Good morning! Today’s reading is Matthew 17-19, where we see Jesus’ divinity unmistakably affirmed, yet also his priority of serving the least and the lost. He gives us several passages which Christians today still struggle with, especially in the more affluent Global North.
Author: Oby Ballinger
Matthew 14-16
Good morning! With today’s reading (Matthew 14-16), we pass the halfway point of the first gospel and get ever closer to the story of Jesus’ final days. What I especially notice in these chapters (beyond the miracles, which already seem commonplace!) are the cost of leading a countercultural life, and the way that Jesus himself has his eyes opened by an encounter with a Canaanite woman.
Matthew 12-13
Good morning! Reading this swiftly through Matthew’s gospel is like eating a really great dessert—everything is so rich and so good! It’s hard to slow down and savor each morsel as it goes by, but we get a chance today to do just a bit of that. Matthew 12-13 contains one chapter focused on conflict with the Pharisees, and another focused on parables.
Matthew 8-11
Good morning! I hope you are enjoying this deep dive into Matthew’s gospel. I find myself reading and learning in a different way when we consider large chunks of the gospel, rather than a 10-20 verse excerpt selected to make preaching easier. For example, I’m only noticing now the contrast between the stationary Jesus of yesterday (preaching and teaching in the Sermon on the Mount) with the man of action we encounter today. In Matthew 8-11, Jesus heals, casts out demons, teaches more, calls disciples, sends them out, and corresponds with John the Baptist via messengers—busy throughout!
Matthew 5-7
Good morning! Today we read the three chapters of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7). Here he sets forth his main teachings on everything, it seems. Reading all these “greatest hits” of Jesus as a teacher can feel like drinking from a firehose! Throughout, we’ll see that Jesus calls those who follow him to uphold the Hebrew law and prophetic teachings, applying them strictly to the self but extending mercy to others who fall short. He suggests that in following this ethic, God will have mercy on the self as well.
Matthew 1-4
Good morning! Today and for the next three months, we’ll be in the New(er) Testament, first reading four gospel stories of Jesus, then reading the stories of the early church before a final over-the-top picture of the end times in the book of Revelation. We’re jumping a few centuries since yesterday’s reading in Malachi. A great deal happens in the “intertestamental” period, and Karen Hansen posted a very helpful link yesterday to help us all figure out how things have changed since the temple’s reconstruction. Here are just a few highlights of what happened in Palestine: Greeks under Alexander the Great defeat the Persians and take over, Romans defeat the Greeks and take over, then Roman emperors install Jewish kings like Herod the Great as surrogate rulers. We’ll hear more about the implications of Roman rule as we go forward, but several immediate implications are that the Hebrew people disagree about whether to resist or accept Roman rule (and their hand-picked overlords), they have to pay exorbitant taxes to Rome via the local powers, and they live with Roman military forces occupying their country, acting at will. All this will influence what happens in the gospel stories of Jesus’ life, including Matthew, which we begin today.
Malachi
Good morning! Malachi is our reading for today, and so we finish the Old Testament today! Malachi dates from sometime during the reign of the Persians, after the release of Babylonian captives and the rebuilding of Jerusalem’s temple. The book critiques the religious leadership in the decades afterward, adopting the voice of God to denounce the half-hearted way that the temple priests uphold God’s ways.
Zechariah 10-14
Good morning! Can you believe we only have two days left of the Hebrew Scriptures?? I’m looking forward to working through the gospels and the rest of the New Testament with you starting Saturday (please invite folks now if you think they might like to join in), but for today we finish the book of Zechariah with chapters 10-14.
Zechariah 7-9
Good morning! Today’s middle portion of Zechariah (chapters 7-9) finishes out the first section of this book with commentary on the spirit of fasting, then the universal promise of Jerusalem. With chapter nine we start the second portion of Zechariah, which was written some years after the temple’s successful reconstruction, according to biblical scholars.
Zechariah 1-6
Good morning! Today we start our second-to-last book of the Old Testament, that of Zechariah. This book gathers together two separate voices (or more likely, communities). We’ll start to hear from “Second Zechariah” tomorrow, but the prophet in focus today comes from an educated, priestly background (attested by his pedigree in 1:1 and 1:7). He makes common cause with Haggai, advocating for rebuilding at the site of the temple in Jerusalem. Almost twenty years after returning from Babylon with Cyrus the Persian’s permission to rebuild, the temple was still unfinished. Haggai and Zechariah were active at the same time, but Zechariah prophesied for somewhat longer if we take the historical references in the text at face value. These men succeeded in their advocacy, because historians believe the temple was fully restored and rededicated just a couple years after Zechariah’s time.
Pastor Oby Ballinger 