Tuesday of the Fifth Week of Lent - April 5, 2022

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Numbers 21:4-9     John 8:21-30

Jesus has had it with the Pharisees. They’ve worn him out, the way know-it-all teenagers can frustrate a father. All along Jesus has been revealing to them his supernatural identity. He’d shown them who he is by performing miracles which have gone in one blind eye and out the other. The Pharisees didn’t listen or comprehend. Maybe they were too busy scrolling on their scrolls. When Jesus tells them flat out that he’s going away and they can’t follow because they refuse to believe in him, they joke among themselves and disingenuously ask if he’s going to commit suicide. (An ironic question to our ears since Jesus’ death will not be self-inflicted but ordained by God.)

They didn’t get it. The last straw was “Who are you?” What they meant was “Who do you think you are?” Jesus tired of sparring with the Pharisees, of playing their lawyerly game of answering a question with a question, went all Old-Testament on them, calling himself I AM, all caps, his Father’s self-designation to Moses at the burning bush. That got the lawyers’ attention. Jesus poured it on: The One who sent me is true; my message is His message; He is with me. Jesus ends humbly: “I do nothing on my own… I always do what is pleasing to Him.” Because of Jesus’ message and his delivery, “many came to believe in him.”

Q: How do I answer the question, “who are you?” Will I be a follower of Jesus Christ? Will I aspire like a pilgrim on the road to Emmaus to do each day what is pleasing to God?

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