Daily Liturgy and Scripture

Our verse from Revelation,  in honor of All Saints Day, reminds us that judgement belongs to Jesus because all righteousness belongs to Jesus. There is none more fit to bring justice to the new earth than one who has walked it, and we are his people. Even if we have suffered, our salvation and our future is secure with him.

James and John asked to sit in positions of esteem with Jesus, which wasn't the kind of work Jesus was about. Over and over, even using the visual aid of a child, he tried to show his followers how glory looks in the Kingdom of God. Ironically, according to Christian tradition, James may have been the first apostle to die, and John may have been the last. The positions of importance they both soug...

The earlier lesson with the children must not have sunk in. Why are the disciples trying to keep them from Jesus? Maybe they thought he had more important things to do, but that was very much not the case. Before that, though, we have this piece on divorce. This might be hard for some of you to swallow. (I myself am divorced.) In the first-century context, divorce was about more than two people wh...

Putting a child among a group of disciples who were trying to establish who was the greatest was a strategic move. Children really have no power of their own. It was more true in Jesus’s day, and it remains true today. They need to be cared for, fed, and guided. Ironically, this is not unlike what the disciples needed, and Jesus didn’t want them to forget that.

Jesus had a wide range of reactions from his disciples. From Peter’s attempt to build altars to the missed opportunity due to missed prayer when they returned, there really was a lot of variation in how much the apostles picked up what Jesus was teaching. All of us have probably been on both ends if we have been following Jesus for very long. Some days you are on the mountaintop, others you are fa...

Sometimes, Jesus really was frustrated. There’s nothing ungodly about that. This was one of those times, and his disciples were causing that frustration. He wanted them to get the essence of who he was. The Son of God. The Messiah. The miracle maker; the Way, the Truth, and the Life. While it needed to be hidden from the general public so that Jesus could complete the work of his ministry, it need...

The woman with the demon-possessed daughter seems to be challenged by Jesus, but she doesn't back down. The payoff is good, and her daughter is healed. Jesus seems to honor this behavior and so should we: someone who is diligent in their faith is worth hearing, and their diligence is honored by God.

Remember that Jesus didn’t come to destroy the Law, but to fulfill it. That’s important to note in times where Jesus comes into open conflict with those who are keeping the law. Jesus wasn’t criticizing the Law itself, but the lack of attention to inward things instead of outward. This is the critical need that Jesus filled: the Law needed life to be understood, and that life was his own.

Jesus doesn’t always handle the same issue in the same way. A couple chapters ago, he responded to the storm by going to sleep, refusing to be disturbed by the squall. This time he walks on the water in the midst of the storm, and his presence is enough to make the storm stop. The common element is Jesus, and certainly he is enough to quiet the storm in any circumstance.

If Jesus was trying to build a dominating kingdom, he was doing a pretty bad job. (Of course, he wasn’t.) He failed to gain fame in his own hometown, and he sent his disciples out to be dependent on others for help. Of course, all of this pointed to the very different kind of Kingdom that Jesus was seeking to build: a community that sought to serve one another rather than rule; to be humble rather...

Lest we think that every Jewish leader uniformly opposed Jesus (there have been stories of a lot of them doing that in the past few weeks), we have this man Jairus, to show that God worked among the Jewish leaders as well. Jairus came to Jesus to save his daughter, which was of no small consequence. Jesus comes to the man's aid but is distracted on the way by the woman who has been labeled impure...

Jesus came to bring wholeness, and he came to bring peace. He showed the meaning peace by sleeping in the front of a boat during a storm, and he showed wholeness by giving it to the demon-possessed man. In. Both cases, the circumstances didn’t change Jesus, but he brought the spirit of God into the circumstances to change them. That same spirit is among us today.

Jesus is using several illustrations to talk about receiving the word, each with its own small nuance. Not all are ready to receive, and not all have the same reaction after receiving. Jesus's way is not an easy one, or it would be easy. God prepares the hearts of those who encounter the word, just as he delivers the word itself to them.

Two things were among the most important to the culture of Jesus's time: honor and family. Jesus was being accused of having an impure spirit (a goofy claim that he immediately debunked), but his family probably perceived that he was causing them shame by being subject to such a claim. To this Jesus made a pretty radical claim: his family was a new one, formed by God. How his earthly family would...

God made the Sabbath as a day of rest, a gift to those made in God’s image. It’s meant to be a time of wholeness and healing, not anxiety. Jesus knew this, which is why he was happy to make people whole on the Sabbath by healing them. Perhaps if the religious leaders had been more concerned about wholeness, they might have been bending a few rules themselves.

Jesus's presence changes everything. He inspires people to break through literal barriers to get to him, and he goes out of his way to spend time with those who may have been barred from entering God's house before his arrival. His disciples had a front row seat for the new Kingdom he brought, and their walk with him daily was nothing less than practicing God's presence.

The passages from Maccabees and Mark are an excellent comparison of what the Jewish people might have been expecting, even hoping for, versus what Jesus delivered. The period of the Maccabees was not long before Jesus, so a military leader to bring back the old glory days (especially under the oppression of Rome, who was a military power) would have been a great hope of the people around Jesus. Of...

Even the Son of God doesn’t do ministry alone. This should be a lesson to us. He went and found people who were willing to follow him — with abandon — and those would be the people he would use to change the world.

Many scholars believe Mark's gospel may have been the first one written, and he jumps directly into Jesus's ministry. In these first 13 verses, we have already been through John the Baptist's declaration, Jesus's baptism, and his time in the desert. While it was fast-tracked in Mark, these are formational events. God included a final prophet (John) to prepare the way (as many others had done befor...

The resurrection of Jesus means everything. It means that what Jesus said about himself was true, that he is trustworthy as a messenger of God, and that we will one day follow him into resurrection. It is a seal on the promise that God made to Abraham, and the promise is extended to all who believe. Because of the resurrection, everything is different.

The crucifixion of Jesus is part of a pivotal set of events defining the core of Christian beliefs. In that moment, sin lost its hold on mankind. As it was happening, however, the set of events were agonizing. Jesus suffered physical pain and the pain of rejection, but God's plan was being fulfilled. If this were the end of the story, it would be truly tragic. Luckily, it's not.

If Pilate thought he was letting himself off the hook by trying to substitute Jesus for a known violent criminal, he had another thing coming. The crowd wasn't having it. The religious leaders were able to drive the fury of the crowd against him. In the midst of this scene, they say something pretty poignant. "Let his blood be on us and on our children." Indeed it was, but not in the way they imag...

How odd that at this moment, the only person who is saying that Jesus is the Messiah is one of his enemies. Peter isn't because suddenly he sees how dangerous it is to be aligned with Jesus. Not even Jesus himself is doing so, but he seems to capitalize on the moment when the high priest brings it up. Could it be that Jesus was joining the high priest in confirming his identity, creating two witne...

Sometimes the challenge really is just to stay awake. Jesus used a parable of ten virgins staying awake in anticipation for the bridegroom. Now he challenges the apostles, as the crowd approaches him for arrest, to stay awake. Jesus is doing the work here, he is doing the praying. They’re not even called to do that, but just to be alert and observe.

Jesus is moving with intention now. God’s plan isn’t being foiled with the betrayal of Judas looming, but will put Jesus in exactly the place he needs to be. The plan is God’s, the sacrifice is also God’s. Jesus is about to establish a new covenant just as a covenant was established with Abraham, and the initiative has always been God’s. We are drawn into that mystery.