8 times I Am
John 8.54 – 58
Dr. Matthew M. Fry

As we continue to experience The Word of the Lord together, Let us Pray. Lord, Open our hearts and minds by the power of your Holy Spirit, that, as the Scriptures are read and Your Word Proclaimed, we may hear with joy what you have to say to us today. Amen.

There are 7 famous sayings in the Gospel of John where Jesus says “I am.” For the good part of the summer, I plan to take each of those 7 sayings, like, “I am the resurrection and the life,” and preach on that saying.

But, because I am the way I am, always on the watch for that which is not obvious, we’ll start with the one that is outside of those 7. It is found chronologically in the middle of the 7, but is usually not included because it is not like the others. By the way, for those of you who like trivia, especially those of you who go to Montreat and like Trivia, who like to answer trivia questions on Friday nights, points will be awarded to those who can remember all 7 I am statements, and the 8^th one, as found in chapter 8, today.

So, hear now The Word of the Lord as it comes to us in the Gospel of John. Listen.

John 8.54-58. ³¹Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; ³²and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”  ³³They answered him, “We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean by saying, ‘You will be made free’?”

³⁴Jesus answered them, “Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. ³⁵The slave does not have a permanent place in the household; the son has a place there forever. ³⁶So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed. ³⁷I know that you are descendants of Abraham; yet you look for an opportunity to kill me, because there is no place in you for my word. ³⁸I declare what I have seen in the Father’s presence; as for you, you should do what you have heard from the Father.”

³⁹They answered him, “Abraham is our father.” Jesus said to them, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing what Abraham did, ⁴⁰but now you are trying to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. This is not what Abraham did. ⁴¹You are indeed doing what your father does.” They said to him, “We are not illegitimate children; we have one father, God himself.”  ⁴²Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and now I am here. I did not come on my own, but he sent me. ⁴³Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot accept my word. ⁴⁴You are from your father the devil, and you choose to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. ⁴⁵But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me. ⁴⁶Which of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me?  ⁴⁷Whoever is from God hears the words of God. The reason you do not hear them is that you are not from God.” ⁴⁸The Jews answered him, “Are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and have a demon?”  ⁴⁹Jesus answered, “I do not have a demon; but I honor my Father, and you dishonor me. ⁵⁰Yet I do not seek my own glory; there is one who seeks it and he is the judge. ⁵¹Very truly, I tell you, whoever keeps my word will never see death.”  ⁵²The Jews said to him, “Now we know that you have a demon. Abraham died, and so did the prophets; yet you say, ‘Whoever keeps my word will never taste death.’  ⁵³Are you greater than our father Abraham, who died? The prophets also died. Who do you claim to be?”  ⁵⁴Jesus answered, “If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father who glorifies me, he of whom you say, ‘He is our God,’ ⁵⁵though you do not know him. But I know him; if I would say that I do not know him, I would be a liar like you. But I do know him and I keep his word. ⁵⁶Your ancestor Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day; he saw it and was glad.”  ⁵⁷Then the Jews said to him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?” ⁵⁸Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, before Abraham was, I am.”  ⁵⁹So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.

The Grass Withers, The Flower Falls, but The Word of The Lord endures forever…Thanks be to God.

Especially in the context of John’s gospel, which starts with the words, “In the beginning was The Word, and The Word was with God, and The Word was God,” the declaration of “before Abraham was, I am” sounds a little redundant. We could draw back to the meaning of the time reference. To Jesus, part of the divine three in one, time is irrelevant. So there is this classic sense of the theology of the gospel of John, where God is above time and simultaneously saturates all time and being.

Or we could pause at the part where Jesus uses the divine name for God, I Am. Granted, the New Testament is written in Greek, and Jesus was very likely speaking in the vernacular language of the day and time, Aramaic, so technically, Jesus does not use the same word that is found in Exodus when Moses asks for God’s name and is told, “Yahweh. My name is Yahweh, meaning I Am.” But I believe that both Jesus as well as the writer of the Gospel of John knew the parallels used across those language barriers. We could give much more attention to the illusion to the divine name here.

But what we are going to do, instead, is to look at the context from which the statement comes. The time distance between Jesus and Abraham is about the same as the time distance between us and Jesus. Too often, I think about anyone that comes from Biblical times as pretty close to each other on the old timeline. But calling upon the name of Abraham is more than just politicians calling on the name of Ronald Reagan or of JFK or of Lincoln. It would be like a politician calling upon the name of Constantine or of Caesar. To understand why Jesus would do this, to call upon the timeless nature of God as well as to invoke and imply the divine name, we must understand what was going on.

Jesus was involved in a heated debate with the Judeans. They have been pushing harder and harder as chapter 8 moves on, being more and more aggressive, to the point where they pick up stones to throw at him. Their aggression passes the line from intellectual confrontation to physical confrontation. This is a tense scene. The Judeans are ready to take whatever Jesus says and use it as evidence against him. They seem almost to be baiting him to say something they would think of as blasphemous. They mock him for his comment about Abraham. “Thou aren’t even 50eth years old. Doest thou havest a time travel machine in thy carpenters shed? Lambda Omicron Lambda, which is Greek for Lol.” So Jesus drives home the point he has been trying to make for the whole chapter, that God is operating in and through Jesus in a unique manner, to summon people to a genuine and authentic relationship to God through Jesus.

Jesus is so aware of God with him that it is natural for him to speak of the union between himself and the Father. The crowd reacted as predictably as many have reacted since. Originally the reaction was to accuse him of blasphemy and threaten him with stoning. Ever since, Jesus has been accused of nonsense. “How can someone be both divine and human?” “Oh that Jesus, he is just a compilation of many other stories. Jesus is just a legend.”

So here’s where I think we should glean some knowledge for our day, and into our future. It has been, in my experience, the desire for us to associate in this story with Jesus. He is misunderstood, as are his current day followers. In the story, Jesus is oppressed by the powers that be, as we have wanted to claim as well. But he holds true, has the power to withstand even through the threats of imminent death, as we want our faith to grow strong enough withstand.

Here’s why I want us to look at it a little bit differently. The Judeans who push Jesus, the ones who misunderstand him, oppress him and threaten him, are the Jews. Hence why the name Judeans sounds so close. These are the religious people. This is the voice of the religious culture. God is doing something in the world, and guess what; it doesn’t fit into the preconceived notions of the temple going people. So they reject it, which is viewed by the writer of this gospel to be somewhat of a mistake.

So here’s what I think. I think the religious people of the day have a long and storied history of taking whatever new thing that God is doing in the world, whatever new way God has of incarnating with the world, and pushing it down, discouraging it, and threatening it, because it isn’t familiar.

Folks, at this point in history, as in every point throughout history, God is doing a new thing in a new manner to keep incarnation in the world fresh and alive. Do we believe in the Son who, while in the midst of doing new things, still today says, “before your old traditions were, ... I am?”