I am
quite comfortable without marriage. What do I need a husband for? I can still
have children with my partner.
 am quite comfortable,
you say. So now listen to what you are really saying
unconsciously.
When the gang of thugs came to
arrest Jesus in the garden, he declared to them, “I AM,” and they
fell to the ground in reverence and fear (John 18:5–6). This concise statement
defines Jesus as divine, according to the name God gave for himself to Moses
(Exodus 3:14). But Judas didn’t bring the soldiers to Christ in order
to worship him; he brought them to betray him and have him arrested. Thus
in his act of betrayal Judas essentially refused the name of Christ’s
divinity by reducing its I AM to a descriptive statement: “You
are.” You are a body to be seized and bound. And so Jesus responds
again, this time descriptively: “I told you that I AM” (John
18:8)—that is, I am the one you seek, the one pointed out to you
by my betrayer.
In accepting the betrayal, Jesus
raises its descriptive element to the level of divine description, as he
does throughout John’s Gospel: I am the one you seek because I am
the way, I am the truth, I am the light. . . . All the
implicit meanings of the I AM from Exodus are made explicit in
Christ.
Notice that our proper response
to the I AM is worship, for in worship we accept and adore divinity.
That’s why in our baptismal vows we answer “I
DO” to the questions about rejecting Satan and
sin. And it’s also why, in the ceremony of Holy
Matrimony, we answer “I DO” as our acceptance of the sacrament.
With each “I DO” we turn away from the sins of the flesh and the
world. With each “I DO” we turn toward the
spirit. With each “I DO” we cease treating each other as
mere bodies. With each “I DO” we sacrifice
the comforts of the body in order to revere the spirit.
Which brings us to your I
am. “I am comfortable,” you say. Thus you refuse the “I
DO” of Holy Matrimony—and divinity with it—to make yourself
into nothing but a descriptive statement. A body for recreational stimulation.
A body to produce a baby. A body to be seized and bound by sin. A body to
defile the Body of Christ. And sadly, in all of this, you betray Christ as
much as Judas did.
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