Daily Liturgy and Scripture

Jesus is fully human, but also fully God. With that mystery at work, you have to expect a few surprises. Spirits obey him and recognize him because of his Godhood, but he doesn't lord it over us regular people. Small acts like the one he did for Simon (Peter)'s mother are evidence of that.

Wny did Jesus need to be baptized? Was it to wash away his sins? Certainly not, but to show us what full fellowship with God looks like. His example was made for us so that we could know God better, and the invitation to baptism is just the beginning.

The responses to Jesus were notable. A religious leader, someone who was probably friends with the enemies of Jesus, gave his own burial plot for Jesus's body. The other religious leaders who convinced soldiers to lie were certainly convinced that something had come of Jesus's message... why else would they go to such great lengths to cover up what was happening? And then there were the di...

The crucifixion is, of course, one of the most important moments in Christian history. Jesus is fulfilling prophecy while demonstrating the unthinkable vulnerability of a God who came to be among us. It was also a wild day, apparently, with those who had died before making surprise appearances. Only God knows the answer to why, but maybe this first bell of Jesus inaugurating his lordship needed a...

It seems that the path to the cross has more people in conflict than just Jesus. Judas kills himself, Pilate's wife tries to warn him and fails, and even the religious leaders who paid Judas realize that they have spent blood money. Supernatural forces are certainly at work, and this has an effect on the people involved.

The road to the cross is a difficult one, and not just for Jesus. Times of testing sometimes show us things we wish we didn't know about ourselves, and Peter is learning his own cowardice. Don't worry, though. Better days are coming.

It's easy for us, with the benefit of looking back on history, to see where God's story was going and think Mary was calmly agreeing to what was about to happen in her life. In reality, it was scandalous enough that Joseph considered cutting her loose. And so would be the life of Jesus: doing things sometimes opposite of what might be expected, but using that upside-down approach to help p...

Seems like things are going pretty badly for Jesus. He’s abandoned. In the eyes of the world, he’s failing. Easter is coming, but let’s not get there too fast. Today, Jesus is refusing to allow his followers to defend him with violence, further proof that he’s starting something new.

Jesus has been talking, in previous chapters, a lot about what citizens of his Kingdom look like. Now he comes to an even more important point: himself. There is no Kingdom without him, and his is the life that was given to breathe breath into the Law and prophets. His sacrifice is the picture of what God looks like and the lengths to which God will go to be in covenant with his people.

Today’s collection of verses are an interesting combination. In Psalm 51, after the lament section, David declares that his sacrifice is a broken Spirit, which he wrote after the priesthood of Aaron was established from the Exodus passage. “You do not delight in sacrifice” also seems like a preview for what Jesus was bringing, And of course, the passage from Matthew is exactly that: instead of the...

Lest we think that Jesus is telling the story of the investing servants as some kind of indication that our talents are needed to built the Kingdom, remember this: the money given belonged to the master in that story, What we have, we have from God. We are to be faithful with what we have so that we may become experienced in living in that kind of Kingdom that Jesus built, and it will certainly ta...

Jesus has been asked for a sign on his divinity before, and has criticized the religious leaders for doing so. Now, he gives them a preview of the future: at his second coming, all things wil be made new and judgement will occur. The encouragement here is for obedience, because this is really the best thing we have to offer the God of the Universe.

The destruction of the Temple that Jesus describes actually happened a few decades after his crucifixion and resurrection. The Temple was central to Jewish life, so this was a pretty big deal. Luckily, there was a new Temple. The place where God came to meet man became a man, and the Holy Spirit moves among us as a constant connection to God. The violent end of the Temple may have been sad, but it...

Jesus is really picking apart the legalism of the Pharisees, and for good reason. They draw out tiny, nit-picky details of the law that miss the entire point of the Kingdom. Making access to the God of the universe impossible is the opposite of Jesus’s mission, and it was important that he said so.

Today, Jesus is drawing out some pretty distinct differences between his Kingdom and the religious establishment of the day. Instead of status, people in Jesus’s Kingdom are seeking to serve. It’s like a race to the bottom. Seeking titles and glory are the opposite of what he came to do, and a radical renovation of the heart and mind is required.

How do we shake loose of thinking about things like the world, so we can allow our minds to think like Jesus? Of course, it isn’t possible to think fully like Jesus without being him, but these rivals who take him on in today’s passage are about as far away as you can get. Challenging Jesus about who’s going to be married in the afterlife is missing the point: resurrection is far better than anyth...

Jesus is really ruffling the feathers of the religious leaders, because he is exposing their selfishness. This isn’t because Jesus came to cut off those who were the religious elite of the day, they did that to themselves. Jesus confronts them because the Kingdom he came to bring needed to be seen for what it really was so that it could be found, and nobody but him held the keys to that.

The sound of rowdy children seems to have been disturbing to the more refined of religious leaders, but Jesus considers them worshipers. This moment, paired with Jesus driving out the vendors who were selling in the temple, points to a more innocent Kingdom, more like the children than the adults. 

Sitting at Jesus’s right and left hand would have been positions of esteem, but James and John didn’t realize what that really meant. How do you sit in a position of authority for a king who has come to serve? Indeed, they would hold memorable places in church history: according to tradition, James was the first and John was the last to die. John was exiled to an island, while James was killed jus...

This upside-down Kingdom continues to take shape, and he seems to make a grave error… if you have a wealthy person interested in your cause shouldn’t you ask them to fund you? Build you a building? But that’s not the way Jesus goes, because his Kingdom is already firmly established. His choice to to turn the man’s posturing (especially when he claims to have kept all the commandments since birth)...

This is a rough verse for divorced people. On the surface, it seems like there is no hope. But, of course, with Jesus, there is always hope. Divorce is no different than any other part of being human, and we are certainly not outside God’s grace or love. If you are person, and you are listening to this, don’t worry. You haven’t been rejected by God. Many things have happened since God first create...

Interpersonal relations are important in the Kingdom, and the harmony people keep is one of the qualities of Christian life. We are not disembodied souls, but we are real people who do real life together. Forgiveness and communication are important in that picture.

The upside-down Kingdom of Jesus is a place where people do not jostle for power, but the race is to the bottom. Serving others is looking outside yourself, which is something children still do because they have not learned how to connive to get what they want. Jesus came to serve, not to be served, and this is very much the quality of someone who set himself aside to bring wholeness to others.

Jesus is the fulfillment of both the Law and the prophets, which is why only Jesus remains after Moses and Elijah disperse at the Transfiguration. This is one of the cornerstones of the Kingdom of which Jesus is King. The things that came before him are not erased, but his is the life that the Law could never give.

It seems that Jesus makes a pretty hasty decision about Peter, choosing to rest the establishment of the Church on Peter's shoulders for one confession. Of course, this is not the product of one moment. Peter has many ups and downs recorded throughout the Gospels, and perhaps this is the reason that Jesus finally made this declaration: not because Peter was perfect, but because his imperfection wo...