Tuesday, March 31, 2020, the Fifth Week in Lent

I was called to the hospital this morning to give Last Rites to a man who was drawing his last breaths.  He did not have the corona virus, but the hospital was enforcing serious cautionary protocols and it took some time for me to be cleared so I was allowed inside.  There was hardly anyone in the hallways, and there were a very large number of empty patient rooms.  I got the impression that the hospital is preparing for an influx of patients with the virus.  The unconscious patient died just after he had received the Last Rites. (He did not have the corona virus).

John 8:21-30

Jesus said to the Pharisees:

“I am going away and you will look for me, but you will die in your sin. Where I am going you cannot come.” So the Jews said, “He is not going to kill himself, is he, because he said, ‘Where I am going you cannot come’?” He said to them, “You belong to what is below, I belong to what is above. You belong to this world, but I do not belong to this world. That is why I told you that you will die in your sins. For if you do not believe that I AM, you will die in your sins.” So they said to him, “Who are you?” Jesus said to them, “What I told you from the beginning. I have much to say about you in condemnation. But the one who sent me is true, and what I heard from him I tell the world.” They did not realize that he was speaking to them of the Father. So Jesus said to them, “When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I AM, and that I do nothing on my own, but I say only what the Father taught me. The one who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone, because I always do what is pleasing to him.” Because he spoke this way, many came to believe in him.

Today’s reading from St. John’s Gospel features some intriguing grammar, both in the Greek and in English translation.  Let’s look at, “For if you do not believe that I AM, you will die in your sins.”  The two words “I am” are capitalized in this version because Jesus seems to be giving the Hebrew name that God gives himself, which we usually translate into English as “I am” or “I am who am” — the word is a form of the Hebrew verb “to be”.  Now, let’s read this sentence without the capitalization and our presuppositions: “When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I am.”  This does not make much sense in English and it does not make sense in the Greek that John writes in.  It sounds like Jesus did not finish his sentence.  The Jews listening to Jesus were struck in the same way, and they respond, “Who are you?” This is a very understandable question if Jesus is speaking to them in Greek or even in Aramaic.  But if Jesus was speaking the name of God, he could only have used the Hebrew word for it.  And so we might imagine Jesus conversing with the Jews in the common Aramaic language, and in the middle of it he uses the Hebrew word for God, which the Jews misinterpret as Jesus simply using the verb “to be”, or not understanding the word at all.  One possibility is that these Jews had never heard God’s name before.  While it was written in the Torah, when it was read aloud in the synagogue, the reader would simply use the word for “Lord” instead.  Only the high priest was permitted to speak the name of God, and then only in the holy of holies. In the temple.  If the Jews had understood that Jesus had not only spoken God’s name, but applied it to himself, they would have stoned him on the spot.  

The conclusion that we may draw from these considerations is that Jesus is planting seeds in the minds of the people that will have a chance to cultivate with deeper thought and discussion among themselves.  They do not understand what he means when he says, “Where I am going you cannot come.”  They certainly would not be able to understand what he he meant by, “I do not belong to this world”, and, “When I am lifted up”.  This begs the question, Why does Jesus talk in this difficult way?  Why was he always speaking in parables, usually leaving the meaning unclear?  Even the Apostles had a hard time with his sayings.  Later, when he is speaking at the Last Supper, they will say, “Behold, now you are speaking plainly and are not speaking a proverb.”  The answer, indeed, proves the Lord’s divinity as well as any of his miracles.  The truth about Jesus is ultimately beyond the comprehension of any human or angelic being.  He is speaking of eternal realities and putting them in a human language.  If his words were easy to understand, he would not be God.  Our languages have a capacity for what is human and of the world.  They strain when we try to use them to talk about God, and we wind up having to invent terms like “transubstantiation”.  This is why the Jews were forbidden to speak the name God gave himself, because then it would seem that God himself was comprehensible.  If we can understand God, then it is not him.

So let us worship with all our beings this One “who dwells in unapproachable light” (1 Timothy 1, 16), who promises a reward which “no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor which has entered into the mind of man, to those who love him” (cf. 1 Corinthians 2, 9).