Jesus answered, “Don’t you know what I am talking about by now?” – Mark 7:18a

We can find this phrase, or others just like it, scattered throughout the gospels. I would love to have seen the body-language Jesus used to go along with his exasperation! I’m sure there was a lot of head shaking, eye rolling, face-palming and more.

• “Do you not understand?”
• “Have you not seen and heard?”
• “Don’t you get it?”
• “How long do I have to put up with you?”
• “Are you not a student of the law?”
• “Didn’t your mother teach you anything…?”

Okay, so maybe not that last one. But I’ll bet the Master said something along those lines and possibly threw in some choice Galilean fisherman phrases too!

I can imagine Jesus making his plans for what we have come to know as The Last Supper, thinking about all he had taught his disciples – and all they consistently failed to grasp! He understood that this meal together was going to be crucial in terms of making sure the most important elements of his message would be front and center.

Jesus was, in a sense – and especially as reported in John chapters 13-17 – going over the highlights one more time, hitting the sweet spots of his core teaching, offering a benediction of sorts that held not only beauty and wisdom but a sense of urgency that I am sure Peter, Andrew, Mary, John, Martha and the others must have picked up on.

“Excuse me?” his friends must have said. “Would you run that by us again? We were just getting used to the servant stuff, and we really liked the whole Triumphal Entry thing. But now you say, ‘This is my body, broken for you’? ‘This is my blood – as often as you drink it’?”

“So listen already,” Jesus responds, “while I go over the highlights one more time…” (Reaching Toward Easter, pp 21-22)

This is my prayer for you during these 40 days of Lent, my prayer for all of us. I pray that the teachings, the ideas, the intentions, the love, the example, and the light that is Jesus will become clear, that we will pay attention, and that his journey will become our journey, that his peace will be our experience, and that we will arrive at Palm Sunday and then Holy Week in the exact frame of mind – the frame of spirit – Jesus invites us to embrace, and then to live.

“So listen already,” Jesus responds, “while I go over the highlights one more time…” – DEREK

for further reading….

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