5th Week of Lent, Thursday, Mar 30
Genesis 17:3-9 / John 8:51-59
God covenants Abraham; “I will be your God.”
During his presidency, Jimmy Carter, a devout Christian, hosted a summit meeting at Camp David. It brought together Anwar Sadat of Egypt, a devout Muslim, and Menachim Begin of Israel, a devout Jew. All three men claimed Abraham as their common father in the faith. Muslims trace their faith ancestry back to Abraham through Ishmael. Jews and Christians trace their faith ancestry back through Isaac.
If the covenant that God made with Abraham is to bear fruit, Muslims, Jews, and Christians must begin treating each other as brothers of a common father, rather than as rivals.
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What is our own personal attitude toward Muslims and Jews? Do we view them more as brothers than rivals? “Trying to build the brotherhood of man without the fatherhood of God is like trying to build a wheel without a hub." Irene Dunne
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A small-time, virtually unknown politician in a campaign speech boasts that he is a better man than Mahatma Gandhi. What is the reaction of the crowd? Some are indignant at his presumption. Others simply reject him as a fool. Still others are so enraged that they want to run him out of town.
Jesus in today's gospel was not giving a campaign speech, for he was not running for election. He had been chosen and sent by God. But his claim to be greater than Abraham was, in the estimation of the Jews, even wilder than the politician's boast of being greater than Mahatma Gandhi, the father of the country of India . Abraham was indeed the father of the Jews, as well as of all the Semitic peoples, a man of faith, devotion, and courage. And yet the claim of Jesus to be greater than Abraham was no vain boast. The Jews may have thought of him as small-town stuff, but he emphatically states that he is divine by declaring, “Before Abraham came to be, I AM.” They may have looked upon him as virtually unknown, but Jesus was known and chosen by his Father to fulfil all of the covenant promises made to Abraham, who from heaven rejoiced to see Jesus coming into the world.
God promised Abraham, “I will maintain my covenant with you and your descendants after you throughout the ages as an everlasting pact, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you.” Jesus came in fulfilment of this covenant, a greater fulfilment than even Abraham could ever have dreamed possible. We as Christians are the beneficiaries of that covenant and its fulfilment. How right and just it is for us to give thanks and praise to God in this Mass in which we renew our covenant with God in the blood of Jesus.
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As we read today's gospel and if we remember what were the gospel passages for this week, we may get a certain feeling of frustration. Because it can be quite frustrating to hear the "Jews" (as the gospel called them) always getting into an argument with Jesus. Yet, it must also be said that the "Jews" themselves were frustrated too because they just could not understand what Jesus was talking about.
There was this underlying frustration of not understanding as well as misunderstanding. It was this frustration that led them to throw stones at Jesus, and the frustration boiled over to become a hatred that eventually made them to nail Jesus to the cross.
As we come to the 5th week of Lent, we too might be having some feelings of frustration. We might have felt that Lent had passed too quickly, that we have not done anything spiritually worthy till now, and that we do not have any "feeling" for Lent.
So we may be frustrated and disappointed with ourselves for having a fruitless Lent and that we have not done anything much for God.
Yet let us take heart in the 1st reading. It is not so much what we can do for God but rather what God has done for us. Through Abraham, God has made a Covenant with us in perpetuity and Jesus is the expression of this covenant. Jesus is the "I AM". And no matter what we have not done, God will still be our God and we will still be His people. Let us take consolation in that and keep faithful to Jesus for the rest of Lent.
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Jesus as “I am”
The conflict now reaches the flashpoint and boils over when Jesus claims ontological priority and eternal existence before Abraham, by appropriating the name of God to himself: “Before Abraham was, I am.” At the Feast of the Tabernacles where God’s Name was invoked, it was easier for people to associate Jesus’ self-referential, present tense use of “I am” with the “I am” in Exodus (3:14) and Isaiah (43:13). Ironically, the very same crowd that denied knowledge of anyone wanting to kill Jesus (cf. Jn 7:20), now takes up stones to kill him by the prescribed penalty for blasphemy (cf. Lev. 24: 16, 23). In doing so, they prove Jesus right: that they were descendants of Abraham only in flesh, but not in spirit. For, in the First Reading, we find Abraham prostrating before Yahweh acknowledging Him as his God, whereas his descendants take up stones to kill the same God.
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Prayer
Lord our God, through Jesus we know that you care for children and the young. As we celebrate today John Baptist de la Salle, a great educator especially of the poor among them, we pray you that the Christian community may be greatly concerned about giving a worthwhile future to them. May they learn to live according to the values of the gospel. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen
