Never cast out

In John 9—where this week’s Gospel reading comes from—Jesus heals a man born blind. Then, because of his association with Jesus, he's “cast out” of the Synagogue (the Jews having previously decided that this would be the punishment for anyone confessing Jesus as Messiah, we’re told). For Jews in the first century this was a crushing situation ultimately resulting in, if not recanted, complete excommunication (no community, no employment, no business dealings) and a loss of the Jewish exemption from Roman Emperor Worship. The result was destitution at best, and at worst, imprisonment and eventual execution.

This is, in part, what makes Jesus’ words in John 6:37 so resonant, “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.”

The words rendered “never” in this passage—literally “not not” in Greek—are magnificent. Whereas in English we’d read this as a double negative, the second “not” negating the first, in biblical Greek it’s an “emphatic negation”—the second “not” radically intensifying the first. This makes “not not” more akin to, “never ever ever ever ever… (ad infinitum)”. Radically emphatic, wouldn’t you say?