The Gospel of John and the I AM

The Gospel of John, the last of the canonical gospel accounts of Jesus’ life to have been written, reads very different from the three other “biographies” of Jesus in the Christian scriptures. Mark, Matthew, and Luke all, more or less, agree on the basics of the story and, when they differ in regard to details, they differ only slightly. Most of what is written in John finds no parallel in the other gospels and, where they might be referring to what may seem to be similar events, John’s recall of the details are either wildly disparate or, as makes most sense to me, written with the creative liberties of an artist intent on getting at something deeper than the mere facts (we could easily argue that the three other amigos do their fair share of this too, but no where near to the extent to which John does). Despite what I consider the misguided attempts by some to reconcile these differences, replacing the last supper with a foot-washing and a long farewell speech (having that pre-arrest gathering on a completely different day forcing Jesus’ crucifixion to another different day, depicting Jesus as less engaged in telling parables than himself embodying one big parable), there is a richness in John’s telling of this story which is done a great disservice in our vain attempts to put poetic expression through the sieve of interpretive literalism. Like Picasso or Dali, who never really cared to paint a mandolin or a clock for what it was, John’s Gospel intentionally paints a distorted picture to convey some deeper meaning and lead us to some more profound considerations. That said, the images we will consider this week are all attributed to things Jesus is to have claimed about himself in the Gospel of John - but recorded and/or remembered by no other gospel writer in quite the same way.

There is, in John’s gospel composition, a repetitive chorus of seven “I AM” statements coming from the mouth of Jesus in reference to himself. The number “seven” and the “I AM” are in themselves highly symbolic in nature. The symbolic significance of “seven” dictates richer meanings than any mere literal understanding of it will preserve. Seven’s influence on Hebraic consciousness derives from a wealth of common folklore which not only predated it but is still very much prevalent within our current common consciousness. Simply stated, the use of the number seven is almost always a way of signifying completion or fulfillment. We break a mirror and, before it runs its course, there will be seven years of bad luck. Those who set out to sail all the seas of the world seek out the seven seas. None of these are making any reference to a literal number of seven particular things. If we are in a relationship and we begin to get a certain itch, it matters not if we have been in that relationship for just a few months or forty years, we still call it a “seven year itch.” When the Jewish scriptures make reference to God creating the heavens and the earth in seven days, it is not making reference to seven 24 hour periods of time. Rather, it is a symbolic way of claiming that creation isn’t half-baked. All that is necessary for creation to be what it is is, in its very blueprints, complete. Paul, in his letters, is notorious for compiling lists of seven things. Sometimes, Paul will even give us a different list of seven things not exactly echoing the seven things he used to identify the same matter elsewhere in his writings. The point isn’t so much in the exactitude of detail but in the resonance with which the number seven lays a claim. So, Jesus in John’s Gospel, makes a particular claim seven times (by the way, the Gospel of John also has Jesus perform seven “signs”). Accordingly, John is claiming that here is something about Jesus which is signifying completion and fulfillment. Jesus is the whole enchilada.

The “I AM” is a purely Hebraic notion. It was the first biblical image of God which we considered in this series. It is a direct reference to God. However, it is no way meant to be descriptive in any decisive way. More of a verb than a noun, it suggests God is known less by a person, place, or thing than by the activity which pulsates through such. Though it ends up translated as Yahweh and as Lord - prompting many to associate this with a Name, it is not a moniker for God. Instead, it insists that God will be whatever God will be. Afterall, God alone has the freedom to be whatever God will be. This implies that if we think we’ve God neatly wrapped up in a nice little box with ribbons to boot, we’d better be prepared for some unraveling to our understanding of God. God has a habit of not being so easily containable. According to John, Jesus is continually calling our attention to how the full activity and presence of God may not exactly be in keeping with ways we have become accustomed to thinking about God.

I AM the Bread of Life. We will all hear something different in each of these I AM statements and that is good and consistent with the very nature of this divine I AM. That being said, when we think about bread, we generally understand it as one of the most essential elements of human sustenance. It doesn’t take much to stretch this into an understanding that God is our true sustenance. However, it is worth noting that bread is not something which occurs naturally in the world. Bread does not simply grow on trees. It requires human labor, an investment on our part to bring it to be. God in Christ may well be the bread of life but we have a necessary role to play in its continual production and distribution…

I AM the Light of the World. Ah, Light! The first of God’s creative utterances in the Genesis story. God said, “Let there be light!” And there was light…and God saw that it was good! Scripture continually witnesses to the power of light as a guide for our path. Again, it is easy to conclude here that God is the One who lights the way before us. However, there is something sinister - and not so good - if we come to think of God shining a light upon us and not necessarily upon those who are different from us. This was something the prophet Isaiah wrestled with in his own day when he confronted the growing exclusionary privileged prejudices of those who claimed to be God’s chosen people. “It is too light of a thing that I have chosen you for myself,” Isaiah hears the great I AM declaring, “I have chosen you to be a light to the world.” Here, “world” is not a reference to the cosmos per se, but is actually Goim’. Goim’ was a Hebraic word which denoted people other than them. In other words, everybody else. By Jewish reckoning, there were only two kinds of people in the world: us and them. Eventually Goim’ got translated into Gentile, however, transliterated out of the biblical Greek, it is ethnos or those other ethnic types (this word also gives us the English word for heathen). We are, as Jesus claims in the Gospel of Matthew, to be the light of the world, the light of the nations, the light of the many, the light of the multitude. It is through us that God’s light shines on others…

I Am the Door/the Gate for the Sheep. Doors and gates are designed for people to go in and out. This is certainly true for livestock. They are brought into the corral when, like at night, it is safer to be protected inside. However, they don’t stay there. They go out for pasture, for sustenance. And, yes, there are risks out there. But little grows under the feet and in the mud of “corralled” animals. Our sustenance is oddly enough in the world and not in some protected enclave. God in Christ is understood as the One through whom we move between the two…

I Am the Good Shepherd. Yes, God in Christ leads and protects us. However, I am left to wonder how much of this insistence of being the “good” shepherd is a means to get at the centuries long history of, not only the Jews, but all of us in becoming idolatrously attached to lesser claimants of our security and well-being. King David, who is arguably Israel’s greatest and most beloved king, was not - contrary to some claims found in the biblical books - what we might call a “good” man much less a “good” king. But kings are not the only ones we elevate to thrones in our hearts and minds for which they are ill-equipped to occupy. What we can say about David is that he did start out as a shepherd. Being the youngest of seven sons to his father, there was not much reason to suspect that he would be any greater than that. However, if the 23rd Psalm can be attributed to David, God was certainly understood to have shepherded him to the greener pastures of having - supposedly - no want. Allowing ourselves to be shepherded by the Good Shepherd may bring us face-to-face, as it did him, with the great want that does exist in the world outside of our corrals…

I AM the Resurrection and the Life. Lest we forget, there is only one prerequisite to a life of resurrection. We must die. Living a life of resurrection need not be relegated to some happy hereafter following some actually physical death. We can be led into an experience of resurrection every time we feel ourselves dying a little - or even a lot -whenever the chances and circumstances of our lives take their toll…

I AM the Way, the Truth, and the Life. I am often terribly saddened by the way many Christians will make the focus of this image the phrase which follows it - “and no one gets to the Father except through me” - and the way in which they, in my opinion, mistakenly interpret it as exclusionary. I can’t help but believe they are putting the accent on the wrong syl-LA-ble. If we were to fill a bathtub with water and I was to declare that no water is getting out of this tub except through the drain when we pull the plug, nobody’s mind will immediately contemplate the fate of the water which doesn’t find its way to the drain. By design, of the tub and the laws of gravity, all the water gets through that drain. In like manner, the good news of Christ is that he gravitational pull of God’s love draws us all to the design in the fabric of the cosmos which pulls us all through. I find it interesting to note that the three most influential religious and spiritual philosophies of Jesus’ immediate culture can easily be summed up in the terms “Way, Truth, and Life.” Hebraic desires were focused on the Torah or the Way; Greek philosophies sought the Truth; and the Mystery Cults sought the intense experience of being embraced by Life in all its fullness. Instead of supplanting these Jesus might well be understood to be claiming that anyway that you get there, I’ll already be there in the works because I AM and, after all, I can and will be whatever I can and will be…

I AM the True Vine. However we understand them, vines are the necessary connective tissue between the existence of grapes and the foundational ground out of which their existence depends. Grapes may well be the fruit of the vine but the fruit of the grape are many including wine and all the festive occasions we may associate with the sharing of wine. All of this, like our earlier contemplations on bread, require an investment of our time and labor. We are to be cooperative co-creators with God…

In the 17th century, the philosopher Rene Descartes, grounding any and all perceptions of reality in the individual, made the rather auspicious claim: “I think , therefore I am.” Jesus’ claims in the Gospel of John grounds any and all perceptions of reality in relationship with the great I AM by which alone we can also claim “I am.”