In today’s Gospel lesson from John, Jesus is speaking with a gathering of Jews who begin to provoke and question him.  Christ tells the group that in keeping his word, they will never see death.  But all they have known, of all the prophets and spiritual leaders who had come before, is earthly death.  They could not conceive the eternal life that spans beyond our earthly life.  They could not conceive that this young man had 'seen’ the long dead Abraham, or ‘knew’ their God.  Oh! How I wonder what my reaction would have been to such a proclamation, had I heard the words directly from his mouth!  How I wonder if, prior to his death on the cross, I could have conceived a promise of eternal life, from a man who claimed to know God?  Might I have been one of the people who picked up a stone?  Might you?

Like bullies in a playground, the hurtful reaction of those gathered made Jesus HIDE and leave the Temple.  This Holy Man, who traveled far, teaching and working miracles, was so scorned and attacked that he had to run from the very people he’d hoped to touch. 

The thing is – we have it easier.  In 2022, during this blessed Lenten season, we can conceive it.  Thousands of years divided from the life of this God-Man, and through the writings, translations, doubts, and lives of hundreds of thousands of believers across multiple continents and nations, we can imagine it.  Even through our questioning, our discernment, our doubts, we can believe.  Jesus lived.  His hands and his words reached many people of his day.  But more important for us today is what came next.  Jesus died.  It is through his earthly death and resurrection that his words, so doubted by those in his presence two centuries ago, became real for all of those generations that came after.  Became real for US.  We can have faith in the promise.  We can look forward to eternal life.  We can believe.

For today, I wonder if you would join my prayer:  I ask God to strengthen my faith, to help me to believe beyond my doubts, to love beyond my fears, to trust in the promise of God’s mercy and grace.  Amen.