Category Archives: Scripture

Good Shepherd: context

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This coming Sunday is the 4th Sunday of Easter in Lectionary Cycle A. The gospel reading only includes verses 1-10, but this commentary will also include verses 11-21 which is the passage in its entirety. Again, there will be a lot of smaller posts to facilitate an ease of reading. That being said, the gospel text has sheep, shepherds but rather than describing a bucolic scene, the passage seems to begin with a harsh, accusatory tone.  It is almost as if we have picked up an on-going conversation. And we have. There are many commentators who set the boundaries of this gospel pericope as John 9:39-10:21 in order that the reader understand the scene that is unfolding. Continue reading →

The Community Rejoined and United

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This coming Sunday is the 3rd Sunday of Easter and our gospel is the account of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. The final movement of the Emmaus story returns the two disciples to Jerusalem and serves as a transition to the appearance there. Jerusalem is the focus of Luke’s geographical scheme throughout Luke and Acts. The Gospel begins and ends in Jerusalem, and the journey to Jerusalem dominates the record of Jesus’ ministry. In Acts the mission of the church begins in Jerusalem, and Paul returns there at regular intervals. Continue reading →

At The Table With Jesus

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This coming Sunday is the 3rd Sunday of Easter and our gospel is the account of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. “ As they approached the village to which they were going, he gave the impression that he was going on farther. 29 But they urged him, ‘Stay with us, for it is nearly evening and the day is almost over.’ So he went in to stay with them.” (Luke 24:28-29) Continue reading →

Scripture fulfilled

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This coming Sunday is the 3rd Sunday of Easter and our gospel is the account of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. The two disciples have explained to their fellow traveler (Jesus unrecognized) the cause of their disappointment and discouragement. It is then Jesus again speaks: “And he said to them, ‘Oh, how foolish you are! How slow of heart to believe all that the prophets spoke!  Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and enter into his glory?’ Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them what referred to him in all the scriptures.” (Luke 24:25-27) Continue reading →

A stumbling block

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This coming Sunday is the 3rd Sunday of Easter and our gospel is the account of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. So far in this account it is the two disciples who are recounting the details of all the things that have taken place there in these days? (v.18) The disciples are distressed by the death of Jesus and cannot believe that the event that has shaken their world is not known by another pilgrim. Continue reading →

Unable to see

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This coming Sunday is the 3rd Sunday of Easter and our gospel is the account of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. Luke sets the scene with markers of time (that very day), place (on the road between Jerusalem and Emmaus) and situation – two disciples who earlier had been with the disciples, heard the women’s testimony and apparently discounted their testimony as idle wistfulness.  The community of believers has been fractured. As it recounts in v.17, the “looked downcast.” Continue reading →

The movement of faith

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This coming Sunday is the 3rd Sunday of Easter and our gospel is the account of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. This account takes place on the first day of the week, that “very day” – Easter Sunday in our parlance. Jesus has been raised from the dead but all the disciples have discovered is the empty tomb. The first witnesses to the empty tomb are all women: Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James; the others who accompanied them (Lk 24:10).  They tell the news to the disciples, but such news was unexpected and “their story seemed like nonsense and they did not believe them” (v.11).  In such confusion are sown the seeds of doubt. Continue reading →

…that through this belief

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This coming weekend we celebrate the 2nd Sunday of Easter in Lectionary Cycle A. In response, Jesus told Thomas, Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. Thomas came to believe because he saw the risen Lord, but Jesus did not praise Thomas’ pathway to faith; rather, he pronounced a blessing upon those who have not seen the risen Jesus yet have believed in him nevertheless. These are those who hear or read the witness to Jesus borne by the disciples and confirmed by the Spirit (15:26–27). This is the second pronunciation of blessing by Jesus in the form of a beatitude in the Fourth Gospel (cf. 13:17: “If you understand this, blessed are you if you do it.”). There are people who refer to this as the 9th beatitude. Continue reading →

Thomas

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This coming weekend we celebrate the 2nd Sunday of Easter in Lectionary Cycle A. Although many translations include “doubt” in v. 27 — and thus lead to the phrase “Doubting Thomas,” but there is no Greek word for “doubt” in the verse. The phrase do not be unbelieving, but believe contrasts apistos and pistos — the only occurrence of both these words in John. Simply put, the word does not mean “doubt” and Greek does not lack the equivalent words: diakrinomai, dialogismos, distazō, dipsychos, aporeō, and aporia.  Lowe and Nida (Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains) give three definitions for the adjective – pistos. Continue reading →

Receive the Holy Spirit

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This coming weekend we celebrate the 2nd Sunday of Easter in Lectionary Cycle A. The sacred writer had already introduced the giving of the Holy Spirit in John 7 in a scene during the Feast of Tabernacles in which the Spirit is promised at a future time when Jesus was glorified.  In the Fourth Gospel it is at the crucifixion that Jesus is glorified in that his willing obedience manifests the nature of God, which is love. It is there on the cross that Jesus delivers the Spirit into the world (19:30), symbolized immediately afterward by the flow of the sacramental symbols of blood and water. Continue reading →