Another year of SpendaYearwithJesus is completed. Am I improved for the year I spent following Jesus’ experience?

The reality is that I am not.

In fact, life goes on at the dizzying pace that it always has…

…with 3-5 fewer daily text messages.

It occurs to me that Jesus’ original followers lived a similar reality. For all the impact we impose on their experience, what really happened to them in the day-by-day?

Maybe that’s the point. I may not recognize it, but I am just a little more understanding of others — the people around Jesus in his day as well as the people around me today who are trying to understand their own experience.

I hear Christians talk about the resurrection as if it was the definitive moment of history, but look how little changed before and after that moment in reality. A handful of people changed.

My brother died on a Friday. But it’s third-day-complicated.

There was an apartment fire on Friday morning. Three people, including my brother, were missing.

The concrete upper-story floor pad had fallen on the bed where he was sleeping, so “finding him” wasn’t simply a matter of peeking in the room.

Saturday, we waited. Excruciating, inevitable waiting.

Sunday, they rolled the stone away, and we learned what we already knew.

Jesus died on a Friday. His brothers were in Jerusalem for the Feast. They must have heard, must have responded. I wonder how they spent Saturday.

Jesus was human. He had a family. Today, I share the grief of a brother.

Every person in the first century crossed the line between life and death, including Jesus. It was part of being human. We don’t need to be reminded that it still is.

Preparing to cross that [dead]line is also part of being human. We anticipate that death will change things. It will bring loss. It will also bring closure.

I have to wonder if Jesus looked at the twelve men around him and felt a sense of gravitas. He had been engaging in succession planning for three years.

• He had already communicated that he had come to fulfill the Law, thus bringing closure.
• The previous spring he had commissioned the twelve to declare the nearness of the kingdom.
• The previous summer, he began to speak of the end, though the disciples understood “dying and raising” as a metaphor.
• He could reasonably anticipate escalation of conflict in Jerusalem (since he was a wanted man for raising Lazarus).

In Jesus’ experience, he and his disciples refreshed Israel’s past by reading the Law every Sabbath day. When they read about the ordination procedures and dedication ceremony for priests, the practice reminded them of the inevitability of succession planning.

As Jesus sat with his men in the Ephraim wilderness and as he sat with his men this evening, the twelve vaguely anticipated ordination (echoing the priestly ritual) in a new kingdom. Jesus knew his dead.line loomed.

The experience was normal. What everyone would expect. Jesus, his family, his disciples, and their families walked the Jordan Valley roads along with hundreds of holiday travelers. The festive occasion: Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

Underneath the normal of that moment was the disruptive fact that Jesus was a wanted man. 4 weeks previously, in a suburb of the capital city and to the amazement of all, Jesus resuscitated a family friend. The religious authorities regarded this action as an exercise of trickery or sorcery – either was criminal – so they issued a warrant for his arrest (Talmud Sanhedrin 43a).

For 3 weeks afterwards, Jesus and his men withdrew into the hills between Judea and Samaria. Then they re-emerged to join the crowds for the feast.

Observe most people, and their lives appear normal. But like Jesus’ experience, underneath the normal are life-challenging disruptions. If attentive, we can see beyond the surface-normal, see into those challenges even as life goes on, just as it did around Jesus as he neared his own end.

“You have a short time to live.” More regularly than we like to admit, we hear of a family member or friend given that diagnosis.

If you had one week to live, how would you spend it?

Jesus knew he had a short time to live. On his way to Jerusalem, he took his closest followers aside privately. He confided to them that he would be handed over to the temple authorities, condemned, mocked, flogged and crucified (Mt 20:17-19). Jesus’ description of his own end is quite specific.

Jesus’ experience included the anticipation of his own death. But as we follow Jesus the last week of his life, we do not see him chasing a new adventure or hurrying to try a new pastime.

So how did Jesus spend his last week?

He did what he had always done: eating meals with family and friends, teaching in the temple courts, spending time with his closest followers. I notice a change in Jesus’ teaching content but not in his pace of life.

Unhurried, Jesus depletes his remaining hours engaging friends.

Does he seem like he really only has one week left to live?

One of Jesus’ followers, Paul, writing after Jesus’ death in his letter to Roman Christians begins with the phrase, “…the one who was descended from David with respect to the flesh” (Rom 1:3; also 2 Tim 2:8). Today, everyone knows that. It’s introductory.

The idea that the Messiah would be a descendant of Israel’s King David was well-established in Jesus’ day.

During Jesus’ “Kingdom Tour” and throughout his public activity, people approached his healing activity with the words of the accolade channeling their hopes as well as uncertainties.

• Two blind men asked Jesus for healing calling him “Son of David” (Matt 9:27).
• After Jesus healed a blind and mute man, the crowds around him observed, “This one is not the son of David, is he?”
• A foreigner referred to Jesus as “Lord, Son of David” when she asked for healing for her daughter (Matt 15:22).
• Two more blind men outside Jericho asked Jesus for healing using the title, “Son of David” (Matt 20:30).

During the Feast of Huts, some members of the crowd rejected Jesus observing from their Scripture (the Prophets and Writings; 2 Sam 7:12-14; Ps 2:7; 89:4; Mic 5:2) that the Messiah would come from the descendants of David and from Bethlehem (John 7:42). Wait a minute!

Jesus rode into Jerusalem at the next Passover, his final visit to the city, surrounded by crowds cheering, “Hosanna to the Son of the David” as well as “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the LORD” (Matt 21:9; a phrase from the Hallel). Were they sure?

In that final week, Jesus posed the question to some religious leaders directly, “Whose son is the Messiah?” Their response, “The son of David” (Matt 22:42). And I want to ask, To whom were the religious leaders talking?

Can we approach the story with the uncertainty of its original participants? I think we can. We only need pause for a moment and allow the fog of uncertainty in our own lives to roll in … and we connect with Jesus’ experience.

It may seem jolting if you have never considered their experience—that this glued-group of twelve mean would split up, that some would periodically leave Jesus’ side, that their families would actually trump their touring activity and take priority!

When we read the itineraries in the Gospels, we seldom visualize detours.

But to call the priority of family a detour is to undermine the Torah-world in which the disciples and Jesus lived.

In a previous post, “Rogue husbands or loyal followers,” we looked at the Torah (Exodus 21.10), the Mishanh (Ketuboth 5.6) and a letter of the apostle Paul (1 Corinthians 7.3) as three witnesses to the priority of a man’s presence with and provision for his wife.

It was lawful for Jesus to respect the schedules of his married disciples (see Mark 1:30; 1 Corinthians 9:5).

As they lived out their year, we can conclude that Jesus and his disciples honored this priority of presence and provision for one’s family, and that their itinerary adjusted accordingly.

In the context of the current events of the SpendaYearwithJesus story, “Family feast travel” was one of those moments when the disciples’ responsibilities, their touring activity and family duties, converged.

“Be like Jesus.” I’ve heard that phrase my whole life in articles, sermons, and now blog posts.

Some tell me that Jesus was focused on the poor. As a result he participated in the challenges of living common to the poor. And we should, too.

Others emphasize that Jesus was singularly focused on teaching, and therefore didn’t have time for the chores of common folk. Teaching is the goal of being like Jesus.

Still others relate that Jesus was always on the road (teaching), so go, go, go.

And further, Jesus could be an itinerant preacher always on the road because he had the support of wealthy people.

But wait a minute, I thought Jesus was poor and related to poor people.

SpendaYearwithJesus developed out of this puzzle of paradoxes with a focus on Jesus’ experience in the daily grind of first-century life — like I live in the daily grind today. Being like Jesus means filling the daily grind with the kind of person Jesus was.

Sign up for the epic conclusion of the story at SpendaYearwithJesus.com.

Walking along the lakeshore, Jesus said to some fishermen, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men” (Mk 1:17). Great turn of phrase.

In Jesus’ experience, however, the phrase has an assorted history. In prophetic use, the phrase refers to God’s judgment of exile.

Prophet Amos warns the people of Israel, “The time is coming when you will be carried away in baskets, all of you in fishermen’s pots.” (Amos 4:2)

Habakkuk also describes, “The Chaldean brings all of them up with a hook . . . and gathers them in his fishing net…” (Hab 1:15; See also Ezek 38:4 for another reference to hooks.)

Jeremiah declares, “Look! I will send many fishermen,” announces Yhwh, “And they will catch them” (Jer 16:16).**

I conclude that Jesus knew his Hebrew Scripture. So is he using the fishing metaphor in spite of its earlier use? Or perhaps the disciples should have heard Messianic overtones. Who appointed fishermen? God did.

In broader first-century Jewish thought, we stumble across a reference to humanity-fishers in the Psalms/Hymns of the Dead Sea Scrolls that echoes the Messianic ring.

You made my lodging with many fishermen,
those who spread the net upon the surface of the sea,
those who go hunting the sons of iniquity.
And there you established me for the judgment,
and strengthened in my heart the foundation of truth.
The covenant, therefore, for those looking for it. (1QH XIII (=V) frag. 29 ++)

The entire psalm deals with rescue of God’s approved ones, but the judgment of God toward oppressors.

There is an interesting reference to man-hunting in Plato’s Laws, 823b.

“There are…very many varieties also of hunts of land-animals—not of beasts only, but also, mark you, of men, both in war and often, too, in friendship [i.e. hunters of men]…”

Plato’s reference simply gives a larger Greco-Roman context to the use of the metaphor. Was Jesus aware of Plato? It’s worth considering but hard to build a case for or against. Some early Greek Gospel readers surely would have thought of Plato, however.

So what did Jesus mean, “Follow me, I will make you fishers of men”? The discipleship calling is clearly stated in the invitation, “Follow me.” Up to this time, it is God who appointed fishermen for epoch-transitions (Assyria-Israel, Babylon-Judah, Approved-Oppressors). The metaphor is startling because it was Jesus who was making this appointment.

** For more info, see Robert Eisler, Orpheus—The Fisher (London: J. M. Watkins, 1921), 75—83.

++ Florentino Gracía Martínez, The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated: The Qumran Texts in English (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996), 337.

Jesus

The Gospels refer to this common name almost six hundred times.
Only four times do they refer to “Jesus Christ” (Mk 1.1; Mt 1.1; Jn 1.17; 17.3). My attention was drawn to this fact by William Barclay in Jesus as They Saw Him.

Pick up a Greek Old Testament (aka The Septuagint), and you will notice something more. The sixth book, commonly titled “Joshua” in English Bibles, carries the name Ἰησοῦς (translated “Jesus” in the NT). In the Greek, the name appears over and over throughout the OT book. If you’re thinking, “Not so fast!” link over to the Septuagint book list in Wikipedia to see for yourself.

Barclay observed, “The name Jesus underlines the real humanity of our Lord.” Would we say the same about the name “Jesus” today?