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John 4:1-3    Now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John – although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples.  So he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee.

This narrative comment in John’s Gospel serves two main purposes.  The minor one is to introduce the setting for Jesus’ significant discussion with the Samaritan woman at the well.  The more major purpose is to inform us of the tension that has been termed in Mark and the other two Synoptic Gospels as the ‘Messianic Secret” – Jesus’ constant requesting people whom he had healed to ‘tell no-one” what had happened.  The basic problem that Jesus faced was pressure from the crowd wanting to proclaim him as the Promised Victorious Messiah King ahead of God’s Plan that was centred on his dying on a cross and rising again in order to procure our salvation – an offensive ‘stumblingblock’ to the Jews, and ‘foolishness’ to the Gentiles.

It is clear that John the Baptiser’s growing popularity with the common people represented a major threat to the long-established power-base of the Jewish leaders, and now Jesus was becoming an even bigger threat.

So Jesus’ decision to leave Judea and return to Galilee served the same purpose as the ‘Messianic Secret’.  An interesting subset of this purpose is John’s unusual use of  the Greek verb translated ‘left’ in verse 3.  The Greek verb carries the stronger element of ‘abandonment’ rather than simply ‘going away’.  It anticipates Paul’s argument in Romans 11: the Jews, the ‘natural branches’ were ‘cast off’, ‘abandoned’, in order that the Gentiles, the ‘unnatural branches’ might be grafted in.  Jesus ‘abandonment’ of Judea led to his more effective connection with non-Jewish ‘outsiders’ away from Jerusalem and the ‘Establishment’.

How glad I am that John includes this piece of narrative.  How glad I am that Jesus resisted all of Satan’s attempts to pressure him to abandon the Way of the Cross in favour of the more ‘acceptable’, popular paths: ‘social concern’ (turn the stones to bread), ‘spectacular sensationalism’ (jump off the pinnacle of the Temple and live), and ‘compromise with worldly human wisdom’ (bow down and worship Satan) to build up his Kingdom (Matthew 4:1-11). 

How glad I am as person of Gentile ancestory that the ‘natural branches’ were temporarily abandoned so that by God’s amazing grace I could be ‘grafted in’.  This last point is why I am involved in the work of International Mission to Jewish People (IMJP) in the hope that many, many of the natural branches might be  grafted back in.

– Bruce Christian