Daily Liturgy and Scripture

When I read about Jesus with the travelers to Emmaus, I love his playful approach. “What things?” he asks, as if he didn’t know what was going on. It is also appropriate that their eyes are opened when he breaks bread, because that is where we come to meet Christ to this day. Tables and fellowship are not just for friends out to dinner, but for us to commune with God.

It is fitting, here at the dying of an old year, to remember the resurrection that Jesus brings. He did not do this to show off, but to show us more deeply what he came to establish: a Kingdom not of this world, which death cannot stop. That does sound a little hard to believe if you don't have the benefit of reading the end of the story, so let's cut Peter a little slack. Probably many of us, if we were being honest, would have a hard time believing all of that too.

It seems appropriate that, as Jesus came to the place of crucifixion, someone helped him carry his cross. He had entered our world in the arms of person (Mary), he had been announced by another (John), and he was leaving his ministry in the uncertain hands of a group of men (the apostles). Now in his death, another man steps forward as God once again brings mankind into the center of his plan.

Jesus’s very innocence makes Pilate himself feel convicted. Under intense pressure from the religious powers, he eventually caves. Not, of course, before trying every way possible to get out of making the call to crucify him. Of course, Jesus was on a path set down since the beginning of the earth, and Pilate was playing a central role.

As Jesus heads through the trial which will determine his fate, he is faced with the question of his divinity. It’s strange that, even now, he doesn’t overtly say that he is the Son of God. Instead, he falls back on the statements about him by others, even his enemies. They have affirmed who he is, but in this dark hour, his disciples have still failed to recognize it.

The discussion of swords at the end of Saturday's passage and in today's passage seems really odd, doesn't it? Why does Jesus do that? He tells his disciples to get swords, but only two. Surely Jesus must have known that two swords were far less than they might need to defend themselves against a group of armed men. And perhaps that was the point: Jesus would not bring his Kingdom at the point of a sword, and he needed his followers to know that directly. Having had swords and then being told not to use them, Jesus establishes those ground rules. 

Christ is born! The coming of God as a vulnerable child is revolutionary and a little bit insane. The creator of the universe, taking on the form of a creation. Wrapped and laid in an animal trough, the Son of God unveils what God is like, and it is nothing like we imagined. 

As Jesus approaches the time of the cross, he continues to build a vision for a different kind of Kingdom. In this scene from the Passover, that gets flipped back to him. Passover was a time of suffering brought by God in the time of Exodus, but now Jesus becomes the one who will suffer. Just as the suffering of the Passover story is flipping upside down, so is the rest of the Kingdom: pursuing power is not the way to be the greatest, but Kingdom people should rather pursue to humbly serve as Jesus did.

Why is Jesus talking so much about the destruction of the Temple? One reason is that what he is describing is actually going to happen within the lifetimes of many who are listening. He is also inaugurating a new Kingdom, and it’s important for his followers to know that this building isn’t the central foundation of that Kingdom, but Jesus is. Even with the Temple is gone, his new Kingdom will remain.

Jesus has been building a picture of the present and future Kingdom that he brings, and this picture would have been startling: in the resurrection, the bond we have with God is so complete that marriage is no longer relevant. For those in happy marriages, this might seem like bad news. Imagine a loving God, though, and that a loving God would not change something so huge if the thing that replaced it weren't better. Direct communion with God will be just such a thing.