Daily Reflection Thursday of the Fifth Week of Lent

Abraham’s life marks the beginning of our salvation history. In advanced old age, he answered God’s call to undertake an immense journey through the wilderness towards the Promised Land. He believed in the promises God made to him. Four thousand years later, we are being called as a Pilgrim People, and the promises are still being made to each one of us.
         The biblical desert was a place of passage and purification. In our own journey to the Promised Land, we must learn that God is with us at every stage of the passage, as God was with Abraham. The wilderness inside us is a place of testing, where the power of false gods is broken. It’s a place of encounter with ourselves, with our inner demons and with God. To enter it, we have to be silent and alone, leaving behind our elaborately constructed avoidance techniques, our safety nets and empty spiritual practices. It seems to me that only through making ourselves vulnerable to our own pain and fear can we make ourselves open to the experience of loving and of being loved.
         In our Gospel, the discussion about the identity of Jesus continues. Jesus makes the bold claim that whoever keeps his word will never see death. This, of course, outrages the Jews who were questioning him and nothing about his response calms them. They ask him the same question they had earlier posed to John the Baptist, “Who do you make yourself out to be?” Their relentless questioning shows how important the issue is – then and now. But instead of leading to a meeting of minds, Jesus’ arguments provoke his enemies still further.
         What enrages them most, of course, was the outrageous claim that Jesus makes, “Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham came to be, I AM.” Here Jesus claims both pre-existence and to be one with God. Claiming to be God sent his detractors over the edge to the point where they picked up stones to throw at him. In those days, of course, stoning was the punishment for blasphemy. In their view, Jesus had gone too far, and his life was now in danger.
         In this Gospel, Jesus is effectively saying: ‘If you want to see God, here I am!’  What should be a wonderful moment of revelation becomes horribly negative. May it never turn negative in our own lives but through prayer may God’s word always find a home in us.