There are so very many people who are hurting, who are also burdened with troubles others can see, and who are judged for it. Or who become topics for discussion about statistics, about trends and reasons and solutions. But when Jesus sees suffering, he sees a person who needs love and care, a person who needs help.
Gospel of John: Stone Him!
They were beyond words, so enraged they were left with inchoate gutturals, and fury coursing like lava through their bodies. Snakes for arms, fangs for fingers, they struck their rocks like prey and hauled them up in one frenzied motion, a giant Medusa of raging Pharisees readying to hurl their judgment in a hailstorm of stones.
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Gospel of John: Who Has the Demon?
Each side insisted the other was of impure lineage, held in the sway of evil. Who was right?
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Gospel of John: Father of Lies
Children of Abraham would have been as attentive and obedient to God’s word now as Abraham was then. They would have taken the risk of faith Abraham took, and believed God—believed Jesus—though it would mean the complete upending of their lives, just as it had meant for Abraham.
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Gospel of John: Be Made Free
was this coming from a grubby itinerant soapbox preacher, a construction worker from Galilee who fancied himself a theologian and even more, the actual son of God, the Messiah?
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Gospel of John: Not From This World
Jesus to the Pharisees: "You all are from below, I am from above; you all are from this world, I am not from this world."
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Gospel of John: Where is Your Father?
If these adherents to every “jot and tittle” of God’s word had also truly known God, which is to say, not just known the scriptures and Law, but had truly known God, then they would have sensed God’s presence there before them.
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Gospel of John: Light of the Cosmos
Did the light come on for John, in that moment? For they were all lambent with the reflected glow of the temple’s luminescence, and perhaps especially Jesus, through John’s eyes of love, was shining with luminescence.
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Gospel of John: Adulterous Woman Reprise
The scribes and Pharisees condoned and rationalized their own sin while at the same time were eager to see sin punished in other people’s lives, even to the death, rather than to see them forgiven and restored. Who might you and I want to see punished, instead of repent? How willing are we to let that go and pray for Jesus to restore them instead?
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Gospel of John: Protectors Pressured
It was more than the Pharisees could bear, for the temple guard to be taken in by Jesus. Picture the angry exclamations, the accusations, pointed fingers, hands with fingers spread wide shooting into the air for emphasis. Imagine voices all trying to out-roar each other as the Pharisees jabbed the chests of the towering Benjamite warriors, in their fury,
