Left Nineveh behind. Looking forward to the Promised Land, again.
NT – Got to love the family! Vs 20-21: Then Jesus entered a house and again, a crowd gathered, so that he and his disciples were not even able to eat. When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, “He is out of his mind.”
I do have sympathy for his siblings. How hard it must have been to have been the ‘Son of God’ when they were mere mortals. But I have a big old bone to pick with Mary. She KNEW. Or did she?
That is the trouble with conflagrating the gospels. We have this tendency to smush them all together and read it like that. However, Mark may not have even known Mary. Luke is the one that seems to have either interviewed her or one of the other children. He has the intimate knowledge of the birth. It is hard not to assume that all of the gospel writers knew all the details but clearly, they didn’t.
Regardless, in tomorrow’s reading, his mother and brothers show up. But Jesus turns them away. He KNEW he wasn’t out of his mind. Do we? Whose side do we fall on? The family or Jesus?
OT – A word or two about Leviticus. Or maybe a few more. Leviticus has approximately 21,900 words. All about ritual laws, sacrifice, duty of the priesthood and cleanliness rituals. Brace yourself. The good news is we are only in Leviticus for 2 weeks and then we get to Numbers.
http://www.biblestudy101.org/Lists/statisticsHB.html
My big question today was about eating the fat of animals. Now, I happen to like the crispy part of a pork chop (I know, I know, not kosher…), and I LOVE the crispy fat part of a good Ribeye steak. But when I checked my Stone Chumash, here is what it had to say “The prohibition against consuming fats and blood applies to all sheep, goats, and cattle, whether they are consecrated or not. Although the word **** is commonly translated as fat, there is no English word that defines it precisely, for in terms of this prohibition, “fat” means only the fatty tissue that is placed on the Altar in the case of offerings.” This fat was the fat around kidneys and the innards. The rest of the fat you can use. You can eat fat from other clean animals that aren’t used as sacrificial animals like deer. Or chicken. Otherwise, a lot of kosher delis in NY are in trouble with their chopped liver.
So, my steak fat is okay on a ribeye!
Check out this sermonette and keep reading. Blessings on your meditations.
How cool it must been to be one of the disciples. I know that later on they are tortured, beaten and killed. But still. To hang out with Jesus every day or three years. Think of all the things that they saw and heard. The 12 are listed here. I seem to think that there is a different list in one of the other Gospeks. I will look for it.
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