Lectionary Friday 2-24-2023

 

Deuteronomy 7:12-16  Complete Jewish Bible

¹⁶ You are to devour all the peoples that Adonai your God hands over to you — show them no pity, and do not serve their gods, because that will become a trap for you.

“Devour”—“Consume”—“Eat”:  The first thing I thought of was Christ’s “hard saying”  (John 6:56) “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me, and I live in him.”

Titus 2  Complete Jewish Bible

^7b  …When you are teaching, have integrity and be serious; ⁸ let everything you say be so wholesome that an opponent will be put to shame because he will have nothing bad to say about us.

“Wholesome” derives from Old English “Hal” which can mean “healthy, sound” and the suffix “-some” which is related to ‘same’ and means “one; as one; together with”. ‘Wholesome’ could also be read as ‘Health-same’ according to its etymology.

(I also remembered that the letter to Titus is considered pseudoepigraphical, which came as a considerable relief to me. I can’t help imagining that the author of Titus was a person with severe control issues.)

John 1:35-42  Complete Jewish Bible

³⁸ Yeshua turned and saw them following him, and he asked them, “What are you looking for?” They said to him, “Rabbi!” (which means “Teacher!”) “Where are you staying?” ³⁹ He said to them, “Come and see.” (One of the translations says, “Come and you will see.”) and remained with him the rest of the day — it was about four o’clock in the afternoon.

All this supposedly happened somewhere near Bethsaida, because that’s where Philip and Andrew and Peter lived. That’s by the Sea of Galilee. It’s very confusing because the text also says that John was baptizing in the Jordan River near Bethany, which is near the Dead Sea.  It’s 65 miles between the two seas. There’s a modern place called Beit-Tsaida Nature Reserve right near the Jordan River and the Sea of Galilee. Anyhow, I started paying attention to time and place clues: John keeps saying “On the following day,” and “Again, on the following day,” all the while having Jesus jump around from Bethany to Bethsaida to Galilee. So, time is important, and not clock time. Then I remembered something I already knew about the phrase “it was about the tenth hour.” (The CJB translates it as “about 4 o’clock in the afternoon.)

See, that hour of the day, in cosmic time, is the very hour when Jesus is hanging dead on the cross. John  meant to imply that as exactly the place where Jesus “was staying,” and that’s the sight that Jesus invited the new disciples to “Come and See.” (Matthew’s gospel says that the ‘ninth hour’ is when Jesus cries out in a loud voice and dies, and isn’t removed from the cross until evening.)

 

I was interrupted while writing, so I have returned to this reflection the next day— Saturday. I’ve lost most of yesterday’s train of thought, except for the gospel phrase “Come and See,” so I went at it backwards from there. I also find it useful to employ “active imagination” when I’m trying to find connections, so that’s what I did.

 

What if I met The One on Whom the Wind Settles

while out walking by a lake, somewhere out of time?

 

What if somebody said, “That’s the guy, right there!” and

I said, “Who?” and looked

and saw the beginning and the end of all hope

just strolling along?

 

Would this be the One

who demands I devour without pity?

 

Would this be the One who says,

“Come and see,”

only to show me endings with no beginnings,

and beginnings with no endings?

 

Would I go?

 

And if I did, would I dare to stay there

for the rest of the quiet afternoon,

hearing no Other sound but the Wind?