Daily Liturgy and Scripture

Jesus has harsh words for those who do not care for others. It’s an interesting pairing with the verse from Malachi today as well, with the people of God called out for being stingy with their giving. Both of these together give us a strong truth: the Kingdom of God is not made for lone wolves, and it should be a place of refuge for the poor. Giving is in God’s nature, and if we are mirroring Chri...

Faithfulness is one of the main things for which we are responsible in the Kingdom of God. Notice, though, that in the story of the master handing out money, the money is still the master’s. God gives, and we are steward of that which is God’s. Perhaps that is the main difference between the servants who handled the money well: they handled their portion with love and gratitude, and the only thing...

A lot of this verse is often brought into discussions about the end times,  but there was certainly a closer prediction to Jesus's time: the destruction of the temple and the siege of Jerusalem. It was about 40 years after Jesus's death that it happened, and it would have been a catastrophic event in the lives of many who were hearing Jesus. In the midst of such disaster, what is our command?...

Jesus is talking about the destruction of the temple and a time of hardship around Jerusalem, and there’s nothing metaphorical about this. It happened. Within 100 years of Jesus’s death, the temple would be destroyed, false messiahs would appear (and be confirmed by respected religious leaders) and things would get bad for those living in the area. The alternative could be taking Jesus at his word...

Remember how yesterday, Jesus was talking to his followers about how chasing power and position wasn’t a quality of those in his Kingdom? Today he turns to those religious leaders among the crowd who WERE chasing power and prestige. They were using religion, the name of God, to do so. They set themselves above the people they led, and criticized those around them without paying attention to their...

The Kingdom of Jesus really is upside down. So much so, it makes no sense to jockey for position. How can we seek a title of authority when we are trying to serve others? Jesus is our teacher, and God is our Father. It’s a wild reorganization and defies our own logic, but we have the Spirit to guide us.

Jesus uses the illustration of a story to show that God has invited people other than the religious elites into the new Kingdom, and the religious elites respond by ENTIRELY missing the point, pivoting to ask him if people will even be married in the afterlife. That's pretty classic play when someone is confronted. Be sure that if you're changing the subject, it's not because you're guilty of miss...

It's fascinating that the religious leaders could condemn neither Jesus nor John because the people held both of them as prophets. Of course, Jesus also held the people in higher esteem than those leaders: he said the leaders would enter the Kingdom after some of the rabble that the religious considered outsiders. He was setting a new standard to enter a new place, and the rules all centered on hi...

The significance of Jesus riding on a donkey (in both the Old and New Testament passages today!) should not be missed. In Jesus's day, victors rode into town on the largest horse they could find. It was a symbol of their bigness over the smallness of those they had conquered. Jesus went the other way, riding a young donkey. It was almost absurd. It was also a sign of how the Kingdom of Jesus is di...

It seems that nobody fully understand the darkness that is descending upon Jesus's light. His sacrifice isn't metaphorical or figurative, but it's really going to happen to him. Ever after he says this, James and John are recommended for high positions to Jesus by their mother. Surely, someone who understood where Jesus was heading wouldn't have requested this. Be patient with them, though. They w...

The word "fair" isn't exactly part of God's vocabulary. If God handed out what we deserve, none of us would be left standing. Instead, God gives grace to all who will come, and that is an amount set by God's judgement. If we start trying to figure out whether or not we think it's fair, we're certainly putting ourselves on the wrong side if the judge's chair.

In Jesus' time, women didn't have a lot of power. The need to hold families together was not only preserving marriages, but preserving the livelihood of women. He points that out with the "hard heart" condition given for divorces-- it was not because God wanted things to be that way. This was particularly poignant because he was talking to a group of men in power, testing him. 

To make a radically different community like the Kingdom of Jesus, members of that community have to be diligent at keeping unity. When things are done to harm other members of that community, the community takes action to make them whole. All along, each of us must remember that we have all been forgiven much, and forgiveness is essential to be passed along as part of our bond in the Spirit.&nbsp...

Becoming like a little child may take some work. It doesn’t mean gaining power and notoriety, but being vulnerable and powerless. This is what children were in Jesus’ time, and it was what he challenged his disciples to be on many occasions. Children also need to depend on their parents for all their needs, and so also did Jesus want to teach that we must depend on God.

Jesus being present with Moses and Elijah is a pretty big deal. Moses represents the law, and Elijah represents the prophets. These were huge pillars in the Jewish world. But then they are gone, leaving only Jesus. He didn't dissolve the other two, so that they no longer exist. They were his predecessors, just as John the Baptist was as well. Jesus didn't destroy any of that, but fulfilled them bo...

Why did Jesus rebuke Peter? Did he have a death wish that he was eager to get to? I doubt it. Jesus was working out the purposes of his Father, and the purposes of God are always for the best. Peter was being a bit short-sided, but his heart was in the right place. He didn't want to see Jesus die, because of course Jesus being alive was better from his point of view. God's point of view may not al...

The poor disciples. They missed it again. Jesus is bringing wholeness to those around him arguing with the religious leaders, and the disciples still miss the point. Maybe this is the drawback from Jesus’s choice not to to take all the star pupils out of rabbinic school, but don’t give up on them yet. They will understand. Probably many of us have had the same issue.

The Pharisees seem to be holding an unflinching line on purity laws (hence their comment about the disciples washing their hands), a clear connection to their strict adherence to the law. Jesus, however, points out that a law about honoring parents receives some flexibility to preserve the spirit instead of the strict letter of the law. Jesus himself came to BRING that spirit, so trying to subvert...

As John’s ministry sadly comes to an end, Jesus begins to very much come into a next-level ministry. As John was broken and the Gospel increased, so was the bread broken and increased when Jesus met the crowd on the hill. It’s no small thing that the apostles were told to feed the people, and came up with a meager amount of food. Jesus didn’t scold them, he just made it more. As we are broken, com...

Jesus was notable enough that people realized he was exceptional for a man of such average birth. That certainly seems to work against them, however. Jesus is right there among them, the Son of God incarnate, and all they can see is the carpenter’s Son, the brother of his siblings. Too much familiarity can keep us from seeing the exceptional, and those around Jesus suffered with the same thing.

Judgement rests with God alone, and so the parable of the weeds and the seeds is a somewhat difficult one. We are certainly tempted to do that work for God: judging others, we separate ourselves from them when they seem opposed to us. God alone sees the heart, however. Those who seem to be against us may only have a personality conflict, or perhaps we both have theology that needs fine-tuning. Onl...

Jesus mixed up his teaching style to reach many different types of learners. This makes the parable of the seeds full of meaning: not only was Jesus teaching, he was talking about the different ways the very message he was preaching is received. It was made to be available to all, and that came true fully with Jesus walking among us.

To stand before the religious leaders and defy them was gutsy. Jesus did more than defy them, though. He called them wicked, bad trees with bad fruit. The Pharisees were a sect focused on keeping purity, so this would have been a major insult. By attempting to control the people and their relationship with God, they had actually gotten further from God themselves. A good solution might be to learn...

This episode in the temple gives Jesus a prime example of what new life in him means: while the law is not erased, it receives its life through him. Where as before, Sabbath laws were focused on keeping a strict set of rules, Jesus brings wholeness. The law was good to give boundaries and show God’s people where they should draw lines, but Jesus lives out a fuller life. Bringing wholeness to the w...

There are no lone wolves in the Kingdom of Christ, not even Jesus himself. John comes before Jesus, and John is part of the plan. Then Jesus comes, but Jesus is working with the Father, even revealing the Father. This is a rare form of community: not only does everyone belong, but we are heirs with the very Savior who we worship.