Reading Jesus
The book of Matthew is filled with Jesus’ teachings and his interactions with people. If you have a red-letter Bible, most of Matthew is in red. The faster you move through the book, the more intensely you are drinking in Jesus’ actual teachings.
The first time I read through the entire book of Matthew, I did it over two days and at the end I experienced the most amazing sensation. I missed him. I missed Jesus. Toward the end of the book, when there is more narration and less Jesus-speaking, I got all uneasy, and then when he was gone, I felt a strange sadness. There would be no more red-letter words to read.
It struck me that I must have felt just a fraction, just a tiny sliver, of what Jesus’ disciples felt when he left. Can you imagine? Being that close to clear-headed leadership… perfect wisdom… ultimate power… pure love. Watching him die… realizing he had beaten death… but then knowing he had really, really, left. Even with the promises of ‘being with them always’ and ‘sending a Helper’ wouldn’t have filled that void of having been in the presence of the Son of God, and then not. Surely they felt as though they needed him to be there in order to go on.
This is why I’m reading Matthew during Lent. I want to take this journey again of reading Jesus’ words and feeling that loss and that need.
It is fascinating to dig in to what Jesus teaches and how he responds to people and situations. He is unabashed love. He is unwavering justice. He is power under control. These things show themselves first in Matthew 3 and 4.
When John insists that Jesus should baptize him instead of the other way around, I can imagine Jesus smiling as he reminds John “no, no my dear cousin,… this is the way it has to happen, remember?” When Jesus is led into the wilderness to be tempted (yeah, led into the wilderness to be tempted) and throughout the entire three-challenge ordeal orchestrated by the devil, Jesus was power under control. When he starts traveling and calling specific men to come with him, He is the very definition of a Man with a mission.
This is the person we are built to follow.
These are the words that have both built and destroyed our human understandings of faith.
I cannot help but read on.
