The time of glory
Jesus said to them, “My time has not yet come, but your time is always here. The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify about it that its works are evil."
John 7:6-7
In this section of John's Gospel, Jesus is being urged by his brothers to go down to Jerusalem for the Feast of Tabernacles, in order to show his disciples in that region some of the miraculous works he's been doing in Galilee.
"Go and get glory!"
It seems like a smart PR move, doesn't it? Promote your brand, expand into new territories, keep your name recognition high with your core demographic. (I feel dirty just writing that sentence.) But any thought we might have that Jesus' brothers are genuinely his cheerleaders is refuted by John himself in v5: "For not even his brothers believed in him."
If we look again at the brothers' advice, and the context in which it is given, we can understand why John says that disbelief, not faith, explains their behaviour. John has already told us that Jesus has deliberately withdrawn from the region of Judea, knowing that if he showed himself there the Jewish leaders would arrest and kill him (7:1). In urging him to go down to Judea and show himself publicly, his brothers are pushing him towards danger and death.
As well as that, we can read the bitter sarcasm in the words they say to encourage him to head to the Feast: "no-one works in secret if he seeks to be known openly" (7:3). "We all know you love this attention, Jesus; we all know you want to be loved and feted and glorious. So go on then. Down to the big city and do your fancy tricks there." Undertone: "and if you don't come back, all the better." We can feel the jealousy for the overachieving older sibling; we can hear the echo of Joseph's brothers devising a creative way to get rid of him.
It's at this point that Jesus delivers his enigmatic statement in v6. What does it mean that Jesus' time has not yet come, but that the brothers' time is always here (more literally "always ready" or "always prepared", πάντοτέ ... ἕτοιμος)?
Getting glory now
The next verse gives the answer. The brothers urged Jesus to show himself "to the world" (7:4) - but it was precisely this world in rebellion against God which hated him and was seeking to kill him, because it did not like the way he exposed their sin. By contrast, it had no problem with Jesus' brothers. They didn't live a perfect life, which highlighted everyone else's moral failings. They didn't make uncomfortable statements about coming from God, or suggest that the only way to God was through faith in them. They could go up to Judea any time they liked. They would face no opposition, and they might even get glory, especially if they continued with their sarcastic denunciation of the big brother that no-one liked. Think of the delicious thrill of scandal - Jesus exposed by his own brothers. It would be the inside celebrity scoop of the year!
In other words, now is the time of glory for the brothers. Unrepentantly sinful, wedded to the ideas of the world, mocking God and his Son Jesus - any time they want approval for that, they only need to ask. As Don Carson (although he differs slightly on the interpretation of this verse) puts it:
"Their alignment with 'the world' means they know nothing of God's agenda. They do not listen to his word, do not recognise it when it comes, and cannot perceive the Word incarnate before them. They are divorced from God's kairos, his divine appointments, and so any time will do."
D. A. Carson, The Gospel According to John, 308.
The chat show sofa and the publisher's advance will always lie waiting and ready to hear more about how Jesus isn't really who he's cracked up to be; or how the real Jesus isn't actually that interested in telling us our works are evil. In this time, when the rebellious world holds sway, all who go with the world's rejection of Jesus get glory now.
Getting glory later
Jesus' road to glory, however, lies in the future. Ironically, the brothers are right in one sense. It is as he goes to Jerusalem - not for this feast, which he attends secretly (7:10), but for the Passover, for which he publicly enters the capital (12:12) - that he will be glorified. And this glory comes ingloriously - through the suffering and shame of his death on the cross (12:20-24), taking the world's rebellion on himself, dying to face the punishment that world deserved, freeing those who trust in him from the world's fate and granting them eternal life (12:25).
And as Jesus says, all those who genuinely want to bear witness to him, who genuinely want him to be glorified - unlike his brothers in chapter 7 - will walk the same road and bear the same cross (12:26). As they speak the same uncomfortable message as Jesus, they will not be feted or loved; they will not win approval or praise. But they will have the joy calling people to eternal life - the same life which Jesus has gloriously won for them.
Postscript
At this point, Jesus' four brothers are sneering, contemptuous, dismissive, faithless. But at least two of them experienced complete turnarounds in their view of glory, and in their view of Jesus. Listen to what James and Jude would later conclude about the older brother they wanted to send off to his death:
My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory... Listen, my beloved brothers, has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom, which he has promised to those who love him?
James 2:1,5
Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.
Jude 24-25
As we trust in the inglorious, glorious death of Jesus, and look to his return, may the hope of his repentant brothers be ours too.