Today, I am reading and commenting on John 12-13.

The part of this passage where a group of “Greeks” requested to see Jesus seems odd to me. (I am not sure if John means “Gentiles” or “Hellenized Jews” when he writes “Greeks” here, probably the latter).  So, here is what John tells us: a group of Greeks came to Philip with a request to see Jesus.  Philip takes that request to Andrew, then he and Andrew take the request to Jesus.  Then Jesus talks about how His hour has come.  We never learn if the Greeks got their audience with Jesus.  John never explains the connection between what Jesus said and the Greeks requesting to see Him.  Actually, writing that makes me wonder if perhaps my default reading that John meant Hellenized Jews is wrong.  Perhaps, the connection has to do with the idea, which I am not convinced of, that during Jesus’ earthly ministry, His message was directed solely at those who followed the Law of Moses (Jews and Samaritans*), while His death began His message being directed to all people.

In any case, the request from the Greeks to see Him triggered Jesus to declare that His hour to be glorified had come.  He begins by saying, “…unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. ”  We frequently read this as being directed at us as His followers, and we are not wrong to do so.  However, I also believe that He was saying that He had to die in order to produce followers who were transformed to be like Him by the Holy Spirit.  Now, as I said, this also applies to us as He explained in the next bit.  We must be willing to lose our life, and the things of this world which we value, in order to gain the life which God offers through Jesus.  What Jesus is saying here follows up on what I wrote about yesterday.  The members of the Sanhedrin tried to preserve what they had, and as a result, they lost it.  Jesus’ disciples (except for Judas Iscariot), on the other hand, gave up all that they desired in this world in order to obtain the life Jesus offered them.  Finally, Jesus told us that those who wish to serve Him need to follow Him.  He said this as the beginning of the week which would end with His crucifixion.  If we wish to serve Christ, we must follow Him to the cross.  We need to accept that following and serving Him may lead to us being tortured and killed, not just accept, but embrace that.  Not everyone who serves Christ will find that end, but everyone who serves Him must be willing and eager to do so.  If that day comes for me I am not sure I am able to eagerly embrace it.  I pray that God will give me the grace to do so if He leads me there.

I was going to end there, but one more thing hit me as I began to write my title for today’s blog.  Christ was lifted up, then put into the ground, and as a result He produced many seeds.  Many of His followers(those seeds) since then have died and produced even more seeds.  This reminds us that persecution of Christians in an effort to get rid of Christians is always counter-productive.  As an example, Europe was once a safe haven for those who followed Christ, and the Church in Europe has almost died.  Europe today is hostile to Christianity, yet the Church in Europe is seeing signs of growing for the first time in what is probably a century.

*Samaritans interpreted the Law of Moses differently from the Jews, but would almost certainly have claimed that temple worship was a distortion of the Law of Moses (at least, that is what I understand from what I have read about Samaritans, both in the Bible and elsewhere).

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

I have created a Patreon page for those who would like to support me in writing these blog posts every day: https://patreon.com/AttilaSoldus

Today, I am reading and commenting on John 12-13.

When we read the account of Jesus washing His disciples feet we rarely truly understand what was going on here on the visceral level which the disciples (and many of those who read this when it was first written) would have understood it.  If we look at the account of the woman who anointed Jesus in Luke we get a little better understanding of it.  And, if we do not fully understand the symbolism of Jesus washing His disciples feet, we will not fully understand the lesson He gives His disciples about it when He was finished.  Jesus is our Teacher and our Lord (another thing which we do not fully understand today in the same way that those who first read the Gospels did).  If He did the demeaning service of washing His disciples feet, then we should put ourselves into demeaning situations to serve our Brothers and Sisters in Christ, and not just them, but also those whom Christ is calling to Him.  I want to highlight one other message which Jesus makes while washing His disciples feet.  He implies that they were physically clean, only their feet were dirty.  Jesus uses that comparison as a metaphor that even if we can clean our spiritual selves we still need Him to clean the dirtiest part of ourselves.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  John 12-13.

I am going to write some thoughts today which I have not completely worked through, so I am not convinced that I will be able to express them without allowing them to be understood as meaning something which is sacrilegious.  Jesus said that if we wish to serve Him, we must follow Him and that if we are His servants we must be where He is.  I understand this to mean that we must be willing to face a death as painful as His if that is where He leads us.  From there He tells those listening to believe in the light while they have the light.  Then,  a little further on He says that the one who looks at Him see the One who sent Him.  Finally, He says that He came into the world as a light so that no one who believes in Him should stay in darkness.  Therefore, as we live our lives those who look at us will see the one who sent us.  If that One is Jesus, they will see the light and have the opportunity to believe in Him, becoming children of light just as we have become children of light.  Let us strive to allow the light of the Spirit to shine through us so that others have the opportunity to walk in the Light of God’s love.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  John 12-13.

As I read this through initially, I noticed that John connects the request from some “Greeks” to speak with Jesus to Jesus publicly predicting His coming death.  Most, if not all, of the other places where Jesus openly predicted His death were spoken privately to just His disciples.  I want to note that there is some disagreement about whether these “Greeks” were Jews who had adopted Greek culture or Gentiles.  I believe that John here is referring to Gentiles (as I understand the First Century, those who were not Romans but considered themselves cosmopolitan thought of themselves as “Greeks).  If I am correct, these would have been Gentiles who sought to worship God.  The arrival of these Greeks looking to meet Jesus which signaled to Him that the hour of His death, the time when He would be glorified, was upon Him.  And while this was the hour for the Son of Man, Jesus, to be glorified, Jesus chose to emphasize that it was really about glorifying God the Father.  So, we should live our lives such that God is glorified by our deaths.  Whether that means we die the death of a martyr, or die in our beds in a way which brings glory to God, we should strive for that.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  John 12-13.

Here we have yet another account of  a woman anointing Jesus’ feet.  John tells us that the woman was Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus.  In some ways, John’s account makes it easier to understand the point of the story,  Here, Judas is the one who complains that she should have sold the perfume and given the money to the poor.  John points out that Judas was not concerned for the poor, but if Mary had sold the perfume and given the money to aid the poor, she would have given it into the fund which Judas controlled.  This puts Jesus’ comment about us always having the poor among us in a clearer context, especially when we realize that it closely mirrors Deuteronomy 15:11, which goes on from telling us that to tell us to be openhanded towards the poor among us.

So, we have a warning against those who claim to be advocates for the poor, but just want us to give to their “fund to aid the poor” so that they can siphon some of that money off to satisfy their own desires.  Then we have an admonition to not condemn those who give from their heart to bring comfort and blessing to others.  Finally, we are reminded to help the poor in whatever way that we can.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on John 12-13

For the last several days I have been really struck by how the passages I am reading are applicable to what is going on around us.  Today’s passage is no different.  Jesus tells us that those who love their life will lose it, only those who care nothing for their life will gain eternal life.  Just before saying that He says that a kernel of wheat must be planted in the soil and die in order to be productive.  Then after saying it, He tells us that if we wish to serve Him we must follow Him.  He talks about being troubled by the suffering He sees in His near future, but He accepts that coming suffering as necessary to make the world a better place.

So, we come to what to make of Jesus’ comment in this context.  If we fail to stand up for Christ in order to avoid suffering, we will suffer anyway, but without the joy of knowing that we have done our best to make the world a better place.  On the other hand, if we embrace the suffering which may come from doing God’s will, we will see the world become a better place and even that suffering will bring joy.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on John 12-131

John’s account of Mary anointing Jesus’ feet in Bethany differs in some significant ways from the accounts of an anonymous woman anointing Jesus which appears in the other Gospels.  This leads me to believe that there were two or more such events.  The overlapping details suggest that some of the Gospel writers combined details from these multiple events (either on purpose because they thought the stories all conveyed the same lesson, or by accident because human memory is unreliable.  In either case, the stories teach us about dealing with others).  This account tells us that it is OK to spend some of our surplus on luxuries.  We do not have to give all of it to help the poor.  It contains the side note that some of the most vocal about giving to aid the poor do so in order to skim off the top of those gifts.