Readings of the day: Numbers 21:4-9; Psalm 102:2-3, 16-18, 19-21; John 21:8-30
Is there not something powerful about
one of the shortest possible of complete sentences in English: I am? Has
somebody ever asked you questions about where you are going or how you are
feeling: “Are you going to see that great movie or play? Are you going for a
walk? Are you going to Mass this morning? Are you feeling alright?” And has
anybody here noticed how often we answer these kinds of questions with “I am”?
“I am” often stands for the rest of the
sentence: I am going to the movie or play or for a walk; I am feeling well,
thank you. “I am” can also be shorthand to identify us: I am a Christian; I am
a priest; a sister; a tradesperson; a scientist; an engineer; a student;
retired…
“I am” in
Scripture stands as shorthand to identify God. In our reading from John’s
Gospel today, Jesus repeatedly says to the Pharisees, “I am.” Many Pharisees,
and many of the people, believed him: Jesus was claiming to be God. Enough
people, especially of the religious authorities of Jesus’ time, thought Jesus’
claim, “I am,” to be blasphemy; a serious enough charge to have him put to
death.
“I am who I
am”: This is how God first identifies himself to Moses at the burning bush in
Exodus. Whenever the people of Israel with Moses through the desert sinned, God
gave them signs of his continued presence among them, as if to say to them
continually, “I am.” Today, although God does not say, “I am,” in our first
reading from the Book of Numbers, he sends “seraph serpents” against the
wayward people of Israel and then, at Moses’ pleading, takes them away. Both the
serpents and then the image God has Moses make of the serpent on a pole, a symbol
of forgiveness and healing, stand for the presence of God among the people: “I
am.”
Jesus picks
up on the same sign to identify himself as God in John’s Gospel: “When you lift
up the Son of Man, you will realize that I AM.” This would have been a scandal
to many of Jesus’ hearers; Jesus is taking a sign of God’s presence to refer to
his own death on a cross! He, not a serpent, will be “lifted up” to the world.
And our world
will have, and we have today, a choice: Do we look at the scandal of the cross
and turn away? We are here to worship the Christ; the one who was “lifted up”
for us; “I am.” And so we are not, at least intentionally I do not believe,
among those who count Jesus as just another blasphemer; another impostor. But
many in our culture, by word and action, at best ignore the cross: It is just
another symbol of a dated religion.
Do we not only
look at a cross and walk past it, but maybe spend some time in prayer before it
to meditate on it; give thanks for Christ’s victory over death; over our sin? How
often do we give thanks for God’s presence on the cross, Jesus Christ; “the Son
of Man… lifted up” for us? “I Am.”
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