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Then Jesus said to them again, "I am going away, and you will seek Me, and will die in your sin. Where I go you cannot come." So the Jews said, "Will He kill Himself, because He says, 'Where I go you cannot come'?" And He said to them, "You are from beneath; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world. Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for if you do not believe that I am He, you will die in your sins." Then they said to Him, "Who are You?" And Jesus said to them, "Just what I have been saying to you from the beginning. I have many things to say and to judge concerning you, but He who sent Me is true; and I speak to the world those things which I heard from Him." They did not understand that He spoke to them of the Father. Then Jesus said to them, "When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He, and that I do nothing of myself; but as My Father taught Me, I speak these things. And He who sent Me is with Me. The Father has not left Me alone, for I always do those things that please Him." As He spoke these words, many believed in Him.
Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed Him, "If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."
- John 8:21-32
In yesterday's reading, Jesus spoke again to the temple authorities. He is at the Feast of Tabernacles in Jerusalem, and it is the last day of the festival. They have already sought to have Him arrested, and to trap Him with the woman taken in adultery. Jesus told said, "I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life." The Pharisees therefore said to Him, "You bear witness of Yourself; Your witness is not true." Jesus answered and said to them, "Even if I bear witness of Myself, My witness is true, for I know where I came from and where I am going; but you do not know where I come from and where I am going. You judge according to the flesh; I judge no one. And yet if I do judge, My judgment is true; for I am not alone, but I am with the Father who sent Me. It is also written in your law that the testimony of two men is true. I am One who bears witness of Myself, and the Father who sent Me bears witness of Me." Then they said to Him, "Where is Your Father?" Jesus answered, "You know neither Me nor My Father. If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also." These words Jesus spoke in the treasury, as He taught in the temple; and no one laid hands on Him, for His hour had not yet come.
Then Jesus said to them again, "I am going away, and you will seek Me, and will die in your sin. Where I go you cannot come." Jesus' "going away" refers to His death, Resurrection, and Ascension into heaven. His repeated reference to what is going to happen in the future (He is attending an autumn festival in the last year of His life -- Succot, the Feast of Tabernacles) gives us a sense of the central importance of the Passion and its subsequent events.
So the Jews said, "Will He kill Himself, because He says, 'Where I go you cannot come'?" And He said to them, "You are from beneath; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world. Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for if you do not believe that I am He, you will die in your sins." Then they said to Him, "Who are You?" And Jesus said to them, "Just what I have been saying to you from the beginning. I have many things to say and to judge concerning you, but He who sent Me is true; and I speak to the world those things which I heard from Him." They did not understand that He spoke to them of the Father. Jesus has repeatedly spoken to them about the love of God in their hearts -- or rather, the lack of it. He's taught that in order to recognize His word as coming from the Father, one must have a love for God the Father and a desire to do God's will to begin with.
Then Jesus said to them, "When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He, and that I do nothing of myself; but as My Father taught Me, I speak these things. And He who sent Me is with Me. The Father has not left Me alone, for I always do those things that please Him." As He spoke these words, many believed in Him. My study bible points out that "lift up" has the double meaning of being nailed to the Cross and of being exalted by His Father upon the completion of His work. It is yet another reference to the crucial events to come at Passover, in the following spring, and tells us of the central importance of the crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension. That "many believed in Him" is a great light, telling us about His doctrine, His word, and that it is for all people. Even many among the leadership believe. Nothing is black and white here, in the sense that the barriers to faith are only those we erect ourselves. The territory of the Kingdom and of His word is in our hearts.
Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed Him, "If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed." My study bible says here that Jesus expects all who follow Him to be disciples, which in the Greek means "learners." It's also the modern word for "students." It says, "Abiding in His word is the responsibility of all believers, not only of the clergy or of an elite class of zealots."
"And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." My study bible says, "The truth refers both to the virtue of truth and, more importantly, to Christ Himself (14:6). Being free refers to the freedom from darkness, confusion, and lies, as well as the freedom from the bondage of sin and death."
So, what is the truth really? We can paraphrase or imitate Pilate's crucial question to Jesus, "What is truth?" which will be reported later on in John's gospel. It's common to hear people say that truth is different for each person. But, you know, everything depends on what truth we're talking about, what circumstances. We can easily see that truth and freedom are bound up with one another. We need this truth that Jesus offers -- that Jesus is -- because we need our freedom. We need our spiritual freedom, which feeds every other type of freedom we might wish to claim for ourselves. The other day I was watching a popular television show. It's one in which all kinds of problems are presented for help from a psychologist. It was the woman whose problem was featured this day that interested me. She had a terrible problem with compulsion. For example, she was obsessed with certain numbers, and she felt that their repetition eased her anxiety. She was obsessed with taboos (like, for example, there were certain other numbers that were bad, that one couldn't say, otherwise it would trigger her need to repeat the "good" numbers). She had had an experience in life where she'd come in close contact with a friend who was expecting a child, and later on that child was born with a birth defect. This poor woman had concluded that somehow it was her fault that the child was born with a problem. She decided that somehow she was an evil influence, regardless of her desire or inner choice to the contrary. At this point in her illness (for that is surely what it was) she slept with her hands and feet bound, because she feared she could possibly walk in her sleep and cause harm to others -- even though this had never happened to her and she did not have a history of sleep disorders. She was also rail thin, because another component of her illness was the need to constantly purge herself of what she felt were toxins. She had two children and a blessed husband who loved her. And she was -- or rather, she seemed to me -- to be a lovely and loving person, but one terribly afraid of condemnation. She had some sort of belief that she was evil, even malicious, despite her own intent or volition to the contrary. And she was a slave to this disease. I have rarely felt so clearly that a great dimension of her problem was a spiritual one. Clearly, whatever it was that was compelling her to a kind of slavery to the lie that she was at heart malicious in essence was evil. It was against Christ and against the truth of Christ. She desperately needed the freedom that comes from the truth Christ offers that He came to the world not to condemn but to save, and out of the tremendous love of the Father that is so great for us that we're not even fully capable of grasping how great that love is. She needed that truth, desperately. Jesus tells us the truth about who we are. The lie that told her the opposite thing was literally killing her. She needed the life in abundance that comes from the truth that God loves us, and that what Christ has done for us -- that great, crucial, central point of the Passion, crucifixion, death, Resurrection, and Ascension -- has already saved us. But that we have to come to accept and realize it and live it. The Eastern Fathers teach that hell is that state of mind in which we resist and fail to accept this truth, and that's where she was. And in that resistance it's the fire of God's love that burns! She was in a hell of her own, right here and now and in this world. She needed all of that truth to be truly free. If the truth is God's great love for us, then how many of us are called to the freedom that is really there in that love? How many of us are called to healing through that love? How many of us might be slaves to the conviction that we're in at least some way unsalvageable, for whatever reasons we might hold on to this? We need to remember the truth that with God's help, all things are possible. We might have all kinds of weaknesses, and flaws, and faults. But God the Son came to save, not to condemn. Sometimes I think it's just easier to believe otherwise because then we don't have to make the effort that faith calls us to. It's work having real faith. (See John 6:28-29.) And that's the thing. Our liberation via His truth calls us toward something, always toward something better, fuller, greater -- toward life in abundance that we can't ever fully get a hold of, because it's just so far beyond our containment. However "good" God is, we'll never be able to understand how great that "good" really is, because it's so far beyond us, it's so different from us (we're human, not God). But we can grasp a part of it. We can participate in it. Jesus is here to give us a part of it, whatever we can manage to take in, the light that illuminates, and the truth that sets us free in so many possible ways. That's what that truth is for, it's for our freedom in every dimension: freedom to be healed; freedom to come to terms with who we are and even our limitations and how grace works with them; freedom to love and to know that God loves us; freedom from pleasing just "the opinions of men" rather than "the opinions of God." Now that's real freedom. Let us remember He is the truth that sets us free, and what that means is offered to us.
