Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“While Peter and John were speaking to the people, the priests, the captain of the temple, and the Sadducees came to them, much annoyed because they were teaching the people and proclaiming that in Jesus there is the resurrection of the dead.”
NL Daily Devotion for Wednesday, June 8, 2022
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
“Much annoyed.” That phrase just caught me and made me laugh. I have no idea of the original Greek and how the translators landed on that phrase, but I’m still giggling. Because Peter and John are way more than annoying. They are subversive. Radical. They are advocating a complete revolution in the status quo.
I mean, can you just imagine the Sadducees, who didn’t believe in resurrection, basically rolling their eyes when they hear Peter and John talking about Jesus rising from the dead? It’s comical that their understanding of what was going on seemed to stop there—annoyance, in the way I get annoyed when someone starts talking about the flat earth or other science-denying nonsense. They don’t realize that Jesus rising from the dead is just the beginning of a whole new way of being in the world. They’re oddly myopic about their pet issue and therefore miss the big picture.
Ah well. We all get a little myopic about our pet issues sometimes, don’t we. One of my biggest pet peeves is the now-standard misuse of “lay” instead of “lie.” When I read it in a publication or hear it in a song or hear my friends use it, I absolutely cringe. So much so that I sometimes completely miss the import of the rest of what’s going on. It’s a silly example, obviously, but hopefully it gets to the point. Sometimes we need to push past our being “much annoyed” and be open to the full picture.
What pet issues do I have that keep me from seeing the greater meaning?
