Daily Liturgy and Scripture

It's amazing how Peter's tune changes once Jesus shows his power. At first, Peter almost seems exasperated because Jesus doesn't understand how to fish. Then Peter sees that fishing isn't the point, that Jesus has a much bigger picture in mind. Such is the way of things when our perspective gets changed to God's: the things that we thought were important may not be, and our eyes may be opened to a much larger world.

Jesus brought wholeness with him and shared it with others, healing the things that make them less than whole. Evil thrives where wholeness doesn’t, because evil can only ever be a twisted version of what is true. The evil spirits recognized Jesus, because they could see his Godhood, and his authority always rose above theirs.

Jesus didn’t walk a straight line from the manger to his ministry. He went through testing and temptation, just the same as we do. Perhaps this was one of the points of God taking on flesh: not just to show us what God looks like, but to show us what we could look like. Under pressure, he kept focused on his mission.

This list of names isn’t without a myriad of stories. David, Jacob, Boaz, Judah, Abraham… the list goes on. Because Jesus had an earthly family, he had the influence of those generations before him. And of course, as the Son of God, he was the culmination of the promises God made through those generations, now coming true in the Messiah.

John the Baptist does more than tell people that Jesus is coming, he prepares the people to hear what Jesus is going to do. Tax collectors and soldiers would continue being part of the story, highly outside the religious circles of proper Jewish holiness. And of course, that’s exactly what Jesus would do: expand the Kingdom to the least likely, the very people who were coming to hear John.

Is it any coincidence that so many of the significant events in Jesus's early life took place in the temple? This was where God's presence was the focus in that time, and it is appropriate for God's presence among people to be significant in that place. From the older generations expecting his arrival to the conversations he had with the teachers, Jesus wasn't just about the business of God. He WAS the business of God.

As God’s plan for a Messiah unfolds, it continues to be among the least expected of people. Shepherds, common laborers, would have hardly been anyone’s first choice for a royal entourage. Not so in God’s Kingdom. Everything is upside down, so big news often starts among people most would consider small.

The praise offered by Zechariah at John's birth (his first words in quite some time!) were important because they foreshadowed both John's role in God's plan and the part Jesus himself would play in salvation. It's fitting that he should use his first spoken words to praise God and lay this out. Perhaps the time he spent in silence was valuable in showing him these things?

God's plan for a Messiah was very much rooted in people. That is true even before the Messiah was born, and the preparations made for Mary. How exciting it must have been not only for Mary to bear God's Son, but also to share with a family member who was also living through something miraculous. God made Mary a community of empathetic supporters who had personally experienced a piece of the miracle she shared, and would walk beside her as she participated in this amazing part of God's plan.

The season of advent is just a little way off now, and our readings from Luke will give us a sneak peek of where we're heading. We'll be talking a lot about waiting, and Zechariah, father of John the Baptist, is probably one of the best archetypes of that action. Not only was he anticipating a promised child in his family, he was doing it in silence. The work of the priests included a lot of talking, so Zechariah wasn't able to do much of his work during this period. This would give him plenty of time to think about the miracle God was about to work in his life.