26B18. Numbers 11:25-29. “Taking some of the spirit that was on Moses, the Lord bestowed it on the seventy elders; and as the spirit came to rest on them, they prophesied,” i.e., speaking in enraptured enthusiasm, but not foretelling the future. When others who had not gone out to the special gathering were given the gift of prophesy, Joshua objected. Moses responded, “Would that all the people of the Lord were prophets! Would that the Lord might bestow his spirit on them all!” Moses rejoices in the generosity of the Lord.

Mark 9:38-43, 45, 47-48. That same generosity is given to someone who drives out demons in Jesus’ name but is not in the group that follows Jesus. Jesus does not want anyone to prevent him, responding, “For whoever is not against us is for us.” Jesus feels that anyone who does good in his name and out of belief in him will be rewarded as will any of his followers. Then Jesus goes on to say that if anything precious to you or a part of you, such as a hand, foot or eye, causes you to sin, i.e. causes you to do evil, cut it out of your life because it will lead to your eternal destruction. As human beings we receive the capacity to do many things with the free will in how to use those God-given abilities. Choose to do all in Jesus as the root of all we do. That will always lead us to do what is truly good.

James 5:1-6. James makes it clear that it is worthless to treasure earthly things that will rot and corrode as will our very flesh someday but fail to do good for the needy that the Lord will remember forever. Choose to value what will serve us eternally.

Psalm 19:8, 10, 12-13, 14. The last verses say, “Cleanse me from my unknown faults! From wanton sin especially, restrain your servant: let it not rule over me. Then shall I be blameless and innocent of serious sin.” As humans being it is easy for us to deceive ourselves, to not see ourselves as we truly are in the eyes of God. True humility requires that we leave lots of room in our lives for God to lead us. The childlike attitude of last Sunday’s Gospel demands that we always have an attitude that is willing to learn.

25B18. Wisdom 2:12, 17-20. “With revilement and torture let us put the just one to the test.” “Let us condemn him to a shameful death; for according to his own words, God will take care of him.” This was written a hundred years before Christ by a Jew who remained loyal to Judaism in spite of being persecuted by Jews who were won over by the Hellenistic (Greek) pagan ways of those who ruled at that time. His circumstances prepare us for the situation that Jesus was to find himself in much later.

Mark 9:30-37. Once again Jesus asserts that he will be killed and three days after he will rise. “But the disciples did not understand the saying, and they were afraid to question him.” In last Sunday’s Gospel Jesus had said, “You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.” Emotionally and intellectually they were locked into the human way of thinking. From what I can see, it was only by the grace of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost that they were enabled to break free from their humanness and pass over to comprehend things as God does. Jesus could not but notice that, on the way to Capernaum, they had been arguing among themselves. After Jesus questioned them as what they were arguing about, interestingly enough the Gospel says that “they remained silent,” but does not say that anyone told Jesus that they had been discussing “who was the greatest.” Once again Jesus recognizes that they were thinking as human beings do and not as God does. So “he said to them, ‘If anyone wishes to be first, he shall be the last of all and the servant of all.’” Human thinking is to take advantage of any situation for one’s own personal gain. God’s thinking is to bring everyone to love as God loves; not to take from everyone so that you yourself have more but to work to the advantage of everyone to have the most for eternity. Placing a child in their midst with his arms around it, Jesus says, “Whoever receives one child such as this in my name receives me.” We are to love everyone, no matter that they have little importance in the eyes of this world but simply to love them as God loves them.

James 3:16-4:3. “Beloved: Where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder and every foul practice.” When we hand ourselves over to what is not of God, we are on the road to the destruction of ourselves and perhaps of some others around us. What is of God is good through and through; what is not of God will eventually rear its evil head. God is love that gives life; all else leads to annihilation. In John 6:53, “Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.” Then in John 6:57, Jesus said, “Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me.” Only the God who first created life can continue to be the source of life for us because life can only come from love, i. e., from God, the only source of true love. Everything that is not from Jesus is a source of death and destruction. Those are our passions. They are not true love. In 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, Paul writes: “Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, [love] is not pompous, it does not seek its own interest, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

24B18. Isaiah 35:4-7a. “I gave my back to those who beat me, my cheeks to those who plucked my beard; my face I did not shield from buffets and spitting.” This is one of the Servant Songs or Servant-of-the-Lord oracles where the prophet proclaims to the sinful people what the Lord wants them to hear no matter how shamefully he, the prophet, is treated, trusting that the Lord will save him by proving him right. As the New Testament people we see these verses as written also to refer to Jesus when he came 500 years after they were written.

Mark 8:27-35. Jesus “asked his disciples, ‘Who do people say that I am?’” Continuing, “He asked them, ‘but who do you say that I am?’ Peter said to him in reply, ‘You are the Christ,’” which means the Messiah or Savior. He told them he would be rejected by the Jewish religious establishment, be killed but rise after three days. Peter, having in mind the publicly accepted notion that the Messiah would be a victorious king who would drive the Romans out, rebuked Jesus for thinking that those kinds of things would happen to him. Jesus, turning the tables, rebuked Peter, saying, “Get behind, Satan. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.” God’s plan was not to get things done through muscle and sword but with love and sacrifice. God’s ways are not our ways. Following Jesus example, God’s way is accepting the cross that God gives us. “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the gospel will save it.” It is quite natural to try to live our lives independently. To try to save our life on our own without the Savior will always be disastrous because only God has the resources to gain salvation. Giving our lives over to God, always living dependent on Jesus and obedient to his will, will give us the salvation we can never get on our own.

James 2:14-18. In many places in Paul’s epistles, he says it is not by works that we are saved but by faith. Paul tried to convert the Jews in the diaspora in the Greek speaking world but found them quite resistant to his efforts. In effect they were saying to him that the Hebrew Torah or Law found in the Pentateuch or first five books of the Old Testament was their Messiah, not Jesus. Paul retorted that, not by fulfilling the works required by the Law, but by putting our faith in Jesus, our Messiah and Savior, could we gain salvation because only God can give salvation, not our works without God. Apparently James was writing against a misinterpretation of Paul that all one had to do was to believe in Jesus and then do nothing. Paul himself never failed by the works of his ministry to bring the faith to others. Also in 1 Corinthians 16:1 -4, Paul calls upon the faithful to contribute to the needy in Jerusalem. Genuine faith produces loving actions for the benefit of others. “So also faith of itself, if it does not have works, is dead. Remember from Matthew 25:42-46 when Jesus in his parable said: “For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, a stranger and you gave me no clothing, ill and in prison, and you did not care for me.’ Then they will answer and say, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or ill or in prison, and not minister to your needs?’ He will answer them, ‘Amen, I say to you, what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me.’ And these will go off to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.” Out of his great love for us, Jesus put his love for us into action. He offered himself for us on the cross. There is no real faith where there is no life of loving. In 1 Corinthians 13:13, Paul wrote: “So faith, hope, love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”

23B18. Isaiah 35:4-7a. A foreign army had come to conquer Jerusalem, but God stands with his people to give them courage and strength. “Here is your God.” “He comes to save you.” The saving action of God that is in the Gospel reading is predicted when Isaiah writes, “The ears of the deaf (will) be cleared:” “then the tongue of the mute will sing.”

Mark 7:31-37. The people see the power of God made manifest when Jesus cures the deaf man and enables him to speak clearly. The People proclaim the magnificence of the work of Jesus, saying, “He has done all things well. He makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.” Jesus, though he appears to be only human, through his miracles manifests his divinity. The God, who in the Old Testament was present at a distance, in the New Testament times, is walking among his people showing his care for them by his powerful works.

James 2:1-5. People are more naturally attracted to the haves’ rather than to the have nots’. I guess because we would rather be one those who have nice things than to be one of those who do not have nice things. In Mark 10:23b, Jesus said, “How hard it is those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” In the mentality of this world we can easily think that once we have nice earthly things we have all we need. The nice things of this world are worthless when we die. James rhetorically states, “Did not God choose those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom that he promised to those who love him?” Sometimes the poor, who are not so disturbed by their relative lack of the nice things of this world, can put their trust more in the things that that only God can offer. They are not so preoccupied by the wealth they already have so that they trust in the God who in Himself is the treasure this world can never offer.