Daily Liturgy and Scripture

Our verse from Revelation,  in honor of All Saints Day, reminds us that judgement belongs to Jesus because all righteousness belongs to Jesus. There is none more fit to bring justice to the new earth than one who has walked it, and we are his people. Even if we have suffered, our salvation and our future is secure with him.

James and John asked to sit in positions of esteem with Jesus, which wasn't the kind of work Jesus was about. Over and over, even using the visual aid of a child, he tried to show his followers how glory looks in the Kingdom of God. Ironically, according to Christian tradition, James may have been the first apostle to die, and John may have been the last. The positions of importance they both sought certainly didn't look like what they were chasing, but they eventually became the kind of disciples Jesus tried to model.

The earlier lesson with the children must not have sunk in. Why are the disciples trying to keep them from Jesus? Maybe they thought he had more important things to do, but that was very much not the case. Before that, though, we have this piece on divorce. This might be hard for some of you to swallow. (I myself am divorced.) In the first-century context, divorce was about more than two people who didn't want to be married anymore, or one person who wished to leave another. According to Bruce Malina and Richard Rohrbaugh's social-scientific commentary on the Synoptic Gospels, this was more an issue of family. Marriages brought families together, divorces split them. This could result in feuding families and disharmony among the community. Additionally, remember that Jesus was talking to the Pharisees. They asked him a legalistic question, so he gave them a legalistic answer. They weren't our for a pastor, they were out for a debate. It can be argued that Jesus definitely won.

Putting a child among a group of disciples who were trying to establish who was the greatest was a strategic move. Children really have no power of their own. It was more true in Jesus’s day, and it remains true today. They need to be cared for, fed, and guided. Ironically, this is not unlike what the disciples needed, and Jesus didn’t want them to forget that.

Jesus had a wide range of reactions from his disciples. From Peter’s attempt to build altars to the missed opportunity due to missed prayer when they returned, there really was a lot of variation in how much the apostles picked up what Jesus was teaching. All of us have probably been on both ends if we have been following Jesus for very long. Some days you are on the mountaintop, others you are failing in the valley. At all times, we should still remain disciples.

Sometimes, Jesus really was frustrated. There’s nothing ungodly about that. This was one of those times, and his disciples were causing that frustration. He wanted them to get the essence of who he was. The Son of God. The Messiah. The miracle maker; the Way, the Truth, and the Life. While it needed to be hidden from the general public so that Jesus could complete the work of his ministry, it needed to obvious to them.

The woman with the demon-possessed daughter seems to be challenged by Jesus, but she doesn't back down. The payoff is good, and her daughter is healed. Jesus seems to honor this behavior and so should we: someone who is diligent in their faith is worth hearing, and their diligence is honored by God.

Remember that Jesus didn’t come to destroy the Law, but to fulfill it. That’s important to note in times where Jesus comes into open conflict with those who are keeping the law. Jesus wasn’t criticizing the Law itself, but the lack of attention to inward things instead of outward. This is the critical need that Jesus filled: the Law needed life to be understood, and that life was his own.

Jesus doesn’t always handle the same issue in the same way. A couple chapters ago, he responded to the storm by going to sleep, refusing to be disturbed by the squall. This time he walks on the water in the midst of the storm, and his presence is enough to make the storm stop. The common element is Jesus, and certainly he is enough to quiet the storm in any circumstance.

If Jesus was trying to build a dominating kingdom, he was doing a pretty bad job. (Of course, he wasn’t.) He failed to gain fame in his own hometown, and he sent his disciples out to be dependent on others for help. Of course, all of this pointed to the very different kind of Kingdom that Jesus was seeking to build: a community that sought to serve one another rather than rule; to be humble rather than oppressive.