Thursday in the Fifth Week of Lent, March 21, 2024

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.

Throughout John 8, 12-59 the Lord Jesus strives to convince the Jews, even those who had followed him, that he was not the Messiah that the Pharisees had told them was going to restore Israel but that he was something very different instead: the Son of God.  Those Jews who had followed him cling to the idea that he was their political savior even after he denies this is the case.  For them, there could be no other Messiah.  They even reject his teaching that they need to be freed from their slavery to sin.  They are like  modern secular people who cannot conceive of themselves as sinners in need of the forgiveness of God.  As for the proof the Lord Jesus points to, the testimony of his Father as seen in his miracles, they simply ignore it.  

The Jews even misquote him to his face.  Jesus says, “Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever keeps my word will never see death.”  The Jews misquote him as saying, “Whoever keeps my word will never taste death.”  When Jesus says “see” death he means that the one who believes in him will never see death as the end of human existence or of his own personal existence.  For the believer, death loses its power and is no longer seen as a threat: it is the entrance into eternal life.  When the Jews say “taste” death, they mean “to experience” it.  That is not what Jesus says nor what he means.  To “taste death” can also be understood as to taste its bitterness, for it is bitter to those who live only for pleasure.  

“Who do you make yourself out to be?”  That is, If you are not the Messiah about whom the Pharisees have taught, then who are you?  It is as though they had never heard him preach of the need to repent or about how to live so as to please God.  He has to be what they want him to be, and if he is not, then he is nothing to them.  “I glorify myself, my glory is worth nothing; but it is my Father who glorifies me.”  Jesus says, You will not believe what I say, but look at the evidence.  Look at the miracles.  What do they tell you?

“Abraham your father rejoiced to see my day; he saw it and was glad.”  “Abraham”, whom you claim as your father, though he is not because he was a man of great faith and trust in God and your are not.  Abraham looked forward to the day when his descendants would fill the land the Lord  had promised him, and in this way looked forward to the fulfillment of all God’s will for them.  “Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham came to be, I AM.”  The last two words in this translation are capitalized to indicate that Jesus was using the name God had given himself when speaking to Moses out of the burning bush.  It was so sacred that it was not to be spoken or even fully written out.  Jesus explicitly declares himself to be God in this way.  

The violent reaction of the Jews show that they understand what he is doing, and that they will not have him to be their God.  A much more sensible reaction would have been to ask him directly, “If you are God, what do you wish?  Why are you here?”  But they did not want to know the answers to these questions.