Daily Liturgy and Scripture

Jesus has stern words for the religious leaders who reject him. This is probably one of the worst: by rejecting him, they reject the Father. They have fully rejected God. This is a turn from what he has just finished talking about, where he reminded his hearers that they need to abide in him. This is the opposite side of the coin: not only are the religious leaders rejecting him, refusing to abide...

Being pruned requires submission, and we all must be pruned by the Father if we are to abide in Christ. Love also requires submission to one another, both for accountability and being in real relationships. All of this means that we cannot be selfish, and life in the Kingdom of Christ is certainly an unselfish life. By staying connected to Christ and one another, we stay on the critical path to fo...

Jesus and the Father are united in a bond of love, and this is the bond in which we are caught up if we are participating in the Trinity. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are intertwined, but we are also caught up in that mystery as followers of Jesus. The Holy Spirit is in us, and the Holy Spirit is also in the Trinity. We are part of God if we are following Jesus in the Spirit.

Jesus is in the Father, and everyone who is in Jesus is caught up in the entire Trinity. What does that mean? Of course, there is some mystery in this. The bond between the Father and Son (and Spirit) is not something of our world, this is the stuff of another world. Still, we are residents of that Kingdom. Being in Christ means walking with Jesus, remaining connected in prayer, praying to the Fat...

Jesus is demonstrating, as he washes the feet of his disciples, that the greatest among them (definitely him!) should be willing to serve all the rest. None of them are higher than Jesus, and none of them have ever stooped lower than he is in that moment. So much so, it alarms Peter. As Jesus tells them that they should love one another, that is the completion of the thought: putting the other fir...

As Jesus’s time is fully come, he is drawing ever closer to the Father. He is fulfilling the purpose he has been about with the Father, and as he gets closer to the cross, he also gets closer to the Father. Prophecy is being fulfilled, and people are being divided. Those who are with Jesus are also with the Father, because nobody was closer to God the Father than Jesus in this time of deep purpose...

The power of resurrection was with Jesus even before he Himself rose from the dead. Lazarus’s resurrection was such a powerful attraction to the work of God that Jesus’s enemies wanted to kill him! This was a preview of the resurrection that was to come, because Jesus would prove himself as Lord and true Son of God by returning from the dead as the prophecies about him predicted.

It's odd that the high priest should say he would give Jesus up to save the people, not realizing that the Son of God would indeed sacrifice himself to do just that. The plans of God are not thwarted, and Jesus was part of that plan. Though his divinity couldn't be seen by all those around him, he would achieve the purpose he came for. Sometimes that happens even through his enemies playing a part...

The entire story of Lazarus being raised seems filled with intention from Jesus to perform a resurrection to show God’s glory, and maybe even a preview of his own future. Certainly, resurrection is what all of us who follow Jesus have to look forward to, and Jesus seems more focused on that than the facts of a funeral. Of course, if you knew you were about to raise the dead person, the funeral doe...

Jesus is again at a festival, and this one commemorates the deliverance of Israel by force by the Maccabees, a violent uprising that gave them the Festival of Dedication (dedicating the new temple after that deliverance). In this time, a true deliverer appears, Jesus himself. He compares himself to a shepherd who cares for his flock, which of course is his form of deliverance contrasted against th...

Jesus continues his rebuke of the religious leaders who have criticized a blind man who has been healed. In yesterday’s passage, he said they were the blind ones. Today, he takes it a step farther: he says that he is the gateway, and anyone who goes another way is mistaken in their approach. His love for the sheep certainly sets him apart from these leaders, and their treatment of this healed man...

What a time for an interrogation! A man miraculously healed, now questioned over and over by the very people who should be happy for him, praising God for the miracle. That’s a true tragedy: not just that the religious leaders were so belligerent toward Jesus, but that they were willfully missing what God was doing in their midst. Hopefully, we will be more attuned to see miracles when they happen...

Jesus concludes his conflict with the Jewish leaders at the Feast of Tabernacles by making a pretty bold assertion: "Before Abraham was, I am." This is how God described himself from the burning bush to Moses, "I am." Jesus is further pressing the idea not only that God the Father testifies to who Jesus is, but that Jesus was with the Father before Abraham. It's no small wonder that the crowd went...

Jesus is defending that he is who he is by invoking a witness to affirm his word: God the Father. Of course, God the Father will now show up and testify on the spot. While that has happened before (remember when Jesus was baptized?), the challenge is actually to Jesus's hearers. If they were actually listening to God the Father, they would see that Jesus is who he says he is.

Jesus, the very Son of God, is at a festival that commemorates God being with the people as they walked the wilderness. It’s easy to be rough on the religious leaders who just wouldn’t believe who Jesus was, but their argument would probably have been many of ours. We know this guy. He’s just a guy. Jesus is up against a difficult situation, but he doesn’t stop being the Son of God, and he doesn’t...

The Feast of Tabernacles was a remembrance of the time the Israelites spent in the wilderness after leaving Egypt. This is the festival to which Jesus's brothers were going and mocking him for skipping. While Jesus was using wise discretion in avoiding confrontation with the Jewish leaders, it's wild that a festival that remembered a time where God showed himself to Israel through fire, clouds, an...

Jesus calling himself the Bread of Life and pointing out that nobody had seen God were references to Exodus. In that story, God fed the Israelites with manna, and the manifestations of God were always veiled. God never appeared in person. Now Jesus is present to fill both of those roles: seeing him is seeing God, and he himself will become the bread that feeds God's people. Not physical bread, or...

Jesus didn't just show up on the scene to hand out free meals, and those who remained after the meal certainly got an extra helping of teaching. While they were looking for another miracle, Jesus wanted them to see the truth: the greatest miracle was him, and he would be the spiritual bread they needed at a much deeper level.

The moment where Jesus fed the crowd is an interesting one. Jesus is indiscriminately feeding everyone, distributing basic needs to all simply because they show up. This might be a good lesson for us: if people are in our sphere, they deserve our love and care. That doesn't look the same for everyone, but it should certainly look like something. Hopefully, it will look like Jesus.

Jesus does not come out of nowhere. John has prepared the way, and God the Father is empowering him. What does this mean? That God has intentionally come to live among men, to show what God is really like, with an introduction from a man (John the Baptist). It is an interconnected web called the Kingdom of God, and we are living in it now if we are living in Christ.

The response given by Jesus about this healing is a strong indication of where the Son of God put his focus. While healing people was important to show who he was, the healings weren't the point. Jesus was guided by God the Father, and was about doing the work of the Father, which was shared with him as the Son. This is important, because that means the work isn't about us either. It's not about t...

Jesus’s decision to stay with the Samaritans for two days was an unusual one. The Jews and Samaritans were not generally on friendly terms, and some of his disciples probably thought he has a little goofy for making that choice. Still, he went, he stayed, and Samaritans believed. Jesus would never deny anyone who came seeking him.

It is no small matter that Jesus reveals who he is to this woman. She is an outsider, far from a distinguished or ‘important’ person. Yet, it is now that Jesus decides to unveil his divinity. This would become the trend in his ministry. He didn’t seek out those who had influence or family names. Instead, he spent his time with the least, the last, and the lost. It seems that they were much more op...

Becoming less so that Jesus may become more wasn't a call that ended with John. We are challenged to do the same thing. It's difficult to live with that level of humility, but if you're putting yourself ahead of Jesus, you're trying to do some of the things that are his job. You're definitely not equipped for that.

Nicodemus may have approached Jesus in the night as a sign of respect, vs. debating him openly in public. This may have been a way to treat him as a peer. In any case, this moment was used to teach the Pharisee, and Jesus laid out some pretty complicated theology for him. This should have been right in his wheelhouse, because as Jesus pointed out, Nicodemus was indeed a teacher himself. The messag...