An interesting feature of John’s Gospel is the number
of times the phrase “I am” occurs particularly from Jesus. It is a phrase loaded in meaning. Linguistically, in Greek we can say “I am”
just by using the first person singular form of the verb “to be” which in Greek
is simply “eimi”. If you then wish to
add emphasis to yourself, you add the first person singular pronoun “ego” (from
which we get our word “ego”) so that it is “ego eimi” or “I am”. Jesus makes some fairly significant “ego
eimi” or “I am” claims throughout John’s Gospel.
Many scholars will say that Jesus’ use of “ego aimi”
or “I
am” is his claiming to be God. They say
this because the name that God gave for himself to Moses at the burning bush was
the first person singular form of the Hebrew verb “to be”, which in Hebrew it
is pronounced “Yahweh”. So, when Jesus
says “I am” he is saying “I am Yahweh.”
Here’s a few of Jesus’ “I am” statements. First, when he is conversing with the
Samaritan woman at Jacob’s Well he tells her that the time is soon to come that
the true worshippers will worship the Father in Spirit and Truth. The Father
seeks such as these to worship him because he is Spirit and must be worshipped
in Spirit and Truth. She then says that
the Messiah is coming and he will proclaim all things to us. We translate what Jesus says “I am he, the
one who is speaking to you.” More
literally Jesus says “I am, the One who speaks to
you.” When you push into what Jesus is
literally saying there it is “I am Yahweh.
I am speaking personally to you.”
This is his claim to be the Word of God become flesh, more or less.
Next, we have some more familiar “I
am” statements from Jesus. “I
am the Bread of Life. Whoever comes to
me will never be hungry; whoever believes in me will never be thirsty” (6:35). “I am the living bread that came down
from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread
will live forever” (6:51). “I
am the light of the world. Whoever
follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life”
(8:12). “When you have lifted up the Son
of Man, then you will realize that I am” (8:28). “Very truly I tell you, before Abraham was, I
am” (8:51). “I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved…”
(10:9). “I am the good
shepherd. The good shepherd lays down
his life for the sheep” (10:11). “I
am the resurrection and the life. Those
who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and
believes in me will never die” (11:25).
“I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me”
(14:6). “I am the True Vine, and
my Father is the Vinedresser’ (15:1). “I
am the Vine, you are the branches. Those
who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do
nothing” (15:5).
This brings us to the arrest scene. Judas, the Temple police, and a detachment of
Roman soldiers (maybe as many as 600) come to arrest Jesus in the garden. Jesus asks who they are looking for and they
say “Jesus of Nazareth.” Jesus answers,
“I
am” and they inexplicably fall to the ground.
There should be no doubt who is in authority at this moment. The military of the strongest empire in the
world at the time has no power over him, but rather are forced to lay at his
feet. Peter drew his sword and wounded
the slave of the High Priest. Jesus
makes him put it away and heals the wound.
Under his authority there will be no war! Jesus lets them arrest him and the disciples
go free.
There are two instances in John’s Gospel where “I am”
is said by people other than Jesus. The
first is in chapter nine when Jesus healed a beggar who had been born blind of
his blindness. The man’s neighbours
couldn’t believe he was the same man. Some
said he was. Others said he wasn’t. They kept asking is this the man who used to
sit and beg. The man with great
frustration kept answering “Ego eimi.” “I am.”
He been made a new person by the One who is “I am”. Later after the man had been put on trial by
the religious authorities for being healed on the Sabbath and suffered the
verdict of expulsion from the synagogue, an act that showed the spiritual
blindness of the religious authorities, Jesus finds the man and asks him if he
believes in the Son of Man. Son of Man
is the Title for the Messiah. The man
says show him to me that I might believe.
Jesus answers, “The One speaking to you is he.” This is supposed to remind us of what Jesus
told the woman at the well. Jesus is the
Creating Word of God become flesh. Jesus
spoke and created this bling beggar anew by healing him. Gave him a new personhood so that he can now
say “I am.”
The second instance of someone saying “I am” is Peter
when he denies Jesus. Except, the
wording is a bit different. Peter is
standing off watching as Jesus is put on trial and a slave-girl asks him if he
is one of the disciples. In English Peter
answers “I am not”. In the Greek text
Peter omits the personal pronoun for “I”, “ego” and just says “eimi ouk”. If we are close readers of Greek, we will
notice that omitting “ego” is significant.
Peter’s answer reflects that in his denial of Jesus he has denied his
own personhood. He has no personhood
apart from his association to Jesus who is the True “I am”.
Such is humanity.
So it is for every one of us. We
have no true personhood apart from being
in relationship to Jesus, to the One who is “I am”. Jesus is the resurrection and the life; the
Way, the Truth, the Life. The is no
life-giving, life-filled relationship to God except in him. He is the Light of the world; the living
Bread; the Vine in whom we must abide if our lives are going to amount to
anything. No one can say “I am” apart
from the “I am” we are in Jesus who is the true “I am”. Wow, I’m getting philosophical today.
Jesus is the Word of God become flesh who makes all
things new. The tragedy his trial and
crucifixion reveals to us is that we humans are utterly messed up. We are infected with a disease of the heart,
soul, mind, and strength called Sin. It
is a spiritual disease that affects our relationship to God, to each other, and
to all of creation. Even creation itself
is infected with it. Death is its unavoidable
consequence and outcome.
We are powerless over sin and by our complicity in it
we are destroying ourselves and God’s good creation. Like an addiction we cannot just stop doing
it. The great physicist Robert
Oppenheimer said when he realized he had been used to create the atomic bomb,
“I am become death”. So humanity whom
God created in his own image has become death.
Getting religion can’t cure us. The blindness of religion is demonstrated
quite well by the religious authorities who of all people should have known who
Jesus was but didn’t. They simply felt
their own power threatened by him and so had the Romans kill him. Religious authority corrupts and it will
sooner than later throw its coercive power behind the power of empire. The history of power and war in the Western
world for the last 2,000 years teaches us that.
Christians have killed Christians to gain the power of empire.
Empire, political power, cannot save us from our own
demise in sin. Thinking that we are
smart enough to elect good leaders who are rational enough to solve the world’s
problems is a delusion. Pilate asked,
“What is Truth?” when the Truth was standing right in front of him. Then, he thinks that killing Jesus is the
best political solution to the situation.
Empire kills. Power is addictive
and it inevitably becomes unmanageable, out of anyone’s control. I am concerned that the current President of
the United States who has demonstrated addiction to power in the course of his business
career has now discovered (like many other world leaders) the ultimate “fix” in
the relative ease of being able to make the command, “Bomb them.”
Religion and Empire cannot save us. Let us not be deceived. When the two of them collude it is
antichrist.
But, there is hope – Jesus is the Word of God by
which God created everything became human flesh. By his death he has dealt with sin and death
to in the way according to Scripture, bearing it away once and for all unto
death. By Jesus death, God has put sin
and death to death. In Jesus, the great “I
am” God has condemned sin and punished it with death, a sentence carried out in
the flesh of Jesus who is “I am”, who is “Yahweh”; a flesh that
will, come Easter, live again free of sin and death.
Jesus death was the Big Bang of a New Creation of
which his resurrection was the first sign.
Until he returns to put things to right he has given us the Holy Spirit
who dwells in us and binds us to Jesus to share in his resurrection life. The Holy Spirit creates community in the
image of Jesus. The hope of this world
is now visible in small, neighbourhood fellowships of Jesus’ disciples. If we want to escape the “I am not” of our
sin infected existence and become somebody’s who matter, if we want to be able
to say “I am” like the healed blind, following Jesus and loving each other and
our neighbours as he has loved us is the vine in which we will bear that
fruit. Amen.
