Daily Liturgy and Scripture

Jesus came to bring his Kingdom to earth, but he did it through people. John was one of those, and John showed his own humanity when he sent his followers to make sure Jesus was the real deal. How did Jesus prove it? Not by setting fire to bulls as Elijah did, not by parting a sea as Moses did. He proved his identity by pointing to the upside-down Kingdom that he came to bring, of which we are par...

The upside-down Kingdom of Jesus continues to come into view with unexpected people. This time, a centurion. It sounds like he was a good man, respectful of the Jewish religion, but he was still an outsider. He wasn’t a Jew, and his reluctance to have Jesus come to his house is a reflection of the Jewish attitude toward people like him. Yet, Jesus decides to hold him up as an example of faith. So...

The Kingdom of God is upside down. This list of blessings and woes isn’t absolute (it is doubtful that Jesus would want to literally starve out everyone who had recently had a good meal) but is a prophetic glimpse into what’s possible with this new Kingdom. The poor are rich, nobody is devalued. Enemies are loved, and money doesn’t hold control over us. It’s a wild way to approach the world, and o...

When you are a Pharisee, the Sabbath is all about making sure you don’t break any of the rules for resting on the Sabbath. For Jesus, it was about finding wholeness through rest, and giving it to others. If he was Lord of the Sabbath (and he said he was), then his rule overrides the law. How ironic. The one who came to give life to the law does so by appearing to break it.

The religious leaders really had to work hard at missing what Jesus was doing. He’s healing people, making them walk again, and the Pharisees are spending their time worrying about fasting. Obviously, they had missed the point of the holiness that Jesus carried with him, which was the reason the apostles didn’t need to worry about pursuing holiness, because it had found them.

It's amazing how Peter's tune changes once Jesus shows his power. At first, Peter almost seems exasperated because Jesus doesn't understand how to fish. Then Peter sees that fishing isn't the point, that Jesus has a much bigger picture in mind. Such is the way of things when our perspective gets changed to God's: the things that we thought were important may not be, and our eyes may be opened to a...

Jesus brought wholeness with him and shared it with others, healing the things that make them less than whole. Evil thrives where wholeness doesn’t, because evil can only ever be a twisted version of what is true. The evil spirits recognized Jesus, because they could see his Godhood, and his authority always rose above theirs.

Jesus didn’t walk a straight line from the manger to his ministry. He went through testing and temptation, just the same as we do. Perhaps this was one of the points of God taking on flesh: not just to show us what God looks like, but to show us what we could look like. Under pressure, he kept focused on his mission.

This list of names isn’t without a myriad of stories. David, Jacob, Boaz, Judah, Abraham… the list goes on. Because Jesus had an earthly family, he had the influence of those generations before him. And of course, as the Son of God, he was the culmination of the promises God made through those generations, now coming true in the Messiah.

John the Baptist does more than tell people that Jesus is coming, he prepares the people to hear what Jesus is going to do. Tax collectors and soldiers would continue being part of the story, highly outside the religious circles of proper Jewish holiness. And of course, that’s exactly what Jesus would do: expand the Kingdom to the least likely, the very people who were coming to hear John.

Is it any coincidence that so many of the significant events in Jesus's early life took place in the temple? This was where God's presence was the focus in that time, and it is appropriate for God's presence among people to be significant in that place. From the older generations expecting his arrival to the conversations he had with the teachers, Jesus wasn't just about the business of God. He WA...

As God’s plan for a Messiah unfolds, it continues to be among the least expected of people. Shepherds, common laborers, would have hardly been anyone’s first choice for a royal entourage. Not so in God’s Kingdom. Everything is upside down, so big news often starts among people most would consider small.

The praise offered by Zechariah at John's birth (his first words in quite some time!) were important because they foreshadowed both John's role in God's plan and the part Jesus himself would play in salvation. It's fitting that he should use his first spoken words to praise God and lay this out. Perhaps the time he spent in silence was valuable in showing him these things?

God's plan for a Messiah was very much rooted in people. That is true even before the Messiah was born, and the preparations made for Mary. How exciting it must have been not only for Mary to bear God's Son, but also to share with a family member who was also living through something miraculous. God made Mary a community of empathetic supporters who had personally experienced a piece of the miracl...

The season of advent is just a little way off now, and our readings from Luke will give us a sneak peek of where we're heading. We'll be talking a lot about waiting, and Zechariah, father of John the Baptist, is probably one of the best archetypes of that action. Not only was he anticipating a promised child in his family, he was doing it in silence. The work of the priests included a lot of talki...

Jesus's resurrection means everything. It means his lordship, and it means he sets the stage for what our own future will look like: a new heaven and earth, resurrected as he was.

Those watching the cross mocked Jesus, challenging him to save himself. Of course, salvation was exactly what he had in mind. Not his own, but theirs. This death would change things, and those who had been far from God would find themselves brought close, as God came close to them.

Failure is hard to live with sometimes. Peter is failing in this verse, right at the time when the chips are down. Jesus predicted that he would do so. What's interesting about that part of the story being found in the book of Mark is that many scholars believe Peter may have actually sat with Mark to create this Gospel. If that is true, then Peter is choosing to tell this part of his own story be...

The intention of the faithful disciples is not matched by their commitment once they get to the garden and Jesus needs them to stay awake. Judas, however, is having no trouble staying up late. If the unfaithful disciples had stayed as committed as the betrayer, what might they have seen? What was it that Jesus wanted them to watch for? Perhaps it was the people coming for him, but this was no surp...

The Passover and Festival of Unleavened Bread marked the time when God was preparing Israel for their deliverance from Egypt long before the time of Jesus, and as Jesus is anointed for burial and his betrayer moves into place, God is preparing for delivery again. Only this time, it will not be Israel alone. The same God who was present with Moses and the children of Israel in Egypt is on the move...

Jesus foresees the destruction of the Temple, which occurs only a few decades after his life. But in place of that earthly Temple, the place the disciples admired, a new temple will come: himself. This temple cannot be torn down by people, but remains the center of our worship today.

Between the stories of the widow who gave all her money and the prophecy that the Temple would fall (which did happen), Jesus offers his disciples a very different priority for the things we see as valuable. While the Temple would have been a point of great pride for the people of that day, Jesus doesn’t get caught up in that. He rather turns his attention to a person who gives sacrificially, beca...

Money is so near and dear to us that we place too much importance on it at times. It was no different in Jesus's time. The money question posed by the religious leaders showed that money was at the top of their list of concerns, but Jesus flips their question on them. Give the money to the powers of this world, but give your love to God and those who bear God's image. 

It seems that Jesus is refusing to answer the question about "by whose authority" he works, but it appears that he might actually tell them. Though he doesn't say it directly, he comes back with a parable about a master sending a son to wicked tenants. The son is there under the authority of the master, and the tenants respond violently. Not only does this establish Jesus' authority, but it also e...

A lot of symbolism is happening in these passages. Jesus riding on a donkey is a parody of the Roman victory parades, where the victors rode through the town on giant war horses. The withering of the fig tree (which wasn’t producing fruit anyway) was symbolic of God removing authority from those who had been producing no spiritual fruit, only using their position to oppress others. It was the comi...