My wife and I recently enjoyed a delicious meal with delightful friends. We ate at our favorite restaurant in the Metroplex, Lavendou Bistro. The food..wonderful; the  conversation..joy.

And (you may have felt this) there was a moment at the end of the evening when I wished it could last, even just a little longer.

In the ebb and flow of Jesus’ summer of bread and fish stew, some meals had to be better than others, some company more friendly than others. Jesus’ moved among the dining tables of his day with contentment. Fish stew was readily available, but depending on his host, Jesus might have eaten lamb or steak.

We don’t have to say that stew and steak are the same culinary quality. Or that all company is the same. We can simply eat satisfied as Jesus did. At the same time, even Jesus could have wanted some dining experiences to last and others to be over quickly!

One of Jesus’ later followers, Paul of Tarsus, said he knew how to be content whether well-fed or hungry. I think he got the idea from Jesus’ experience.

At our recent delicious, delightful dinner, I ate apple tart with ice cream for dessert. The earliest inscriptions of recorded history refer to apples. Though different varieties, Jesus surely ate apples too. Now the ice cream…?

Listen to a conversation about Jesus’ experience. Assumptions abound like the fact that life was easier for Jesus.

In Torah school, we imagine Jesus as the smartest kid in the room (i.e., he had a learning shortcut) and the most dedicated! Oh, Jesus was the smartest and the most dedicated, why —  because it was easier. Huh?

Here are some historical and human realities for your consideration:

• Honey and dates were available to sweeten bread.
  The man who multiplied loaves never tasted a doughnut (no refined sugar).
• In the carpenter shop, piling boards and swinging mallets leads to crushed fingers.
  Jesus crushed his fingers, especially while he was learning the trade.
• Friendship requires shared space and time and interests.
  Jesus passed time, both entertaining and uninteresting time, with Lazarus and other friends.
• When as many as 100,000 people descend on a city of 30,000, traffic bottlenecks.
  Jesus waited at Jerusalem’s gates and streets like bridge and tunnel commuters today.

By the way, there was a VIP entrance to Jerusalem. Jesus was not a VIP.

Life 2,000 years ago was not easier for Jesus.

I taught the grade school age kids at church on Sunday. As I was getting ready Sunday morning, at 8am I received the text:

“Through the narrow dirt streets, parents bring their children to the house where Jesus is. He welcomes them, blesses them happily.”

[You can subscribe and review the story at SpendaYearwithJesus.com]

It probably comes as no surprise. I enjoy teaching. I enjoy getting the SpendaYearwithJesus texts.

Regularly enough, I will be doing something during a day and Jesus will be doing something during that day that will create a pleasant intersection of experience.

At the very least, I looked at what I was doing from a larger perspective, even part of Jesus’ story.

So with Jesus’ experience on my mind, I went to church. I taught the kids. I came home.

That day, Jesus blessed the kids, spent time with friends, got in a boat with his disciples and went home.

It was a good day.

I was talking with a friend about visualizing Jesus’ experience day-to-day. I asked, “Do you think Jesus would have mowed his own lawn?”

Puzzled, my friend said, “My gut reaction is, ‘No.’ He needed to be out teaching.” Then he added, “But why do I think that way?”

After 2,000 years, one of the most enduring memories of the man Jesus is his teaching – quotable statements, absorbing parable stories, compelling conversations.

It seems, however, that the focus on teaching overshadows other typical activities in Jesus’ experience. Miracles take on this precedence as well. Why do we think this way?

The first-century ebb and flow of daily living necessitated natural down-times for anyone living at that time including Jesus.

(1) Harvest and (2) home maintenance as well as (3) winter rains inevitably interrupted crowd-gathering and hindered travel.** Unless Jesus spontaneously controlled the weather, but is control really the point?

While teaching is a defining activity of Jesus’ life, he was also subject to the constraints of daily living on this planet.

Which means Jesus had to submit his daily activities to earthly constraints.

For more info, see the weather cycle post.

The fifth of the ten commandments states, “Honor your father and mother” (Deut 5:16). Jesus lived under the Torah, so we would expect for him to keep the fifth commandment.

We read about Jesus’ mother, Mary, at various times throughout Jesus’ life. Jesus’ father, Joseph, however, only has an active role in the Gospel birth narratives of Matthew and Luke. Tradition suggests that Joseph died before Jesus started his speaking tours.

At the end of Jesus’ life, he entrusts his mother’s care to one beloved disciple. For the sake of consideration, let us accept the integrity of the event in the story and the integrity of Jesus’ care for his mother.

So how did Jesus honor and care for his mother throughout his adult life? Can we conclude that Jesus left home for the road neglecting his mother during three years of speaking tours?

Then after three years of making James or Jude take care of their mother, Mary, Jesus has a change of heart at the end of his life. He re-asserts his authority as firstborn magnanimously entrusting his mom to a faithful disciple.

So two realities influence Jesus’ experience in the SpendaYearwithJesus storyline. One is time and specifically, when Jesus was with his mom. The other is the integrity of Jesus’ material contribution to her care before he entrusts her to his disciple.

If Jesus did not consistently care for his mother, then how could James or Jude accept his decision to entrust Mary to a disciple?

I passed a sign in front of a church that read, “My lifeguard walks on water.” Have you seen this one?

I’ve seen this phrase in quite a few places — all land-locked. I wonder what a lifeguard sitting on the beach would think of it?

Judging from the way his family and the crowds responded, Jesus’ experience was fairly normal and human. The miracles were amazing but just not amazing enough.

A trip to Jerusalem with holiday crowds would have been a great venue for walking on water or parting a river. I’m sure that the crowds would have appreciated the shortcut and the spectacle.

Come to think of it, I’m sure there are a few lifeguards today who wouldn’t mind being able to walk on water. But we’re stuck with normal. No shortcuts.

If we could follow Jesus’ experience, we would find that he walked through water more than he walked on water. In the long run, that may even be more important for us.

After Jesus feeds and dismisses the crowd of 4,000, he and his disciples board a boat and row west across the lake.

The miraculous meal overwhelms a rather mundane ambiguity. From whence the boat?

Are we to conclude that they stole the boat? Of course not!

If they borrowed the boat they would by necessity have to return it. Alternatively, some of Jesus’ newfound friends might have given him a lift.

The option developed in the SpendaYearwithJesus storyline is that Jesus’ dispatched his married disciples to their homes to meet him later on the other side of the lake.

On the one hand, the married men could spend some time, however brief, with their families. On the other hand, their splitting off and then rejoining the group could account for the boat.

The challenge to this option is a view that Jesus and the twelve were together at all times..24×7 — always teaching and healing except when they were walking from town to town.

The manic teaching and healing schedule, however, does not account for the logistics surrounding those activities.

Jesus did not have a staff to whom he could delegate. If he had anything even close to resembling a travel secretary or a transportation captain, they were probably part of the twelve.

Mark, Luke, and Matthew tell a story of events that seem rather random. While the sensationalism of the events arrests our attention, I wonder what happened to the participants.

Here’s a summary: Spontaneously, Jesus tells his disciples, “Let’s go to the other side of the lake” (Mk 4:35). When they arrive on the other side (after an episode amazing in its own right), they are greeted by a hostile, raging, tormented man.** Jesus heals the man and sends him back home to the astonishment of his community. #irony Naturally, the townspeople ask Jesus to leave.

Where are they now?

The human question arises, what happened to the guy? The Gospels don’t say…

Was the world of Jesus’ experience so large that people randomly appeared and then disappeared never to be heard from again? Like the people you sit near on an airplane going overseas.

Or was his a world where interaction led to more interaction? Similar to meeting a like-minded colleague at a conference and exchanging business cards.

I conclude from research and personal experience that it was the latter – that contact generally resulted in more contact. Jesus probably saw the man during his second longer stay on the other side of Lake Galilee.

** Two men according to Matthew 8:28.

We must not neglect the wives of Jesus’ disciples. Neglect, you ask? Those men are on the road with Jesus!

In Jesus’ experience, loyalty to the Torah was authoritative. And the Torah warned against neglecting one’s wife.

If a man [who is already married] marries another woman, he may not neglect [his first wife’s] food, her clothing, or her conjugal rights. (Exodus 21.10)

This particular regulation seems obscure within the larger body of Law, but it apparently caught the attention of the Rabbis and is therefore worthy of our notice.

In the Mishnah, the discussion concerning conjugal rights prohibits lengthy absences by the husband as follows:

Disciples may go to Torah study without their wife’s consent for thirty days.Workers go out for one week. . . . Sailors for six months. . . (Ketuboth 5.6)

Paul echoes the Torah’s concern for conjugal integrity in his letter to the Corinthians.

The husband should fulfill his wife’s conjugal needs and the wife her husband’s. (1 Corinthians 7.3)

It would seem lawful of Jesus to respect the schedules of the disciples who were married (see Mark 1:30; 1 Corinthians 9:5). And that affects how we schedule Jesus’ experience.

Jesus was not under the Mishnah. The Mishnah simply gives us a context in which to form our own assumptions.

In other words, expect during the SpendaYearwithJesus story for the married disciples to break off from the group to visit their families. And don’t be surprised if Jesus stops praying, teaching, and healing to honor his mother every once in a while.

Every week, week after week, month after month, year after year…

Jesus’ friends and neighbors gathered Sabbath day to Sabbath day to read the Law of Moses.

The founders of the early church verified and upheld the practice.

Paul referred to the practice in his missionary preaching:
“… the utterances of the prophets … are read every Sabbath” (Acts 13:27).

James also confirmed the habit as part of the ruling of the Jerusalem Council: “For the law of Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath” (Acts 15:21).

Other first-century writers comment on the practice of gathering for Sabbath instruction. Philo was a Jewish philosopher from Alexandria, Egypt. Josephus was a historian of the Jewish War.

Philo explains, “…on the seventh day there are spread before the people in every city innumerable lessons of prudence…during the giving of which the common people sit down” (Special Laws 2.15 §62).

Josephus also explains for his readers, “And the seventh day we set apart from labor; it is dedicated to the learning of our customs and laws” (Antiquities of the Jews, 16.2.3 §43).

In another book, Against Apion, Josephus continues concerning the learning of the law, “…for he did not suffer the guilt of ignorance to go on without punishment, but demonstrated the law to be the best and the most necessary instruction of all others, permitting the people to leave off their other employments, and to assemble together for the hearing of the law, and learning it exactly, and this not once or twice, or oftener, but every week…” (2.17 §175).

The Law of Moses** animates Jesus’ experience. In particular, we understand the rhythm of Jesus’ story in the seven day increments marked by the Sabbath rest (Saturday). We also hear the Law informing the teachings, the challenges, and even the arguments in Jesus’ story.

Every Sabbath, Jesus’ devout friends and neighbors gathered to learn the Law.

** In English, Moses’ Law is called Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Interestingly, in German, the books are titled Moses I-V.