From the responsorial psalm: “O LORD, hear my prayer, and let my cry come to you. Hide not your face from me in the day of my distress. Incline your ear to me; in the day when I call, answer me speedily. O Lord, hear my prayer, and let my cry come to you.”
A reading from the holy Gospel according to John (Jn 8:21-30, today’s readings)
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.”
Twice, Jesus declares his divinity when he tells the Pharisees that he is I AM. When they ask directly who he is, he refers to the beginning of all creation, echoing the first words of Genesis and the Gospel of John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Jesus is able to tell the Pharisees that they will die in their sins if they do not believe in him because he is the Just Judge, the only one capable of judging who goes to eternal life and eternal condemnation. The Pharisees fail to see that Jesus is the Son of God, but Jesus tells them that they will know who he is when they “lift up the Son of Man” in the crucifixion as Jesus perfectly accomplishes the will of the Father. Always doing what is pleasing to the Father, even in that moment of abandonment, Jesus is not alone. Neither are we when we believe in him and come into his kingdom.
Father in heaven, help me see in Jesus’ treatment of the Pharisees an invitation to believe in him. Even as he tells them they will die in their sins, he invites them to come to him by saying, “If you do not believe that I AM, you will die in your sins.” Just as Moses listened to you in obedience by lifting up the bronze serpent so that the Israelites might have life, Jesus is lifted high on the cross so that believing, we have the hope of eternal life through his saving death and resurrection. God, nurture the little faith I have and let me see that it is your gift. The verse before the Gospel reminds me how I depend on you for every good gift: “The seed is the word of God, Christ is the sower; all who come to him will live for ever.”
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.