Lent brings us to a threshold where two names meet. In Genesis, a man receives a new name; Abram becomes Abraham; and with it a covenant that will outlast deserts and dynasties. In the Gospel, another Name sounds in the Temple: before Abraham came to be, I AM. Promise and Presence, oath and the One who swears it, stand together as we near the Passion. The Psalm sings the refrain that interprets them both: the Lord remembers his covenant forever.
The God who remembers
Genesis opens with Abraham on his face. The posture matters. The covenant begins not with Abraham’s plans but with God’s initiative. “I will be your God,” the Lord declares, and then unfolds a future Abraham cannot measure: descendants, kings, land, a bond extending “throughout the ages.” The words are not a contract negotiated among equals; they are a pledge rooted in God’s own fidelity.
Psalm 105 invites a response of memory to this divine memory: “Recall the wondrous deeds he has wrought.” Memory in Scripture is not nostalgia but allegiance. To remember God is to live now by what God has done and promised. We live so much of our lives at the mercy of short attention spans: today’s crisis erases yesterday’s consolation; an unanswered email feels like an ultimate verdict. Lent steadily restores us to a truer scale of time. A thousand generations are in view. God’s remembering stretches that far, and more.
A new name, a sure Name
The renaming of Abram to Abraham is not cosmetic branding; it is vocation. God confers identity by promise. In Scripture, names disclose mission: Sarai will become Sarah; Jacob will become Israel; Simon will be called Peter. Each new name carries a call to live from God’s word more than one’s own strength.
The Gospel moves from the name given to Abraham to the Name that cannot be given, the Name that simply is. When Jesus says, “Before Abraham came to be, I AM,” he does more than assert pre-existence. He speaks the divine Name revealed to Moses at the burning bush. The reaction; stones lifted; signals that his hearers grasp the claim. Jesus is not merely a teacher of God’s word; he is the Word made flesh, the living covenant in person.
John’s Gospel often uses “the Jews” as a shorthand for particular religious authorities who oppose Jesus. It is not a dismissal of the Jewish people, whose covenant remains God’s irrevocable gift. In fact, today’s first reading shows Christianity’s roots sunk deep in Israel’s story. The One who speaks “I AM” is the faithful God of Abraham, now present among Abraham’s children.
Keeping covenant, keeping the Word
In Genesis, God’s gift is followed by a human task: “On your part, you and your descendants must keep my covenant.” In the Gospel, Jesus’ promise comes with a similar call: “Whoever keeps my word will never see death.” To keep is to hold, guard, obey, and let shape. Covenant-keeping is not an anxious scorekeeping; it is a life arranged around a relationship. It looks like Abraham’s posture: listening, trusting, walking toward what one cannot yet see.
The Verse before the Gospel sets the tone: “If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.” Spiritual hardness is not limited to obvious rebellion. It can be subtler: a defended life that allows Jesus to be an inspiration but not Lord; a compartment of the heart cordoned off from the reach of his word; a refusal to let the Gospel unsettle our cherished self-explanations.
We might test ourselves with a simple question: In what concrete way am I letting Christ’s word rearrange my week? Covenant-keeping always becomes visible in time; in how we spend, speak, forgive, and persevere.
“Will never see death”
The crowd hears Jesus’ promise and objects: Abraham died, the prophets died; how can your word cancel mortality? Jesus does not deny the fact of bodily death. He promises something deeper: that communion with him transforms death from a final void into a passage into life. In John’s vocabulary, “death” is not only biological cessation but separation from God, the true Life.
This is not wordplay. It is the heart of Christian existence. To keep Jesus’ word is to abide in the One who says “I AM,” the One for whom death is not master. The promise does not anesthetize grief. Christians weep as Jesus wept at Lazarus’s tomb. But our bereavement is braided with hope because the covenant-keeping God has taken our mortality into himself. The Cross will soon appear on the horizon of our liturgical calendar. There, Jesus keeps the Father’s word to the end, and the Father keeps his promise in raising him.
There is also a present tense to the promise. Sin tastes like death even now; alienation, bitterness, the shrinking of the heart. Obedience to Jesus’ word; mercy extended, truth told, chastity embraced, money entrusted rather than hoarded; already loosens death’s grip. Holiness is a way of not dying before we die.
Abraham’s joy and our sight
“Abraham your father rejoiced to see my day; he saw it and was glad.” How did Abraham see? By faith. He glimpsed in promise what we see unveiled in Christ. The Letter to the Hebrews will say he looked forward to a city with foundations, whose architect is God. Lent trains our sight in the same way. We are asked to rejoice in what we cannot fully count yet: the fruit of a hidden fidelity, the slow mending of a relationship, the reorientation of a heart around God’s praise.
Our culture prizes immediate verification. Abraham waited years for Isaac, and longer still for a joy beyond the geography of Canaan. To live by covenant is to be content with God’s timing, knowing that the Lord remembers his covenant forever even when our calendars fray.
Stones and the hidden hour
At the Gospel’s end, stones rise and Jesus withdraws. He is not fleeing in fear; he is moving according to the Father’s hour. There is a sobriety here for anyone who follows him. The truth about Jesus; his claim to be I AM; does not always produce applause. Sometimes it exposes the fault lines in our loves. We prefer a God who confirms our plans; the living God asks for our name, then hands us his.
Where are the stones in our hands? They might be arguments we rehearse to avoid conversion, quick condemnations that keep us from listening, or cynicism that protects us from hope. The Psalm counsels another grip: keep, not stones, but covenant; hold, not grudges, but the Word.
Practicing covenant memory
As Holy Week nears, a few small practices can open space for today’s readings to take root.
- Speak the Holy Name with reverence. Pause once or twice today to say slowly: Jesus, I trust in you. Let it steady the heart before a decision or during a moment of anxiety.
- Keep one concrete word. Choose a specific Gospel command for the day; reconcile with someone, refuse a hidden resentment, give quietly; and do it as an act of covenant-keeping.
- Remember God’s deeds. Write down three instances of God’s fidelity you’ve known; however ordinary. Place them where you will see them before bed. Let memory become worship, not nostalgia.
- Soften a hard place. Where the heart is resistant; an apology owed, a habit defended; ask for the grace not to harden. Pray Psalm 95: “If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts,” and take one step.
God’s word to Abraham; “I will be your God”; finds its astonishment in Jesus’ word: “I AM.” Between them stretches the faithfulness of the One who remembers his covenant forever, and the invitation to keep his word today. Let that Name be our shelter and our courage as we approach the mystery of the Cross, where promise is fulfilled and death is unmade.