Jesus has revealed himself clearly to you?!’ I mean, in the previous chapter, he healed a blind man!
In a show on Netflix called The Good Place, which plays with the idea of an afterlife based on merit points, a few humans are proud because they managed to get all four clues that the architect Michael (who runs the afterlife) left them. Michael responds that he actually left them 1200 clues, but he’s glad they got enough to work it out at least.
The interesting thing about what we see in the Gospel accounts is that for some people, Jesus’ message was as plain as day: the kingdom of God is at hand, and he is the way to that kingdom. Do you know who those people were? A broken woman, a demon-possessed man, the little children. And they weren’t even necessarily seeking God out.
Don’t get caught up asking the wrong questions of Jesus. He is plainly the Messiah.
God, thank you for the way you reveal yourself in so many ways. Today, I ask that you show me one of the 1200 clues for you I just haven’t picked up on before. Amen.
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