Tag Archives: Jesus

The Great Commandments

Mk 12:28-34

One of the scribes came to Jesus and asked him,”Which is the first of all the commandments?”
Jesus replied, “The first is this:
Hear, O Israel!
The Lord our God is Lord alone!
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
with all your soul,
with all your mind,
and with all your strength.
The second is this:
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
There is no other commandment greater than these.”

“Well said, Teacher,” the scribe says to Jesus, who spoke of loving God and loving neighbor.
He was among the representatives sent by the Roman-backed Jewish priestly leaders to discredit Jesus after his symbolic attach on the temple. Mark describes the attempts by the scribes–scholars skilled in religious matters –to trap Jesus in chapters 11 and 12 of his gospel.

But this scribe is different. The familiar words he’s heard so often seem to touch his heart as Jesus speaks them. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength…Love your neighbor as yourself.” That’s more important than the temple sacrifice and worship you’re working to maintain.

There’s no evidence that the scribe left everything to follow Jesus, but he’s told he’s ‘not far from the kingdom of God.” What became of him, we wonder?

We may not be far from the scribes, though. We lose sight of what’s important too. We get used to even the holiest things and defend ourselves with questions as they did.

Jesus engaged them, however. Will he not engage us this Lent, stirring our hearts, our souls, our minds, and renewing our strength with his truth?

Lord,
Let me hear your voice, your unfamiliar voice– I don’t listen to you enough.
Though unseen, you are always with me,
Though unrecognized, you care for me and all the world.
Feed me with the best of wheat and honey from the rock,
As once you led your people out of Egypt,
Lead us to your truth.

The Paralyzed Man

We need to engage our faith and its stories in an imaginative way. It’s not enough to leave our faith to the experts. Like anything important, faith should engage our minds and hearts and imaginations.

Our gospel story for today, for example, begs us to think about it. Have you every thought about the poor fellow who’s paralyzed and was brought to Jesus for help?

How did it happen, you wonder? Was he a fishermen there in Caphernau, and one day his wife tells him there’s a leak in the roof. So he gets a rickety ladder and climbs up. The ladder gives way and he fall fifteen feet unto the dark basalt rock below. Caphernaum was built on that.

He can’t get up; he can’t move. Some of his friends come. Nothing they can do, so they take him into his house to his wife and kids, and that’s where he lay helpless–who knows how long?

It’s a tough thing to lie on your back and can’t move. It has to wear your spirits down.

Then, Jesus comes to live in Peter’s house in Caphernaum. And the man’s friends–thank God for friends like this–come and pick him up and take him there, because they hear that Jesus can cure you.

But they can’t get near the place; it’s jammed with people. So they pull him up to the roof. Did he say “This is the last place I want to go.” And they cut a hole in the roof large enough to lower the poor man down, right to Jesus’ feet.

“Your sins are forgiven,” Jesus says to him. “I’m taking away the cold darkness freezing your soul… Get up and take up your mat and go home.”

And the man went home. He must have put his arms around his wife and his family. She probably told him never to go up on a ladder again. We never hear about him after this.
Like so many in the gospels, he’s a sign that God wishes to heal what’s broken in our world.

So his story makes us hope for the paralysis we see maybe in ourselves, maybe in our world so often frozen in its inability to bring about peace and justice. Like the friends of the paralyzed man, we bring our paralyzed world to the feet of Jesus, that he bring life to our souls and bodies. The Lord is here as he was there.

I wonder, too, about Peter–the miracle took place in his house. His life was certainly changed when Jesus came to live with him. All those people at his door. After the man left, I wonder if Peter looked at his roof and asked “Who’s going to put that back?”

But that’s for another day.

Peter’s Mother-in-Law

The gospels tell the good news of Jesus Christ– what he did and said. They don’t tell it all.

We’d like to know more about him, of course, but how about some others the gospels mention in passing?

Like Peter’s mother-in-law, for example, whom Mark’s gospel recalls. After leaving the synagogue at Capernaum where he expelled an unclean spirit from a man, Jesus entered the house of Peter and Andrew where Peter’s mother-in-law has a fever. Not quite as bad as being possessed by an unclean spirit, we may think, but most of us know a bout with the flu can take a lot out of you too.

Jesus took her by the hand and helped her up. The fever left her and she waited on them.
That final phrase “and she waited on them” – says a lot.

She was one of those who cooked their meals, washed and mended their clothes, fussed over them when they came home, wanted to know what happened that day, tried to protect them when too many people were knocking on the door to see them. Cook, Cleaner, Advisor, Gatekeeper, Supporter, and much more.

We all know what it means when someone like her waits on us.

Peter’s mother-in-law not only received the blessing of Jesus but kept it alive in what she did. She welcomed Jesus in the way she alone could. Without what she did, do you think he and his disciples could have carried on?

The church exists on many levels. Paul used the analogy of a body. We tend to think it’s just a few that bring the gospel to the world, but it’s never been the work of a few. Many, like Peter’s mother-in-law, have a part in it too.

The church is not made up of “Lone Rangers.” The final chapter of Paul’s Letter to the Romans has a litany of people in the Roman church whom the apostle greets as friends and co-workers. Most of them we know nothing about. Some of them, like Peter’s mother-in-law, probably “waited on him.”