Readings for the Day:
Original Manuscript:
Our passage today comes towards the end of an even longer passage in John, starting in the previous chapter, covering Jesus’ time at the Festival of Booths, a celebration of the harvest mentioned in Torah. It involved a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and after some uncertainty about whether Jesus is going to go, He finally does and has a great deal of conversations centered around who Jesus really is.
After this passage, where Jesus is trying to show the people a way out of the very thing that plagues us all, sin, Jesus throws His hands up in exasperation stating, “why do you not understand what I say?” Jesus doesn’t end the conversation there, though. He continues only to the point when they try to kill Jesus before His time after He says, “before Abraham was, I am.” That “I am” is a reference to the Holy Name of God.
If Jesus was willing to continue in conversation with those who constantly wouldn’t listen to Him, how much more will He continue to reach out to us, even when we fail to listen? Jesus is still there, holding out a lifeline for you. You just have to do what His audience at the Festival of Booths failed to do and pick up that lifeline by listening to what Jesus has to say. It might not be what you expect. It might not be what you want to hear. Yet listen all the same and hear the live-giving Word of God that is embodied in our Lord Jesus Christ.