The late summer period of Jesus’ last year. A time of preparation – for the winter rains and for the fall feasts. In Capernaum, homebase for Jesus’ family and closest disciples, the residents live in a rare tension. They, at least their leaders, must determine whether to silence Jesus.

The Hebrew Law states that from time to time prophets will make predictions and perform miracles and then propose worship of previously unknown gods … as a test of loyalty. The penalty for this mutiny is death by stoning. (Deut 13:1-11)

Throughout human history in culture after culture, mutineers and traitors receive the stiffest legal penalties. The Hebrew law is no different. But for the people of Capernaum, the law continues:

If that prophet-scoundrel leads his neighbors  to worship other gods, if they all conspire together, then the town must receive the mutiny-punishment as well. (Deut. 13:12-17)

Conspiracy to commit treason is treason and receives treason’s penalty. Rules always sound so clean and forceful when read from the rulebook. But on the ground in human experience, there are always complicating factors. A major theme of Jesus’ experience, a theme that appears over and over in the Gospels, is this conflict over Jesus’ identity — teacher … false prophet … The Prophet … Messiah … And the people of Capernaum lived in the tension, at least for another month…

Michael Grant, author of Jesus: An Historian’s Review of the Gospels writes, “He must have seen what lay in store for him.”**

I heard a story from a part of the world where religious hostility is intense. A young man left home. While away, he crossed a religious boundary. He knew that when he returned to his town, his family would kill him for his religious choice. He said his fateful good-bye to his friends and returned home. A few weeks later, his friends received word he was dead.

Jesus made the comment, “No prophet can die outside Jerusalem…” (Lk 13:33).

The Gospels relate the hostility: first Herod tried to kill the infant Jesus because of the visit of the Magi (Mt 2:13, 16) then the Pharisees and the Herodians because of Jesus’ healing fame (Mk 3:6; Mt 12:14) then Jesus’ childhood neighbors in Nazareth because of Jesus’ rebuke (Lk 6:29) then Herod Antipas because of John (Lk 13:31) then the chief priests because of Jesus’ teaching fame (Mk 11:18).

Jesus’ experience was apparently full of conflict, and here we see that Jesus was aware that his situation was not going to have a happy ending or was it?

** Michael Grant, Jesus: An Historian’s Review of the Gospels (New York: Scribner, 1977), 135.

Imagine you’re a student of Elizabethan literature. Suddenly, one day in your seminar class, your professor is joined by none other than … William Shakespeare! You’re speechless. You fumble for words, for just one intelligible question for the “bard.” You are in the presence of the greatest writer of his age!

Peter, James and John had that experience. They met the greatest writer of his and their age–Moses. Every Sabbath, Sabbath after Sabbath, they gathered and read Moses’ writing!

The Gospels relate how Jesus took Peter, James and John to a high mountain to pray. The summer seems a likely time since winter on the mountain would be quite inhospitable. As they were praying, Jesus’ clothes glowed bright and white, then “Elijah with Moses” appeared (Mk 9:2-8).

This moment was something beyond the modern-day celebrity “meet-and-greet.” Can you imagine meeting one of your heroes from history?

If you met Moses, would you ever be able to read the books of Moses the same again? You would know something that no one else knows. What the author looked and sounded like!

I can imagine that Peter, James and John had a hard time keeping it to themselves at first. Of course, Peter eventually did tell (2 Peter 1:16-18).

The disciples felt exuberant. (Yesterday in the SpendaYearwithJesus storyline) Jesus confirmed that he was Messiah!

Shortly thereafter, their hopes were shaken by Jesus’ comments about dying and raising.

Exuberance and disappointment.

In the summer of 2013, my brothers and their families, my parents, and my family were planning to go to Orlando. We had taken a trip two years before and it was great. So we were excited to get together again.

You can imagine our disappointment when my dad called to let us know my mom was not going to be able to make the trip. The fact is, my mom had been under treatment for myeloma cancer for almost five years. We thought she was stable, but we were wrong. Our excitement to go to Disneyworld turned to concern for my mom’s condition.

Exuberance and disappointment.

We can connect with the disciples’ and Jesus’ experience. We can feel the uncertainty of human experience — both the exuberant uncertainty of happy opportunities and the weight of grief in a terminal diagnosis.

Perhaps Jesus’ disciple-optimists were thinking about implications of Messiah’s leadership (of course, not without its challenges: dying and raising as a metaphor rather than literal prediction). The disciple-pessimists were probably concerned about their future.

Either way, I don’t think they got much sleep after the news of that day.

It went by so fast

On a fall Saturday in 1994 at a rooftop restaurant in Atlanta, Ga, I asked my girlfriend to marry me. She said, “Yes.” Actually she said more than yes, but that’s another story. After that 6 hour long evening, my fiancee and I said to one another, “It went by so fast!”

All year, Jesus’ closest disciples try to understand the man to whom they gave their loyalty. They see crowds gather around Jesus, and towns cool to his presence. They witnessed the mixed support of civic leaders and opposition of religious leaders.

In Jesus’ experience from Passover to Passover, today is a turning point — the stuff of speeches and books. Yet in only six verses (Mark 8:27-33)…

Jesus reveals his demise.

The disciples expected greatness. They could not mistake the foreboding nature of his words.

The limits of a human day

Jesus’ experience, like ours, is wrapped in the limits of a human day. Today is a big day in Jesus’ experience, but it passes like any other day.

The sun sets, emotions calm, people sleep. The sun rises, a new day, new emotions. And naturally …humanly… memory slides slowly from vividness to oblivion.

Today is a turning point in Jesus’ story. I wonder if his followers felt about this day like my wife and I do about the night of our engagement. The event passed so quickly.

Like important days in our lives, however, the significance accumulates with time.

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I enjoy following the Olympics. The competition, the athletes’ backstories, the surprises, the heartbreaks, and even the behind-the-scenes operation of the games.

During periods of Olympic interest, it strikes me to ask, Why didn’t Jesus talk about sports?

Jesus talks about life — farming and fishing, fields and trees, building a tower. Sports were not off-limits to the religious people of the day. So why doesn’t Jesus talk about sports?

Simply put, sports did not make a significant imprint on Jesus’ experience or culture.

One reason is that Jewish participation in Roman sports posed some major incompatibilities in the participant’s “uniforms.”

So even though archeologists have uncovered a sports complex (hippodrome) located in ancient Jerusalem, this find does not factor into Jesus’ story.

Jesus apparently had other interests and occupations, even though sports were a part of ancient life.

Knowing the context helps us frame and tell Jesus’ story.

Connect with Jesus’ experience.

McCown: Luke’s Central Section

The opening verse pitches the dom in an t tone for th e whole n a rra tiv e : w ith th e cross before him, Jesus tu rn s his face stead fastly from Galilee tow ard Jerusalem (9 51, 53). H is progress is so rapid, in th e concise account, th a t th e v ery first n ight brings him to S am aria to sleep, n o t in th e city where first shelter was sought, b u t in some village to which he moves on a fte r a rebuff (9 52,56). W heth er th e ro u te was from Tell H ûm eith er across Esdraelon by w ay of T ab o r to Jen în or Q ubatîyeh, or down th e Jo rd a n Valley b y w ay of Beisân to some village in th e moun- tain s south of it, th is would be no small achievem ent, as th e w riter knows from having m ade both journeys on foot, but not in one day.

C. C. McCown, “The Geography of Luke’s Central Section,” Journal of Biblical Literature 57, no. 1 (1938): 53.

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, 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.”

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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.