“Jews had for centuries longed for a ‘new Exodus’ to get them out of their ongoing enslavement to pagan powers. Jesus is saying: this is the moment!””
He did it! Jesus is the victorious messiah that many had hoped for. In fact, Jesus’ death and resurrection proved his victory over sin, death, and the grave. This message is the heart of all Christian hope and the anchor to our way of life. Jesus, through his death, put to death those things in our life that had broken our relationship with God. Then, by faith in Jesus and his resurrection, we are given new life - raised with Christ in God, made brand new, redeemed and restored. All of this is completed in and through Jesus.
Jesus knew all of this was to happen when he ate with his disciples that last night before he was to die. We call it, the last supper. We remember the meal Jesus had with his closest friends for many reasons and its where we find this weeks “I Am” statement. In John 14:1-6 we get a glimpse of this tender moment between Jesus and his friends. Jesus tells them, “Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, and trust also in me. There is more than enough room in my Father’s home. If this were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? When everything is ready, I will come and get you, so that you will always be with me where I am. And you know the way to where I am going.” “No, we don’t know, Lord,” Thomas said. “We have no idea where you are going, so how can we know the way?” Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.”
These are incredibly tender words, and we should read them as such. One of the most exclusive claims of Jesus is made in one of the most tender moments with his disciples. Jesus is giving the disciples hope in this passage. He’s also making powerful connections to their history as a way of reminding them who he is.
N.T. Wright comments, “Jesus chose Passover to do what had to be done: to go to Jerusalem, to denounce prophetically the present temple and its leadership and to inaugurate a radically different temple-equivalent. Jesus chose the freedom-moment, the victory-moment, in order to evoke, to recapitulate, God’s victory over Pharaoh, over the Red Sea, over the dark forces that had kept Israel captive. Jews had for centuries longed for a ‘new Exodus’ to get them out of their ongoing enslavement to pagan powers. Jesus is saying: this is the moment!”
Jesus essentially said to his disciples, ‘I am the protector, provider, and your guide. I am the image of God in your midst, the truth you should embody, the only one who can provide life now and forever. For your ancestors in the desert, ‘I Am’ was the only one who provided the way, he led you in the truth, and he gave life to your ancestors as they wandered in the wilderness. ‘I Am,’ is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob — and guess what? I Am the way the truth and the life so don’t be afraid. Then Jesus says, “Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, and trust also in me.”
Jesus uses this important event, passover, to remind his disciples of who he is and what he’s done. The emphasis here is that God is the only one who could have brought the Israelites through the desert, and he’ll do it again here and now in and through Jesus. Wow. I love how all this ties together. The admonition here is to trust a God who has already come through, saying he’ll do it again — beautiful.
This reminds of the hymn recorded in Colossians beautifully reminding us of the character and nature of Jesus. Don’t let your heart be troubled trust in Jesus. Colossians 1:15-17, 19-20: “Christ is the visible image of the invisible God. He existed before anything was created and is supreme over all creation, for through him God created everything in the heavenly realms and on earth. He made the things we can see and the things we can’t see— such as thrones, kingdoms, rulers, and authorities in the unseen world. Everything was created through him and for him. He existed before anything else, and he holds all creation together.”
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