Daily Liturgy and Scripture

This thing with the fish seems familiar. Jesus has served fish before on hillsides full of curious seekers. This time, it is a small meal for those closest to him, but it is still full of significance. Jesus provides the meal despite the massive amount of fish the apostles have. (It can certainly be argued that he provided those too!) He is pouring out abundance on them, and especially Peter, who needs to know that his failure is not the end of his story.

“These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” This is the reason John gives for writing, and was one of Jesus's reasons for walking among us. That was no less true among his early followers, and the difference between Mary and Thomas is a great example. Mary requires only hearing her own name, and Thomas is slower to believe. In both cases, Jesus knows them well enough to meet them where they are, and they respond by believing that he is the Messiah, the Son of God."

It might be easy to criticize Joseph and Nicodemus for seeming to show up late to the party. Weren’t they Jewish leaders? Couldn’t they have done something to stop all of this before doing the work of gravediggers? Laying aside the fact that all of the crucifixion events were fulfilling scripture, many of us have probably been in their place. Maybe we couldn’t change the way things were, but we could be faithful in the places available to us.

This is a power struggle unlike any in history. Pilate, the Roman governor who holds most of the immediate power, seems in a struggle against his one conscience. The religious leaders appear to be using the crowd to drive home the outcome they want, and in the middle of it is the Son of God. While Jesus is truly powerful, he is choosing to take a position of weakness, not even defending himself. There is a lot to learn from this moment, and we may find ourselves in the position of several of these subjects depending on where we are in life.

Jesus has spent a lot of time talking about his Kingdom, and now he outlines the purpose of his kingship to Pilate: to testify to the truth. There is a lot to unpack in that statement (which is why there are so many parables explaining the Kingdom) but at the end of the day, Jesus established the Kingdom to show a better way, and to bring God together with humanity.

Here's a wild idea to consider: the "other disciple" that knew the high priest and got Peter entrance to the yard was probably John himself. He often referred to himself in his own book in the third person. Peter being questioned as "also" being a disciple might imply that John was already identified as one, but John was still respected enough to get Peter into the courtyard. If this is the case, Peter's denial is all the more crushing: he stood near another disciple and claimed no connection to Jesus. This is indeed a sad erosion of the core group of followers that Jesus had built.

We are not alone in this Kingdom that Jesus built, and neither is he. He is in the Father, and we are in the Son. We are the body of Christ, and that means we are doing the work that he started. His strength is ours, and his Father is ours.

Jesus did not come to erase the whole canon of Hebrew scripture to that point and drop in the New Testament as a replacement. He came to fulfill the Law and give it life. He was presented in the Temple according to Jewish law, and not without special recognition. This was the first of many times Jesus would show that what had God said before his birth still mattered, and that the plan was set in motion at the beginning of time.

The time is coming when what the disciples believe about Jesus will be come critical. Not just because they need to believe the things he has said, but because they need to believe that he is at the right hand of the Father, part of the trinity. This would become a radical change in worship and humanity’s view of God.

The laying out of life in the Trinity continues: Jesus has been doing the work of the Father, and the Spirit will do the work of the Son. This isn’t a hierarchy, because the members of the Trinity do not obey some ultimate high God. Rather, this is a cooperative effort, something which some have compared to a dance. The work of the Trinity is all about one purpose, and God is enfolding mankind in that purpose.