Daily Liturgy and Scripture

It's funny that Jesus was prophesied about by those who meant to oppose him. Anyone who thinks that God needs our assistance to accomplish his ultimate purposes can take a note from this. While we join God in that work, it is very much God bringing it about. We are included in that work which is ongoing. (Also, if you wish to continue this reading plan, here's the rest of the year.)

Jesus enters a hostile territory to save a friend. This is a pretty good story in itself, but the saving is a resurrection, with a boost in the faith of his friends to boot. Since the Jewish leaders who questioned him were following, perhaps a few of them received a boost in their own faith as well.

To not recognize Jesus means you are not his follower. What he said to the contentious Jewish leaders remains true today. There are false versions of Jesus's message that lead to places that may seem good, but they certainly don't lead to Jesus.

The new way of approaching God is to approach Jesus. To walk in step with Jesus is to walk with God, and in God's direction. The illustration of the sheep pen with the robber and the workers illustrates this, and steps on a few toes along the way.

Hello, friends. :-)

All of the miracles Jesus performed on Sabbaths were healing miracles, making someone whole. And of course, doing so got him in trouble. If the Kingdom is subversive, then it is in this way: the thing which before could only point to our faults (the Law) has now been replaced with the way of Jesus, and that way does indeed bring wholness.

The language of family was familiar to the Jews, especially with the common bond of Abraham as their father. But Jesus was coming to establish a new Kingdom, a new kind of family. In this family, what came before Abraham was the common bond, and that was God.

To claim that God the Father speaks directly in your defense would have been pretty radical. It certainly would have stoked the ire of the religious leaders. Yet what Jesus spoke was confirmed by the church in the centuries that would follow: to see Jesus was to see God.

It seems that the familiarity that caused Jesus's family to doubt his divinity extended to his community. Everyone thought they knew who he was, because they had seen him grow up. But the eyewitnesses to his miracles had a different opinion, and that was the one that would grow the Kingdom of Jesus.

Sometimes those with whom we are most familiar have a hard time growing in our eyes. We know them so well, we can't easily see them as being different from the person we have always known. Such was the case with Jesus's family, who had a difficult time believing he was anything except their brother.

What would you do with the knowledge that your closest friends didn't really believe in you? Jesus had that knowledge, and his response was to continue challenging those who did believe. While that's not a great strategy if you're putting together a party, it's a pretty good one if you're building the Church.

Jesus feeding the people through a miracle and the manna that fed God's people in their flight from Egypt seem like a pretty obvious connection: in both cases, the people get their bellies full. But in Jesus's reckoning, the same negative outcome also happened: instead of worship and awe for the provider, the people only wanted more and more to fill their own bellies.

Do you get the sense that this whole passage is Jesus teaching his disciples? First by sitting, then by testing them with the loaves and fish, then by walking on the water? The ministry of Jesus lasted only about three years, and this may have been the pivotal point where they really started to understand who he was and what the Kingdom made by him looked like.

"You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life." Keeping in mind that Jesus was arriving on the scene at a time when the Law was the absolute, it was something to say, "that points to me, here I am." Our task is the same: Jesus is the way, Scripture is an arrow pointing to him.

It's interesting that the very accusation made by the religious leaders about work on the Sabbath is turned on its head by Jesus. The work he has come to do is the work of wholeness, and this is what he gives the man by the pool. Where the Law gave restrictions to keep people from sinning, Jesus gives fullness of life.

Jesus seems... maybe a little irritated?... that people need a sign in order to believe. He later comng mends Peter for not seeing but still believing. Nonetheless, he performs the wonders they ask for. Perhaps because their need for wholeness was part of their belief.

The new Kingdom, being laid out by its king, for the first time. This is what is happening in the conversation with Jesus and the woman at Jacob's well. It seems almost playful, and that's a notable change from the heavy weight of the Law.

John is yielding his ministry to Jesus, as he has always understood he will do. This is a part of the model of the new Kingdom, for though ministry may be given to some, all still point to the work of the Messiah.

Nehemiah's choice to come see Jesus at night might look sneaky, but it was a mark of respect. Open debate was common among Jewish teachers, but he seemed to want to figure out what Jesus was all about. Jesus gave him what he was looking for: a glimpse into how God was fulfilling the promise to the Jews and expanding the Kingdom.

Flipping over tables wasn't a choice Jesus made again, but this time it was for good reason. The holiness of God was being treated with little regard, and so he created a disturbance. In a whirl of feathers and fur, he cleared out the place where Gentiles were permitted to be in the temple structure, perhaps showing a future where Gentiles could truly be close to God.

John's handoff of ministry to Jesus is a prelude to the way of Jesus. In this way of thinking, you do not hoard for yourself. You make the way to Jesus, and he is the one who leads.

Only God knows fully the reason that John was so closely tied to the work of Jesus, but the work he did as an itinerant preacher gives us a pretty good idea: the Law was passing away as the main method God used to form his people, and John was the first messenger of the new way. He had his own set of disciples, but the ultimate goal was still Jesus. (Even John's disciples were recorded as being baptized again into the Spirit after Pentecost.)

The team you have around you is important in accomplishing your mission, and the church is no exception. Paul is in a struggle, and he needs to know who he can depend on, and who has abandoned his work.

The hard work over retraining to become followers of Jesus instead of followers of our own instincts is called discipleship. Paul outlines some pretty clear differences between those two paths, and also shows that he has been teaching by living it himself. For a young pastor like Timothy, this would be critical.

Working with people can be one of the most challenging jobs of a young church, especially for a young pastor like Timothy. To this challenge, Paul offers guidance. The church is still God's, the people are God's, and God is doing the work. The pastor stands with his people before God to lead in discipleship.

"Join me in suffering" isn't exactly the best marketing slogan. Can you imagine any church putting that on their sign? Yet that was the thing with which Paul was familiar because of his contention with the powers, and it would remain part of the picture as the young church grew.

"Devote yourselves to do good." That instruction is important enough to be repeated twice in this short passage. For Cretans, who have been more self-absorbed, this may have been a tough discipline. In the Kingdom of Jesus, we follow Jesus and care for each other.

Undermining the Cretan culture and trying to help Titus learn to bring order, Paul turns to the family and interpersonal structures. There's not a lot of deep theology here, but it's immensely practical: to grow a community of Christ, you need a basic agreement to act like a Jesus follower, and this was a foreign concept to the Cretans.

Working in Crete must have been a real challenge. To have the reputation of being liars, brutes, and gluttons works against the ways of Christ, even the ways of the Jewish Law. Paul recommends strong measures, and hopefully Titus is up to the task.

This closing passage of the book gives an idea of the kind of issues the early church might have faced, and how a pastor would have addressed them. Slaves and masters, rich and poor, false teachers and Christ followers. This is the landscape that Timothy was working in, and it was his charge as a young pastor to bring order to the chaos.

Paul outlines to Timothy how those who put their hope in God receive help from the body of Christ, the Church. Not only direct work such as work with widows, but also a voice. In a time of emperors and kings, the Church was establishing a place where rich and poor alike could have power, possible through the shared power of the Spirit.

This chapter gives an insight into the give and take in leadership of the early church. They didn't lord leadership over one another, but they sought to follow Jesus and teach others to do so. The previous chapter about deacons and overseers now leads into this one, where we see a pastor being ordained by the church elders.

Paul needs to do more than cheer Timothy on, he needs to give him good tools with which to build a strong church. Two of those things are help and right belief, and he gives a little guidance for each here. Deacons, overseers, and pastors remain part of the church today.

Paul seems to have a low view of women in this passage, but this letter to Timothy should not be seen as the universal rule. It was certainly specific to Timothy's experience, and elsewhere Paul highly praises women who lead in the church, particularly Phoebe, Tryphena, and Tryphosa in the book of Romans, which was written to a large audience.

Like Philemon, 1 Timothy is a look at the dynamic between two followers of Christ. In Timothy's case, though, Paul is raising him up as a pastor. This means that in addition to the practical side of Christian living that Paul had with Philemon, he is teaching Timothy how to both know sound doctrine and live in such a way that he would be able to see it play out in life.

Reading Philemon is eavesdropping on a conversation between two people who are committed to following Christ and letting that guidance be their true motivation. Paul isn't coercive, he doesn't need to be. It is a conversation of certainly, not in the foundation of their own friendship, but in the shared priorities of the Kingdom of Jesus.

Once again, Paul's incarceration is the method of working God's will: he is allowed to address the Jewish leaders, and this amounts to a few converts. Perhaps Paul was actually relieved to have been in the company of the Romans, since the Jewish leaders tended to respond to him with violence.

A voyage that started as a prison transport has now become an opportunity for Paul to visit growing churches. It's kind of fascinating to watch how this unfolds, since the purpose of jailing Paul was to keep him from doing his work, and now that very establishment is what grows it.

The purpose of Paul's preservation extends to those around him. It is not recorded why Paul needed to get to his final destination, but Church tradition records that this trip did end with Paul's death following his trial. Whatever God was doing, the protection of the Creator of the Universe was ample to preserve all those aboard as Paul guided them along the way God intended, whether they were believers or not.

"He could have been set free if he had not appealed to Caesar." Paul seems to be the architect of his own doom? Perhaps it is also that Paul's purpose in front of this high court is to win converts to Jesus even at that level, and this certainly did begin to happen.

A lot of maneuvering is happening with Paul the prisoner, efforts he has made on his own behalf to prolong his life. It says something for the followers of the Law, calling for the head of a man with whom they have disagreement: it is certainly not the way of Jesus.

Think you've seen persecution? Try Paul's brand on for size: held in prison despite valid charges, the victim of powerful political figures who want to flatter one another at his expense, kept from visiting the churches that he loves. And of course, people wanted to murder him. Seems like it would have been easy to turn away from this difficult life and go back to being a Pharisee, but Paul held firmly to the faith he had in Jesus.

Paul swings the momentum of the trial away from the contrived charges that are being brought against him and declares the situation to be what it is: a battle of theologies. Not only is that the truth of the matter, is also makes it uncomfortable for a government official to intervene in the dispute.

Paul seems to be skirting disaster at every turn, and only God knows the reason why his life is being preserved so. Perhaps God is still working in this situation, bringing about things that only God knows. Whatever the case, Paul is finding refuge among the very government that crucified Jesus.

Anyone who thinks Christians should never stir things up might take a moment with this passage where Paul purposely causes an argument between the Pharisees and Sadducees. Of course, living in harmony with others is what we should pursue, but there are also times when the Spirit moves in us like fire, and challenging the powers is no small feat.

Paul appears before a maddening crowd and talks about his own maddening past, persecuting the Church he now serves. He is in Jerusalem, which was once the seat of his fervent belief in the Law, and. now he professes the same passion for Jesus. What a swirl of memories and emotions he must have felt as he stood there talking.

It's interesting that Paul, who was once a strict adherent to the Law, now returns to the ways of the Law in order to answer those who continue to be as he once was. While the Lordship of Christ is absolute, the way we practice should be a matter of consideration. Elsewhere, Paul talks about being all things to all people and this is the exercise of that statement.

Paul seems to have an urgency in his actions now, perhaps driven by the foreboding news from Jerusalem. It's interesting how things like that can propel us forward, giving us a sense of purpose and a deeper passion for our call.

We are accountable to one another in this Kingdom of Jesus. Paul was accountable to bring the Word to his churches, but he was not the center of worship. The influence of the Holy Spirit and the commitment to one another are the things which sustains us, and listening to both the Spirit and one another remain important as we work together.

Ever sat through a sermon so boring that you fell out the window and died? To be fair, it says Paul was talking, not preaching. Still, you have to hand it to Paul: if you kill someone with preaching, the least you can do is raise them back up!

Not worshipping other gods is a basic command for followers of the true God, but sometimes those gods do not go quietly. Not the gods themselves, of course. But the people who profit from the established powers that work against the way of Jesus are often the loudest of all, when their power is threatened.