"I AM."

Homily for April 9^th, 2019: John 8:21-30.

          “Many came to believe in him,” we just heard. Others, however, did not. As he nears his arrest, trial, and crucifixion, Jesus speaks with increasing urgency. “If you do not believe that I AM, you will die in your sins.” That sentence makes sense only if we know the story of God calling Moses, already an old man, to return to Egypt and deliver his people from slavery to the Egyptians. Moses asks what he is to say to his people when they ask who has sent him. And God responds: ‘Tell them that I AM has sent you.’ So what Jesus is saying in the gospel we just heard is that only those who believe he is the divine Son of God will have their sins forgiven.

          The gospel readings for the previous Lenten Sundays have given us reasons to believe in Jesus as God’s divine son. In the story of Jesus’ temptations on the first Sunday of Lent we saw that Jesus, though human, is also divine. In the story of his Transfiguration on the second Lenten Sunday we saw the light of his divinity breaking through the flesh of his humanity. The Sunday following brought us the story of the workers who had died unexpectedly in a recent construction accident. Their fate warned of the certainty of death and judgment. And Jesus confirmed this lesson with his story of the unfruitful fig tree, cut down because it proved unfruitful – another warning of the need to prepare for judgment.

On the Sunday following we heard Jesus’ story of the Prodigal Sun being welcomed home by his still loving and merciful father. And just two days ago, in Jesus’ story of the woman taken in adultery (for which the punishment, in Jesus’ day was death), Jesus tells us again that God forgives every sinner who repents.

          “Because he spoke this way,” today’s gospel tells us, “many came to believe in him.” In his book Jesus of Nazareth Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI writes that those who welcomed Jesus as he entered Jerusalem riding on a donkey on the first Palm Sunday “were not the same crowd that only days later would cry, “Crucify him.” That cry came, Pope Benedict writes, from “the Temple aristocracy,” a small ruling clique who felt their power threatened by Jesus’ teaching and claims – and not even all of them, as we see in the case of Nicodemus, a member of the ruling caste, but secretly Jesus’ disciple (cf. op.cit. 185f).

“Just as the Lord entered the Holy City that day on a donkey,” Pope Benedict writes, “so the Church [sees] him coming again and again in the humble form of bread and wine.” Greeting him, we are encountering the One who made us; the One who upholds us at every moment of our lives; who is always close to us, even when we stray far from him; who loves us more than we can ever imagine; who is waiting for us at the end of life’s road, to welcome us into the place he has gone ahead to prepare for us; where we shall experience not just joy but ecstasy – for we shall see God face to face.