Day 8

This morning everything is familiar.  John 12:12-19 The Triumphal Entry, what we ‘celebrate’ on Palm Sunday.  It’s very familiar and so a little more difficult to find something new or something that pertains to me right here, right now. So…

Just some things that stood out to me.  First, “his disciples did not understand these things at first, but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written about him and had been done to him.”  This brings me back to yesterday and how I noticed John mentioned Mary anointing Jesus in a chapter before it even happened.  He is doing the same here so it’s probably just how he writes.

This time he is mentioning Jesus’ death and resurrection as when he was “glorified” and that’s when the disciples put everything together.   He’s mentioning it chapters before it happens, perhaps as some foreshadowing or foreboding of what is to come.  

It was the past tense used to talk about it before it happened that threw me, as if it had already happened, which it had at the time of the writing but not at that time in the storytelling.  Anyway, enough about that.  I doubt if it has any consequence at all.  Just me being weird in my reading.

The next thing that grabbed my attention (not really grabbed but that I noticed) was  what the Pharisees said to one another, “You see that you are gaining nothing.  Look, the world has gone after him.”

I decided to read it in a different translation and went with the Message, “The Pharisees took one look and threw up their hands: “It’s out of control. The world’s in a stampede after him.””

How must this have felt to them. Some guy, just comes out of nowhere and starts with all these miracles and just draws everyone to him.

Seems odd that they were so familiar with the word, and yet, they were not recognizing it coming to life right before their eyes.  I wonder if I would?  

I know as a child and teen and even now, I always wanted to yell the pharisees, “Open your eyes! See what is happening.  See who He is!”  But that’s easy for me to say all these years later, when I have the gospels to spell it all out for me.

Plus, I’m sure they felt that as he moved up in the people’s eyes, as they began to follow him, they were moving down – losing power, losing control. 

Jesus tried to tell them he didn’t come to do away with the law but rather to fulfill it but in the moment, I’m sure felt like he was replacing them, that they weren’t going to be needed anymore and then what?

Jesus didn’t come to start a new religion, he came to revive his. To remind them who they were and what they were created to do.  He came to remind them who God was.  

As I typed that, I thought of all the wrath of God… the flood, the mass killings, the killing of babies, and I can’t help but pause before I type something like God is a loving God.  

It made me pause and wonder if the people used God as an excuse for these mass killings to further their agenda and wrote about it as if it was God… I don’t know that I really want to go here in a blogpost… Not that many read it anyway… but…

When I think of other things attributed to God such as welcoming the foreigner, the stranger, the alien… Genesis, Leviticus, Deuteronomy and others.  When I think about the 10 commandments which can be and was by Jesus shortened down to just the two, Love the Lord your God and your neighbor as yourself… or when I think of how God asks us to help the poor, to love our neighbor, to offer the sojourner a place to rest… Then I remember the loving side.

But if I consider that God didn’t commit or bless all these mass killings… should I consider that God didn’t say all these other good things too?

Suddenly, I’m left wondering once again, what is God, what is the Bible?

All this from thinking about the Pharisees and how they couldn’t SEE… 

Hmm… I think I’m done for today.  So much to consider and think about here.  

You have now gotten a glimpse in the scary brain of Sherri, and how it works like a tumble weed blowing in the wind…

Until next time… ♥️