Scripture: John 7:14-31 (NIV)

Not until halfway through the festival did Jesus go up to the temple courts and begin to teach. The Jews there were amazed and asked, “How did this man get such learning without having been taught?”

Jesus answered, “My teaching is not my own. It comes from the one who sent me. Anyone who chooses to do the will of God will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own. Whoever speaks on their own does so to gain personal glory, but he who seeks the glory of the one who sent him is a man of truth; there is nothing false about him. Has not Moses given you the law? Yet not one of you keeps the law. Why are you trying to kill me?”

“You are demon-possessed,” the crowd answered. “Who is trying to kill you?”

Jesus said to them, “I did one miracle, and you are all amazed. Yet, because Moses gave you circumcision (though actually it did not come from Moses, but from the patriarchs), you circumcise a boy on the Sabbath. Now if a boy can be circumcised on the Sabbath so that the law of Moses may not be broken, why are you angry with me for healing a man’s whole body on the Sabbath? Stop judging by mere appearances, but instead judge correctly.”

At that point some of the people of Jerusalem began to ask, “Isn’t this the man they are trying to kill? Here he is, speaking publicly, and they are not saying a word to him. Have the authorities really concluded that he is the Messiah? But we know where this man is from; when the Messiah comes, no one will know where he is from.”

Then Jesus, still teaching in the temple courts, cried out, “Yes, you know me, and you know where I am from. I am not here on my own authority, but he who sent me is true. You do not know him, but I know him because I am from him and he sent me.”

At this they tried to seize him, but no one laid a hand on him, because his hour had not yet come. Still, many in the crowd believed in him. They said, “When the Messiah comes, will he perform more signs than this man?”

We really know nothing about Yoda that we don’t see on screen.  Even before the Disney recodification of Star Wars canon, the only speculation we had about his early life came from a “Design an Alien” competition for Star Wars Galaxy Magazine.  According to Wookieepedia, Yoda left his home planet (whatever that is) and wound up running across Jedi Master N’Kata Del Gormo, who took Yoda as his padawan.  Of course, none of that is officially true now and the mystery of just how Yoda got so wise and knowledgeable remains.

Was it part of his species?  After all, there was Yaddle who also sat on the Jedi Council and seemed to be another of his kind.  Not just any Jedi sits on the Council.  We haven’t seen enough of The Child in The Mandalorian to know if it is genetic, though apparently the Force power is.  So maybe they are just born with an innate knowledge and understanding of The Force.

Still, you’d have to think that Yoda learned from someone.  As he says in The Last Jedi, “we are what they grow beyond” so he probably exceeded whatever teachings he received as a young being, but someone must have taught him the basics, guided him through tough situations, and trained him in the way he needed to go.

We need that, obviously.  Left to our own devices, we’d never figure out how to feed ourselves, much less learn things about our world and our faith.  Often it is our parents that let us know about Christ but not always.  However, people rarely come to faith without some sort of teaching, without some sort of instruction of what the faith is and who Jesus is.

Which is probably why the people in our Scripture today were so confused.  They were used to knowing a rabbi’s teaching lineage.  This rabbi learned from Rabbi X who learned from Rabbi Y.  This one from Rabbi B who learned from Rabbi A.  You could understand their teaching because you knew what came before and how they had come to be where they were at that time.

They didn’t understand that Jesus’s teaching came from the Source.  He knew God’s Will because He was God.  He knew what the Scriptures meant because He was there when they were written.  Make sure that your knowledge comes from Him and what you pass down is in line with His teachings!