Thursday in the Fifth Week of Lent, April 7, 2022

John 8:51-59

Jesus said to the Jews: “Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever keeps my word will never see death.” So the Jews said to him, “Now we are sure that you are possessed. Abraham died, as did the prophets, yet you say, ‘Whoever keeps my word will never taste death.’ Are you greater than our father Abraham, who died? Or the prophets, who died? Who do you make yourself out to be?” Jesus answered, “If I glorify myself, my glory is worth nothing; but it is my Father who glorifies me, of whom you say, ‘He is our God.’ You do not know him, but I know him. And if I should say that I do not know him, I would be like you a liar. But I do know him and I keep his word. Abraham your father rejoiced to see my day; he saw it and was glad.” So the Jews said to him, “You are not yet fifty years old and you have seen Abraham?” Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham came to be, I AM.” So they picked up stones to throw at him; but Jesus hid and went out of the temple area.

The Lord Jesus concludes his teaching to his followers and the Pharisees.  He is trying to convince him that his kingdom is not of this world, and that he came to deliver them from the devil and sin, not from the Romans.  The people, however, steadfastly misinterpret even his plain speech about who he is and what he came to do.  Some scholars have speculated on whether Jesus was a zealot, a member of a group of fanatics set on the liberation of Israel, but a close reading of the Gospel according to St. John makes it seem rather like many of his disciples were zealots.  One of his Apostles, Simon, is even named a zealot by the Evangelists.

“Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever keeps my word will never see death.”  The Lord makes a promise here.  Now, the Greek word translated here as “keeps” can mean “observe”, as in “obey”, as well as “to guard”.  The Lord is saying that the one who both obeys his commandments and perseveres in his faith until death, despite persecution, will never see death.  “Now we are sure that you are possessed. Abraham died, as did the prophets.”  We find the Lord accused of being possessed in all the Gospels.  But we might wonder about what the Lord means here when he says that those who keep his word will never see death.  It is true that he is speaking of the death of the soul in hell, but the phrase he uses, “never see death” is an interesting one.  The Greek word translated as “see” also has the meaning of “experience”.  But we can think of it this way: the true follower of Jesus shall not “taste” or “see” the bitterness or the horror of death.  He will die, as all humans must, but his death will be a true passing from this world into the next, and not the catastrophic ending dreaded by unbelievers.

“Who do you make yourself out to be?”  They have asked this question a number of times by now but they will not accept the Lord’s answer.  “If I glorify myself, my glory is worth nothing; but it is my Father who glorifies me.”  The Lord offers this as a prelude to his final answer to their question, one which the people will not be able to misinterpret.  The “glory” the Lord speaks of here is the miracles he has performed through the will of the Father.  “Abraham your father rejoiced to see my day; he saw it and was glad.”  The Lord probably said “your father” in a way that indicated his disdain for their claim that they were the children of Abraham.  The verse itself is majestic.  We think back to Abraham, who lived fifteen hundred or more years before the Birth of the Lord, and how he foresaw the Lord’s “day”, and rejoiced in it.  We see the Desire of the nations and the Prince of peace standing before his creatures and teaching them.  God walks on earth as once before he walked in the Garden of Eden.  Then he came to punish.  Now he comes to save.

“You are not yet fifty years old and you have seen Abraham?”  This is an important verse in that it tends to confirm St. Luke’s statement about the  Lord’s age (cf. Luke 3, 23).  These people have heard the Lord tell them that he was God’s Son, but they had chosen not to understand what that meant.  “Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham came to be, I AM.”  This is perhaps the most beautiful verse in the Holy Scriptures.  It is succinct and powerful.  It is pure revelation.  Now, the Lord was speaking to the Jews in Aramaic at this point.  If he had said “I am” in Aramaic, they would have waited for him to finish his sentence.  But he says this in Hebrew, and this is the name God called himself to Moses at the burning bush.  No one was allowed to speak it except for the high priest in the holy of holies in the Temple.  The Lord Jesus, in speaking the Name and using it to refer to himself, outraged the Jews, who immediately sought to stone him.  “But Jesus hid and went out of the temple area.”  The Evangelists tell us of how the Lord was nearly killed on numerous occasions.  This reinforces for us the fact that he was crucified only because he himself willed it.  If he had not, he could have escaped again.  But he does not now depart from Jerusalem.  He remains because he still has work to do there.