Daily Liturgy and Scripture

It’s quite a God who not only talks of a new Kingdom but also meets the practical needs of those who come to hear him. This isn’t a God who only came to bring good ideas, but whole life. How can people pursue something greater if they don’t know where their next meal will come from?

Jesus seems harsh to everyone in this passage! The words he has for the religious leaders are indeed harsh because they have failed to help the people understand the spirit of the Law. But what about this woman who asked for healing? It’s not stated directly in the text, but my theory is that he was setting her up to defend herself because he needed those around her (including his own disciples) t...

Jesus is always on the opposite side of the story from fear. When the disciples are afraid of the ability to feed people, Jesus steps in and shows them abundance. When Peter starts to sink on the water, Jesus remains steadfast and pulls him back up. We never see him panic, never see him despair. Fear is not in his playbook, and this should be part of the Kingdom we inhabit.

There’s a lot of irony in today’s New Testament passage. Jesus is talking about the treasure of the Kingdom that he brings, and then those most familiar with him reject the gift he brings, because they think he is just one of them. On one hand, this is sad for them. Jesus is right there, and he is offering a great gift. On the other hand, this is a strong indicator of what Jesus was like: he didn’...

Jesus talks a lot about the Kingdom, because it’s a strange place compared to the religious landscape people have come to expect. Grandiose temples and spectacle were the order of the day both for the Jews and the Romans, so Jesus casting a picture of a Kingdom that starts so small it it barely seen would have seemed pretty ridiculous. Who wants to be part of that? And yet this was the better opti...

The Word was available to those around Jesus in a way it had never been before: it was embodied in him. But of course, not everyone received it the same way. Just because the news is good doesn’t mean it’s wanted. The list of reason Jesus gave haven’t changed much in 2000 years, and the impact of Jesus’s Kingdom plan is still lessened because hearts are hard.

The stories of Moses and Jesus have a common theme today: a sign is demanded. In the story of Moses, a sign is given, because God needs to show his people living in Egypt that he is greater than the gods of Egypt. Jesus does not do this for the religious leaders, though, because they already know the God who showed up for Moses in Egypt. This time, Jesus did not need to show God’s power, but the w...

Jesus had very little patience for those who prized Law above the wholeness of God's people, and this scene illustrates that. There was a debate at hand about whether or not work was permitted on the Sabbath, but that wasn't the point: the Sabbath regulations were intended to create a place of rest for God's people, and that Spirit could never be fully captured in Laws. This is why Jesus came to b...

Jesus's Kingdom didn't come without expectations, not even for John the Baptist. The message was good, but Jesus came to transform us into a different kind of person. His talk of the towns that heard the message but did nothing about it is a good indication of this. Especially with the use of Sodom in the list, the people would have probably been a little offended... and rightly so.

A lot of the guidelines for life in Jesus’s Kingdom have to do with other people, but the central relationship is with Jesus. There is even some overlap: welcoming Christs’s ambassadors is welcoming Christ himself, and he holds those who are his very closely. This is all wrapped up in relationships, which are the basic building blocks of the Kingdom.

The group Jesus set up was more than a fan club, it was an intentional gathering of Jewish men who were to become the beginning of the early Church. Replacing the fallen Judas with Matthias was important because, not only was it a prophetic moment, but the gap left with only 11 needed correcting. The places each of these apostles actually went in their journeys are the stories of legend, but the c...

Sorry to be a day late on Ash Wednesday! This is absolutely an important day in the Church calendar, because it starts the season of Lent and reminds us, through the application of ashes to foreheads, that we are dust. But we are also loved, and the Savior who took on our dusty body has much to say during this season.

Why would you have recruited Matthew to be a disciple? The obvious choice is his skill with financial matters, but Jesus doesn’t capitalize on that. Instead, he seems eager to take advantage of the group of rabble that Matthew apparently ran with. Maybe he was trying to find a way to inject himself into a crowd of people who might not have followed of their own accord? Whatever the reasoning, he u...

It seems like Jesus is in the business of thinning the crowd in this scene, not growing one. While that’s not the model that most modern churches would want to follow, he had a good reason. The work of the Gospel wasn’t just about doing magic tricks and gaining fame, it was about sacrifice and service. This would be modeled perfectly by Jesus later, but he didn’t want anyone to miss it right now....

Jesus is establishing an upside-down Kingdom where those who were thought to be outsiders are suddenly included. As with the Roman who requests help for his servants it only takes faith and an inquiring Spirit; Jesus does the rest. Those who find themselves “outside the gate” in Jesus’s illustration are all the religious leaders who have used their position to prosper themselves but impoverish the...

Jesus continues to turn the system of Law and purity on its head, but he does not miss the opportunity to tell the listeners to "first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye." This would have been particularly poignant to the Pharisees, who specialized in telling others the way they should live through the Law. This gave that g...

The connection Jesus challenges us to have with God is radical. In the vision of Jesus, God is close, providing our needs, even seeing what we need. This is not a God who is far away, but a God who is close enough to be part of our lives.

Jesus intends to show us the way into an interior life with God that will govern our exterior lives with others. In that approach to life, we are turned toward God and can forgive others; we are looking for the Kingdom now and building it for the future.

Jesus's Sermon on the Mount is a tough pill to swallow. He is taking the Law, which was probably a heavy burden for many at the time already, and making it worse. Why? So that nobody can be righteous? Of course not. Those who want to make themselves right by rigid adherence to the Law are in the wrong kingdom. In the Kingdom of Jesus, following Jesus gets the life of the Law and the Life in the Sp...

Jesus declares those blessed who would have been among the lost, lonely, and left out. They do. Not look triumphant, but such is the case in the Kingdom he brings. Those who reside in the Kingdom of Jesus are oriented in a different way, and the life of Jesus remains our true way.

"Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near." Jesus spent more time talking about the Kingdom of God than anything else, and it started with him. To build a Kingdom like that, you need to start in a different way. How did Jesus start? By rejecting easy power and pride. He chose instead to walk a long road to suffering, but the Kingdom he brought was worthy of God because of its slow coming.

God’s plan was unfolding with Jesus, but it included other characters. John was central to that, because he began preparing the stage for Jesus to advance. It still wasn’t a perfect world for the message that Jesus would bring, but John would bring some of the first apostles along, and performing Jesus’s baptism set an example for all of us to follow.

Not only is prophecy being fulfilled in Jesus’s coming, but the Exodus story is also being remembered with this series of events. Just as Moses’s birth caused Pharaoh to kill the generation in which Moses was born, so did the same thing happen with children Jesus’s age in an attempt to stop God’s moving. In both cases, God is enacting a rescue play for humanity, but Jesus is expanding that far bey...

Jesus didn’t come to maintain the status quo, and his birth is no exception. The scandal of his birth was small, but it set the stage for what was to come. He would disrupt and upend the thinking of many, and his parents both got an early taste of that.

Let us never forget that Jesus was from an earthly family, and that family was not made of superheroes. It is full of scoundrels and murderers, cheats and cowards. From that family line, the Son came to show us what life could really be like. Only God could do that!