Day 72, June 17: Deuteronomy 30-32; Psalm 62; Luke 18 Then he took the twelve aside and said to them, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished. For he will be handed over to the Gentiles; and he will be mocked and insulted and spat upon. After they have flogged him, they will kill him, and on the third day he will rise again.” But they understood nothing about all these things; in fact, what he said was hidden from them, and they did not grasp what was said. (Luke 18:31-34 NRSV) Jesus tells his disciples, for the third time, what is going to happen to him. Although his words are abundantly clear to you and me, to his disciples, they are shrouded in mystery. Is it that they do not want to hear what he is saying? Have the disciples, in their new life as companions of Jesus, been in so many new situations where they do not know or understand what is happening, that they now exist in a perpetual fog? I am sitting in an airplane 30,000 feet in the air. I am typing this on an iPad, when I am done, the app that I am using will automatically save it to a cloud. I can, if I want to, send a text message to my daughter in Tokyo. (It is a 4:10 a.m. in Tokyo right now so I will not do that as she is probably sleeping. And, she would probably return the favor to me in the middle of the night to teach me a lesson.) When I try to explain all of this to me mother she does not understand. “What do you mean by ’save it to a cloud’? What is this ’text message’ and how can you send it from the airplane?” The world of tech is not her world, so try as I might, and she as well, it eludes her. What is simple for me is not for her. She has no need or desire to learn this “tech stuff”. Back to the disciples. Perhaps it is both that they do not want to hear what Jesus says, and they are in a fog because everything is different. They have left their homes and families; they have seen a dead person brought back to life; they have seen a man walk on the water; they have seen their teacher disregard the sabbath. By this point, the disciples may not know which way is up and which way is down. I believe their great virtue is that in spite of this, they stay with Jesus. “In for a penny in for a pound.” **Tomorrow’s Readings - Day 73, June 18: Deuteronomy 33-Joshua 1; Psalm 63; Luke 19**
Posted on: Mon, 17 Jun 2013 12:59:41 +0000
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