Thursday of the Fifth Week of Lent

God speaks to Abram and changes his name. You are Abraham now - father of a host of nations. An everlasting covenant, binding for a thousand generations. I will be your God and the God of your descendants.

In the Gospel, Jesus stands in the temple and makes the claim that turns stones into weapons: before Abraham came to be, I AM. Not "I was before Abraham." I AM - the present-tense divine name, the name from the burning bush, the name no Jew would speak aloud. Jesus speaks it as his own.

The crowd understands immediately. This is not metaphor. This man is claiming to be the eternal God. So they pick up stones.

Abraham rejoiced to see my day, Jesus says. He saw it and was glad. Abraham, who was given a new name and an impossible promise - descendants like stars, a covenant that would never end - looked forward across the centuries and saw this moment. The I AM standing in his descendants' temple, speaking the name that makes stones fly.

In the evening of life, you have lived inside this covenant for decades. You are Abraham's descendant by faith, named and claimed by the God who keeps his promises for a thousand generations. The everlasting pact did not expire when Abraham died. It did not expire when the temple fell. It has not expired now.

Jesus' claim cuts through every comfortable reduction of Christianity to ethics or spirituality. I AM is not a lifestyle brand. It is the name of God, spoken by the God who entered time to save it. Whoever keeps my word will never see death - not because death doesn't happen, but because the I AM swallows it.

The stones miss. Jesus hides and goes out of the temple. Five days to Palm Sunday. The stones will find their mark soon enough - not in the temple, but on Golgotha.