18 Pentecost
John 8:48-59 
Have you ever been travelling or out to eat at a restaurant and bumped into a famous person? What did you do? If you got a chance to speak to them, what did you say? When I was young the most common response was to ask for an autograph. These days, the request is usually for a ‘selfie.’
You might think that if you bumped into a famous person and were able to say a few words to them that you might ask a question about their latest movie, or one of their famous feats on the sporting field, their last book or recent newspaper editorial, or their life in politics, etc. But hardly anyone ever asks any of these things.
Our first thought instead is usually this: I need proof that I really met them. Hence the old form of the autograph, and these days the even more convincing ‘selfie.’
Perhaps this has always been the nature of people. In the Old Testament reading for this Sunday we heard part of the account of Moses meeting God for the first time at the burning bush. And does Moses ask any of those famous questions that people always say they would like to ask God if they had a chance? Of course not. He straight away thinks that people will not believe he has really met and spoke with God. So he asks for some kind of proof. And in that day and culture, before the selfie and the autograph, if you met and really knew a person, they would tell you their name. Their true name. The one that had power. The one that not everyone would know. The name that defined who they were.
So that’s what Moses did.
Moses tells God that the people might not believe God had spoken with him unless he had proof. ‘What if they ask me what your name is?’ he said.
Then we have the famous passage where God says, ‘I am who I am,’ and tell them that ‘I am sent you.’ It seems to be in part an explanation of the meaning of Yahweh, the name by which the patriarchs had known God, and which the people would have themselves known. The name Yahweh, used in this text but translated, according to custom, simply as LORD, is most often taken to mean ‘he who will be,’ or something similar. In this case, God’s own explanation is his name is not simply the one who will be, but the one who is, the ‘I am’. The one who simply is and who needs no other explanation. And it is the kind of information that Moses could only get from God himself. It is the name behind the name.
This is the one and only time in the Hebrew scriptures that God names himself. In subsequent Jewish history, the name ‘I am’ is held as the most holy and the most important name for God, because it is the name that God himself gave when asked his name by Moses.
This account of Moses meeting God at the burning bush is the background to Jesus’ dramatic statement in today’s Gospel reading. ‘Before Abraham was, I am.’
For the best part of two chapters in John’s Gospel we have found Jesus teaching in the temple during the Feast of Booths and arguing with the Pharisees. And the theme of this teaching and his arguments with the Pharisees continues to come back to the question of Jesus’s identity. Jesus tells the people that he is from above and that if they know him, then they know the Father. He has told them he is living water, the light of the world, and the truth will set them free. When the Pharisees, after all these statements, asked him ‘So who are you?’ Jesus responded by saying, ‘Why do I even bother talking to you.’ How could he make it any clearer to them?
Then the discussion turns to Abraham. We saw in last week’s text that Jesus once again argued circles around the Pharisees. So they changed the subject, or rather, simply resorted to slander and accusations. ‘You must be a Samaritan and demon-possessed,’ they claim. Jesus doesn’t respond to the accusation of being a Samaritan. It was irrelevant. And a trap. If he doesn’t deny it then he must be a Samaritan heretic, but if he strenuously denies it, as if being a Samaritan is a terrible thing, then what of the woman at the well and the other Samaritans he has taught and who have believed in him. So Jesus simply points out that he is not demon possessed, and then takes the subject back to Abraham.
Abraham died, he points out, but whoever believes my words will never see death.
Now the Pharisees think they have him. This could be a charge that could stick. ‘Do you think you are greater than Abraham? Just who are you claiming to be?’
It is the second time they have asked Jesus directly who he is. Again, Jesus tells them. But this time his answer is so direct and shocking that it leaves no room for misunderstanding.
He says Abraham, who they are proud to have as an ancestor, looked forward to his coming.
To this the Pharisees respond in mockery. You talk as if you knew Abraham. He lived many centuries ago and you are clearly not even yet fifty years old.
Then Jesus makes the strongest statement in the Gospels about who he is.
‘Before Abraham was,’ he said, ‘I am.’
There could be no mistaking his meaning.
A bit earlier in his discussion with them he has said ‘You will die in your sins unless you believe that I am,’ and again, ‘When you see the Son of Man lifted up, then you will realise that I am.’ (8:24,28). But these words could perhaps be understood as short for ‘I am the one’. But this latest statement leaves no such room for any alternate understanding.
Jesus was claiming not just to be the promised Messiah, but the Creator himself.
This is the moment John has been building to over the past two chapters.
It is the dramatic conclusion to the long dialogue of Jesus with the Pharisees in the temple. And lest the reader thinks Jesus’ odd phrase, ‘Before Abrahem was, I am’ could be understood in some other way, we are told the Pharisees immediately take up stones to throw at Jesus, executing him for blasphemy.
They understood exactly what Jesus was claiming. They knew well the story of God revealing his name to Moses.
But Jesus slips away from them and leaves the temple.
This final line in the chapter is amazing in itself. Jesus has just revealed that he is the Creator God himself, come to them in flesh. He had been with them discussing who he is in the very temple they have built for him. And now, God leaves the temple.
It is a very symbolic statement. Jesus chooses the temple, built to honour and worship him, to reveal in the most dramatic and unmistakable way possible who he is.
Moses had many centuries earlier asked God for a name that he could give to prove to the people he had really spoken to God. That name was ‘I am’. The name was never repeated in the biblical account. It was never used to validate the identity of the God who spoke to Moses. Until now.
Now God chooses to use the name he gave to Moses. He chooses to use it in the very temple built to honour and worship him. And when he does, the religious leaders try to execute him for blasphemy.
So God leaves his temple.
The reader of John’s Gospel will not be surprised to learn who Jesus is. We were told in the very opening of John’s Gospel that Jesus, the Word, was in the beginning with God and was God, and came to dwell among us. We have been shown through the miracles Jesus performs and things he says that he is God in human flesh. Jesus has said it many times in indirect ways. Now he states it bluntly.
The Pharisees and high priests finally get to meet the God they worship- and in the very temple in which they worship him.
Have you every wondered what you would do if you met God face to face? We might have some big question we had long wanted to ask. Some of us have a whole list of big questions! We might simply want to fall down in worship. But the response of the Pharisees and priests is a shocker. They try to kill him. They had not been accept that Jesus, being from Galilee, could be they Messiah. And they certainly could not accept, however many miraculous signs he performed, that Jesus is God in flesh, come to them.
So they try to kill him for his audacious claim.
But at least they react. They did not ignore Jesus’ claim.
So back to us. What do we do when we discover that God has come in flesh to live among us? What do we do when we learn that Jesus is the creator himself? We might judge the Pharisees and priests for their reaction, but many of us simply shrug and say, ‘Well, that’s interesting,’ we think, and head off to whatever we have to do next as if nothing unusual has happened.
Do we miss the life-changing and world-changing nature of what Jesus has just revealed to us? Do we miss the significance of God coming and actually dwelling among us as if were an everyday occurrence?
This is the challenge put to each one of us. We have followed the story in John’s Gospel thus far. We have seen who Jesus is through what he says and in what he does. We have been told by John form the beginning who Jesus is.
Now, we hear it from Jesus himself.
So how will we respond to Jesus’ dramatic revelation, ‘before Abraham was, I am.’
How will we respond to meeting God himself in Jesus Christ.
Will we reach for stone like the Pharisees? Will we reach for our autograph pads or our phones for a selfie? Will we pull out of our pocket our list of questions to ask God?
Or will we respond like Thomas does at the end of John’s Gospel when he finally realizes who he has been spending the last three years with. Will we say in awe and worship, ‘My lord and my God,’ and devote our lives to following him?
Amen.
Pastor Mark Worthing.
Port Macquarie.