Daily Liturgy and Scripture

Jesus clearly saw that bad things were coming, but he didn't give his disciples a detailed timeline or even specific events. His vagueness in this area should be a lesson to us: while the last things matter, they shouldn't be our entire focus. Jesus taught his disciples what life looks like and that's what he wanted them to teach others. Preaching the Kingdom, living with our fellow citizens and welcoming new citizens was their first order of business, as it should be ours.

God is the god of the living, and not the dead. This is true in the illustration of the offering, the connection to the patriarchs, and in the summary by the man whom Jesus said was not far from the Kingdom of Heaven. Giving money is not big deal if our heart is set in the Kingdom where the living God dwells; we are merely giving the things of the world back to the world. Nothing else compares to his majesty. If Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had died and ceased to be, God would be the God of nobody. They live with him the same as he lives. And if we are already citizens of the Kingdom, we are already living there with God. Being citizens of earth is a prelude to greater things to come, but we practice that way of life in the here and now.

There’s an interesting thread of the prophetic running through today’s readings, both Numbers and Mark. While many of them see the events of the future coming, they aren’t sideshow fortune tellers. A prophet’s job is to see a better future (and sometimes a worse future) and portray it to the people. What God is capable of doing, the prophet sees first. So as Caleb and Joshua see what God is able to do, so could John the Baptist. This kind of authority to speak for God was probably what the religious leaders feared most, and Jesus was certainly capable of doing the same.

What’s going on with this fig tree? Seems kind of weird, Jesus walking up to it when it’s not supposed to be growing figs anyway, cursing it and telling it to never produce fruit again. The next morning the tree is dead from the roots up? Certainly this is an object lesson. There’s a big different between a fig tree’s leaves and its fruit. While it’s possible to eat the leaves, the fruit is really what the hungry look for. Leaves are more for the nourishment of the plant itself. This is symbolism for the passing of an age. In the past, the Jewish people were God’s path for redemption, a people he chose to be set apart. But now they were no longer producing fruit, no longer being the light to the nations as God had hoped. The enterprise is expanding. God is using Jesus to bring life to the law, to be the light to the nations himself.

Jesus certainly has made believers of his followers, they are convinced of his lordship. James and John are so fired up, they’re already trying to plan out the throne room. But they’ve missed the point. Jesus is heading to a throne, but he won’t rise to power by stepping on the backs of others. His ascent is backwards: he will lower himself, suffer humiliation, and die. Only then will be be elevated. In Christian tradition, it’s interesting to note that James was thought to be the first to be martyred, and John was the last. The cup of suffering for James certainly didn’t last as long as John’s, but they did fully take up the mantle of discipleship.

“Humanly speaking, it is impossible. But not with God. Everything is possible with God.” I don’t think Jesus commenting on how hard it is for the rich to get into Heaven is an indictment of having money, because he also sought to relieve the burdens of the poor. The words he had for the rich young man were just for him. There is something that stands between all of us and the Kingdom. This is why we must remember our own inability to live up to God’s best. It’s only possible to do that through the working of the Spirit, the life of the Son, and the grace of the Father.

Things are really different when kids are around. We change the way we say things, sometimes we don't say things at all. When Jesus plops a child down in the midst of the disciples who are debating over who should be captain of the team, it forces them to rethink their line of thought. "Be like that," he said. But then the kid sticks around. Jesus says, "if you cause one of these little ones to fall into sin" because the child is still close. So if that's true, how does this reframe our view of the passage about cutting off our hands and plucking out our eye? Jesus loved children, and certainly he wouldn't want to terrify them. Did this section have a comical tone? Did Jesus talk about cutting off hands the same way we might comically threaten to eat a child as if we were a monster?

Jesus left us with no greater gift than prayer. Of course it was a part of the lives of Jews and God-fearers before Jesus, but it plays out in so many critical places in his life, we really should consider nothing of higher importance in our life in the Spirit. In this story, a spirit that was possessing a boy was impossible to cast out without prayer. No further details are given between the prayer lives of the disciples and that of Jesus, but we have already seen that Jesus went into prayer and came out walking on the water, seemingly as a natural outgrowth of his prayer life.

The blind man isn’t the only one who needs Jesus to be patient with him so that he can learn to see fully. The Pharisees and the disciples both need the same patience. In the case of the Pharisees, they can’t see the value of the Kingdom through their need for a good healing miracle, or maybe some other kind of trick. The disciples are on board after the miracles, but they can’t accept the suffering that Jesus tells them he must go through. Each in their own way is missing some part of what makes the Kingdom different. Almost all of the disciples come around eventually, and even some of the Pharisees. May we also not miss any part of the Kingdom of Jesus because we are convinced it must look like the picture we have painted than the way it actually does.

Come on, disciples! You guys know this stuff! You have seen him do it before, you should know what he’s going to do! (Isn’t this what you want to say to them?) The feeding of these 4,000 people follows the same pattern as before: people are hungry, disciples think they shouldn’t be running a food service, Jesus asks them to find the food, and he multiplies it. Maybe they thought the first time was a one-shot deal, or maybe they were under the impression that they had more important matters than catering. Either way, Jesus took the time. He met the needs, he saw the people. Hopefully, we’ll catch on to that same need the first time around.