Living Words

We Have Not Obeyed His Voice Daniel 9:1-27 by William Klock Last week we looked at the resurrection story in John 20 as it continued into the evening that first Easter Sunday—as Jesus appeared to his disciples while they were hiding, as he breathed new life into them through the Holy Spirit, and as he commissioned them with those words, “Even as the Father sent me, I am sending you.”  With those actions, with those words, with that little group of disciples hiding in Jerusalem Jesus began the renewal of Israel.  That was the beginning of a new people called to be light in the darkness and sent out to boldly proclaim the good news and the coming of God’s kingdom.  At its core it was the same mission that the people of God had had since Abraham: to be light in the darkness, to make the one, true God known to the nations.  But now, recentred in Jesus, this people would go out—as I said—as prophets, priests, and kings.  As prophets, calling first Judah, then the nations to repentance.  As priests, mediating, pr

Prophets and Priests 1 St. John 5:4-12 & St. John 20:19-23 by William Klock Jesus’ disciples were afraid.  They were huddled together in the dark, doors locked, talking—it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if there was some arguing going on—all in quiet whispers lest the authorities find them and crucify them just like they’d crucified Jesus.  That’s what St. John writes in his Gospel. On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews…   This was the evening of that first Easter Sunday when Mary went to the tomb at dawn and found it empty.  She ran as fast as she could through the empty streets of Jerusalem to find Peter and John.  She beat on their door and when the door was opened the frantic words spilled out with her sobs, “They’ve taken the Lord out of the tomb and I don’t know where they’ve laid him!”  So Peter and John ran and they saw for themselves the empty tomb with the linens used to wrap Jesus’ body lying there u

New Creation St. John 20:1-10 & Colossians 3:1-11 by William Klock “On the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark.”  If we’ve been paying attention to John’s Gospel—it helps if we’ve recently been reading it from start to finish, but even if what’s fresh in our minds are these chapters we’ve read as our Gospels these last few days—if we’ve been paying close attention, this bit about it being the first day of the week ought to jump out at us.  In our reading on Friday we heard John’s echoes of the old story of creation in our Gospel.  When Pilate presented Jesus to the people, robed in purple with his bloody crown of thorns, and declared, “Behold, the man!”; when they took him off to be crucified, John reminds us that it was the sixth day of the week—echoing the sixth day on which the Lord completed his work of creation by calling forth human beings to govern his good creation.  John strategically quotes Pilate at that point, as he presents Jesus to the peop

Behold, the Man! St. John 19 by William Klock The more things change, the more they stay the same.  At the end of John 18 there’s that familiar scene of Jesus before Pilate.  On the one hand Pilate has no interest in crucifying Jesus, but he’s also finding the whole situation a pain in the neck.  Pilate’s only real interest was in keeping the peace in Judea and these Jews weren’t making it easy for him.  And so he had Jesus brought to him and he asked, “Are you the King of the Jews?”  And Jesus responded, “Are you asking because you’re interested or because that’s what you’ve heard people say about me?”  And Pilate responds, “Am I Jew?  Why should I care if you’re King of the Jews or not?  It’s your skin on the line.  Your own people—your own priests!—arrested you and handed you over to me.  I’m giving you a chance to explain yourself.  So what do you have to say?” Jesus goes on to explain in those well-known (and often misunderstood words), “My kingdom is not from this world.  If it were, my disciples w

Bread, Wine, and Clean Feet St. John 13 by William Klock Our world needs more than ever the story of Holy Week.  The whole story of Jesus, just like the big story of Israel and her God, is a story about love.  But on Tuesday, as I was mixing concentrated floor wax remover into a bucket of water and trying to figure out the right ratio to get the old wax off the floor, I was also thinking about how Holy Week takes this grand biblical theme of love and super-concentrates it for us so that we can’t miss a single bit of it.  From Jesus humbling himself on Palm Sunday and weeping over unrepentant Jerusalem, to this last Passover meal he shared with his disciples and his washing of their feet, to his death on the cross on Friday, the love of God is profoundly manifest in Jesus.  And here, in the middle of Holy Week, after Jesus has shared this Passover meal with his friends and washed their feet, Jesus says to them, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also ar

Hosanna to the Son of David St. Matthew 21:1-43 by William Klock That first Palm Sunday, Jesus made his last trip to Jerusalem for the Passover.  In the little town on the hill opposite the city he made arrangement for a donkey, then he rode down into the valley, back up to the city, and fulfilling the ancient prophecy of Zechariah about a humble king who would come to deliver his people.  You and I know where this story is headed.  Just in case we might have forgotten, the long Palm Sunday Gospel gives us an opportunity not just to remember but to put ourselves in the story of Jesus’ arrest, his trial, and his crucifixion.  But the people on that first Palm Sunday had no idea that the story was headed in that direction.  Jesus had put two and two together—or maybe we should say that he’d put Moses and Isaiah or the law and the prophets together—and he knew that somehow he was headed to his death, despite the acclaim of the crowd.  I have to think that there were a few others amongst his people, wise people

About the King’s Business Daniel 8:1-27 by William Klock The books of 1 and 2 Maccabees in the Apocrypha detail the persecution of the Jews in the mid-160s BC, during the reign of Antiochus IV Epiphanes.  2 Maccabees 6, for example, tells how “the king sent an Athenian senator to compel the Jews to forsake the laws of their ancestors and no longer to live by the laws of God; also to pollute the temple in Jerusalem and to call it the temple of Olympian Zeus” (6:1-2).  The gentiles used the temple of God for their orgies and drunken banquets.  Antiochus desecrated the alter with the sacrifice of a pig.  On holidays the king’s men would round up Jews and force them to participate in his parades and sacrifices.  Those who refused to participate or who were caught living by torah were killed.  Two women, for example, were caught having circumcised their baby boys.  Their babies were tied around their necks as the women were paraded through the streets to the wall of the city and then thrown down it to their deat

With the Clouds of Heaven Daniel 7:1-28 by William Klock The seventh chapter of Daniel begins this way: In the first year of Belshazzar king of Babylon, Daniel saw a dream and visions of his head as he lay in his bed. Then he wrote down the dream and told the sum of the matter.   It’s finally Daniel’s turn to dream.  The storyteller rolls back the clock about a decade to the first year of Belshazzar, which would have been about 550 BC.  The implied audience, remember, is the faithful Jews living in Judah in the early 160s BC, during the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes.  The purpose of the book of Daniel was to encourage them and to exhort them to stand firm for the Lord, to stand firm for his law, even as this pagan king was making it illegal for them to live according to the law and to worship the Lord, even as many of their fellow Jews were caving in to the pressure and apostatizing.  The book of Daniel points them back to their ancestors who lived during the Babylonian exile and had their own struggles

He is the Living God Daniel 6:1-28 by William Klock Last Sunday we read those closing words of the fifth chapter of Daniel that tell us Belshazzar, the very night of his feast, was killed and that Darius the Mede received the kingdom.  Daniel 6 picks right up from there.  Let’s look at Daniel 6:1-9. It pleased Darius to set over the kingdom 120 satraps, to be throughout the whole kingdom; and over them three high officials, of whom Daniel was one, to whom these satraps should give account, so that the king might suffer no loss. Then this Daniel became distinguished above all the other high officials and satraps, because an excellent spirit was in him. And the king planned to set him over the whole kingdom. Then the high officials and the satraps sought to find a ground for complaint against Daniel with regard to the kingdom, but they could find no ground for complaint or any fault, because he was faithful, and no error or fault was found in him. Then these men said, “We shall not find any ground for comp