Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“Jesus then said, ‘I will be with you a little while longer, and then I am going to him who sent me. You will search for me, but you will not find me; and where I am, you cannot come.’”
NL Daily Devotion for Saturday, February 19, 2022
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
Oddly, the officers don’t actually arrest Jesus. The Pharisees send them, but literally nothing happens. It’s one sentence, and then Jesus is talking about going away. The people are as confused as I am. Where is he going? Greece? What is he talking about? They didn’t know, of course, that he was going to die, be resurrected, and go hang out with God. And as usual, he wasn’t explicit. It would have raised more questions than it answered, never mind the fact that it would probably have gotten him into a whole lot of trouble right then and there, and he still had a lot of work to do before he’d be ready for that to happen. All of which makes me wonder why he said anything at all. Maybe it was a way to take some of the pressure off—make the authorities think he’d be gone soon enough so they could feel safer to leave him alone. Maybe that’s why the officers didn’t actually arrest him. We, in hindsight, know exactly what Jesus meant, yet even so, we have a lot to wonder about, just like the people at the time.
Do I enjoy wrestling with the meaning of Bible passages? What ways are the most fruitful for me?