Year B

Jan 28 2025

Scripture Study for

John’s vision of the woman and the dragon begins a section of Revelation that focuses on the power of evil—Satan—to oppose both God and God’s people. Although the power is formidable and truly destructive, in the end it does not prevail. The woman adorned with the stars, sun, and moon (see Genesis 37:9–10) represents Israel, who gives birth to the Messiah. Satan, of course, wishes to prevent this, but God rescues the child and also the “mother,” God’s people, who are also threatened by evil. The passage immediately after the reading (12:7–9) recounts the battle in heaven between Satan and Michael, which ends with Satan being thrown down to earth. Our reading resumes with a hymn of praise for God’s victory over Satan.

Paul has been responding to the claims of some that there is no resurrection, to which he answers that if there is no resurrection, then Christ was not raised from the dead and—if this is the case— then we have no hope (15:12–19). But Christ has been raised, and now Paul explains the implications. Christ has been victorious not only over his own personal death but over death absolutely. Just as our human existence and experience of death is corporate (“in Adam”), so also will be our experience of life “in Christ.” Those who “belong to Christ” will be the next to be raised, and then finally all will be raised when Christ comes into his kingdom.

Luke’s account of the Visitation features what might be termed two prophetic oracles, in the sense that both Elizabeth and Mary praise God and announce what God is doing. Elizabeth’s greeting to Mary focuses on Mary as “blessed” both because she is the “mother of my Lord” and also because she has believed what God has spoken. Mary begins by “proclaiming the greatness of the Lord” for the blessing God has given her, but immediately turns to the larger redemptive work of God, which is the reason for Mary’s blessedness. This redemptive work involves overturning the power of the proud, the rich, and the mighty in favor of the weak and lowly. All of this is done because God remains faithful to ancient promises.

Jan 28 2025

Scripture Study for

As God’s prophet, Elijah makes enemies of king Ahab and his wife, Jezebel. In the scene immediately preceding the reading, Elijah has bested Jezebel’s prophets of Baal, whom he puts to death (18:1–46). Jezebel’s response is predictable: she will have the head of the prophet, who now flees for his life into the wilderness (19:1–3). Here we find him praying for death. But his task as God’s man is not done, and so an angel comes to bring him some food. This, then, is not simply a story of God providing food, but is particularly a story of God providing food to sustain the prophet so that he can continue divinely-commanded work.

Paul reminds the Gentile Ephesians that they have been brought into the household of God in Christ through baptism and “sealed with the promised Holy Spirit” (1:13). Those who fail to conform to the character of God by “living in love,” the same self-giving love shown to them in Christ’s “sacrificial offering,” grieve the Spirit who has been given to them as a pledge of their adoption. The emphasis here, as throughout the letter, is that the church, as the people of God formed to announce God’s salvation, must in its internal and external relationships reflect the love that motivates that salvation. The world must be able to see God’s love in the church created by God.

When Jesus announces to the people that he is the “bread come down from heaven,” the bread the people have asked to receive, they turn on him. Jesus cannot possibly have “come down from heaven”— they know exactly who he is, the “son of Joseph.” Jesus’ call to “stop murmuring” recalls Israel’s “murmuring” in the wilderness when they didn’t believe that God would provide for them (Exodus 16:2, 7–8). The theme of belief thus now comes to the fore. Only those who listen to God (a form of belief) are able to believe further that Jesus has been sent by God and that he, indeed his very flesh, is the bread of life, which is far greater than any manna.

Jan 28 2025

Missing the “Wow!”

I thought about the chocolate bar that I had eaten for lunch. I plodded along, thinking of the mountain we’d just climbed, but even more of my sleeping bag. I stared down at the path. Suddenly the young woman in front of me stopped. I almost ran into her. The person behind me bumped my shoulder before she stopped. I looked up. There, standing six feet in front of us in this Maine wilderness, was the largest moose I have ever seen.

Today I feel as though I am staring at a well-worn path, too. There is an occupational hazard in writing many reflections and studying the same scriptures over and over again. What are the perils? I begin to skim. I think of “mining” the word of God for “the lesson.” I think about pontificating about “those (other) folks” who dwell in the futility of their minds as I dissect Paul’s thought system.

Some of the Israelites in the first reading may have analyzed the biomass of the desert. They scrutinized their path. They correctly concluded that there was not enough forage there to support them. Their whole community was going to die of starvation.

Folks scrambled off to find Jesus. Their brains were racing: “What might we do with a man who can feed five thousand people? Many are starving in Israel.” Like me, they were staring at their path, thinking about their chocolate bar and their sleeping bag.

Jesus is like that moose in our midst. He stops us in our tracks. He says to us, “Hey! Look up! I am the Bread of Life! I am here!” God sent the Israelites manna from heaven to say, “Look up! I am here!”

The moose lumbered off. We trudged back to camp. But that startled “wow!” has never left me.

Consider/Discuss

Sometimes we trudge along the well-worn path of religious practice, staring at the ground. We may figure that we’ve pretty much “got this.” When we are plodding along, thinking about the “how” and the “what,” how might we miss the Who, the “wow!” of the One who is our faith?
The passage just before today’s reading from John is the story of Jesus walking on the water. Are we trudging down the weary path of life absorbed in our own thoughts? How can we allow the Holy Spirit to help us “look up!” to walk on water?

Living and Praying with the Word

In love’s deepest longings, we don’t just want to know about someone, we want to know them. Remind us that St. Paul encourages us to “Be renewed in the spirit of your minds.” So, Lord of heaven, this day, we want to see you. Step onto the mundane path that we trudge and surprise us! Step into our way and say, “Hey, here I am!” Open our eyes to see you.

Jan 28 2025

Scripture Study for

After their deliverance from Egypt, Israel finds itself in the wilderness, where the people begin to murmur that they have no food and water. The failure to trust that God will provide for them leads them to fear they will perish, which in turn causes them to regret leaving “the house of bondage” in the first place. It is imperative at this early stage of the relationship that God show Israel the capability to provide for their most basic needs. This will be important later when God insists that Israel must not turn to any other gods for assistance in such matters. Thus the provision of manna (from the Hebrew man hu, “What is this?”).

Paul has been urging the Ephesians to recognize that, having been renewed and transformed through their incorporation into the one church, they are not the same people they were before they were baptized. They are fundamentally and radically different now, and they must begin immediately to acknowledge this. Their baptism and incorporation into Christ’s body must mean, among other things, a complete reassessment of their lives, leading to a renewal in their way of thinking and of evaluating the world and its ways. Now, as members of God’s church, they must manifest the very character of God, which is “righteousness and holiness of truth.”

Shortly after the feeding of the five thousand, the people find Jesus in Capernaum, where their initial question, “When did you get here?” begins a dialogue about Jesus himself. He accuses the people of setting their sights too low by “working” for perishable food instead of seeking eternal life. They take this to mean that they themselves can “work” for this “food,” but the only work they can, or need to, do is to believe in him, who was sent by the Father. Now skeptical, the people demand proof of this. Moses was sent by God and provided manna in the desert; what can Jesus do? He responds that it was God who gave manna in the desert and it is now God who gives the “true” (authentic, incomparable) bread from heaven, the source of life, Jesus himself.

Jan 27 2025

Seeing with Eyes of Amazement

Grass? That word jumped out at me when I first read today’s passage from John. Grass? In Israel?

When I look out of my window, I see green. I see grass, rich green grass. I see the dark green of spruce, the rich green of maple, the forest of green in the woods of oak and walnut and cherry. The region in which I live is in the rain shadow of Lake Michigan, and bursts with the color green on the first day of August. Water is abundant. All is vibrantly green.

I don’t recall that depth of green when I visited Israel, especially not in unirrigated places. So it startled me to read “there was a great deal of grass in that place” (John 6:10). I asked a Palestinian friend about that. She said, “That would be very unusual. Maybe a few places in early spring?”

The author of John writes in multiple layers of meaning, often frolicking with witticisms that we don’t comprehend in translation. So why the “grass?”

I looked up the Greek word used for “grass” . . . and surprise! Grass wasn’t something that you mowed to play soccer. This Greek word means “fodder” or “hay”—something that you feed to animals.

Clever, isn’t it, that Jesus would tell them to recline on the “fodder” when he is about to feed them?

Our God is surprising. Philip did the math—a hundred days’ wages wouldn’t be enough. How can we feed these folks? (Elisha’s servant asks the same thing: “How can we do this?”)

Using Eucharistic language, the Lord’s abundance was unexpected. He worked through an unlikely person: an unnamed little boy. Jesus’s unwillingness to be king was unexpected, too.

When you look at grass, think how astonishing God is: “The hand of the Lord feeds us; he answers all our needs” . . . in totally unexpected ways.

Consider/Discuss

As we head into a month of Bread of Life discourses, we will see Jesus continually doing the unexpected—feeding five thousand people, walking on water, ducking away from those who would make him king, calling himself the Bread of Life, making his supposed followers grumble at his audacity as they walk away. God’s ways are not our ways. Even more, God’s ways seem to be radically different from our expectations. How could we cultivate an “eyesight of amazement” this month, allowing the Holy Spirit to surprise us in ways that we might not expect?
In what unpredicted ways has God met your needs or answered your prayers? Who has helped you to “pick up and get going,” even someone whose help you did not expect?

Living and Praying with the Word

Lord, what an adventure it is to follow you! You take us places we never imagined we might go. You have worked through people whom we never would have expected. Thank you for keeping us alert and attentive to your ways, always hoping, always wondering how you will feed us today. Give us this day our daily bread, with baskets left over! What are you going to do today, God?