From John’s Gospel:
Now the Jewish festival of Booths was near. So [Jesus’] brothers said to him, “Leave here and go to Judea so that your disciples also may see the works you are doing; for no one who wants to be widely known acts in secret. If you do these things, show yourself to the world.”
(From the Daily Office Lectionary – John 7:2-4 – August 29, 2012)
The picture of Jesus getting advice from his brothers just tickles me. John makes such a deal of it (while pointing out that his brothers did not believe in him – as the Messiah, I suppose – at the time). It seems so at odds with John’s otherwise oh-so-perfect, oh-so-divine Jesus!
It isn’t clear who these brothers are; there are some who suggest they are older half-brothers. Although there’s no biblical warrant for this, there is this pious invention of a first family for Joseph. The story is that Joseph was a lot older than Mary, had been married before, and had sons from that first marriage. Thus, Mary became a step-mother and Jesus had a bunch of older half-brothers. The reason for this invention is a belief in the “perpetual virginity” of Mary which seems to have originated in the 2nd Century with Irenaeus; his contemporary Origen came up with the step-brothers theory. What I always wonder about is why there’s no mention of these other kids in the few stories we have of Christ’s infancy and childhood. Where were they when Joseph and Mary made the trip to Bethlehem? Did they go along (then why aren’t they portrayed in Luke’s Gospel)? Or were they left home with relatives? What about the flight to Egypt? Surely Joseph wouldn’t have left them behind while he moved to another country! Were they with the family in Jerusalem when, instead of joining the return party, Jesus stayed behind to dazzle the Temple intellectuals? If they were, why didn’t they help in the search for the missing boy? Anyway, as this probably makes fairly clear, the whole perpetual virginity thing seems suspect to me.
So if these brothers aren’t Joseph’s boys from a first marriage, they must be Joseph’s and Mary’s subsequent issue; after all, Jesus is described by Luke as Mary’s “firstborn” (Luke 2:7). Presumably they are “James and Joses and Judas and Simon” (named in Mark 6:3 and Matthew 13:55), and they are Jesus’ younger brothers.
I never had a younger brother. I had an older brother (nearly a decade older, in fact). He passed away several years ago and I often miss his brotherly advice. We were not close during my childhood, but once I was in college we got close and became good friends. It helped that we lived in the same metropolitan area; I was a student at UC:San Diego and later at California Western School of Law in San Diego; my brother was on the faculty at San Diego State University. We saw each other often, enjoyed each other’s company, and I often turned to him for counsel.
Jesus getting advice from his brothers (whether they were older or younger doesn’t really matter) appeals to me. I can relate to that picture of Jesus and it helps me to believe that Jesus can relate to me. I believe Jesus can (and does) give me brotherly advice.
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Father Funston is the rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio.
The Jews, John tells us, disputed among themselves as Jesus was delivering the lengthy dissertation on bread from which these statements come. Earlier he had introduced this idea that his flesh was bread to be eaten by his followers: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” (v. 51) The very idea of consuming human flesh is off-putting, even disgusting, and would have been extremely objectionable to the Jews; no wonder they grumbled and mumbled, complained and disputed. Even as a metaphor, the statement demands a lot from Jesus’ followers!
On the cover of our worship bulletin this morning is a depiction of King Solomon’s Temple. It’s an artist’s rendering of someone’s reconstruction of the Temple based on the description of its construction in the Old Testament record. Our first reading today (from the First Book of Kings), as long as it was, is just a small part of the dedicatory prayer that King Solomon offers when the Temple is finished and consecrated.
Where were you on July 20, 1969? In July of 1969 I was living in a boarding house and studying in Florence, Italy. The boarding house or pensione in which I lived, Pensione Frati, did not have a television. My landlord, Colonello Roberto Frati, arranged for me and the other Americans living there to go to his sister-in-law’s home where we could watch Neil Armstrong’s and Buzz Aldrin’s moon landing on her TV – this great big box of a television set with a tiny black-and-white screen. We all gathered around that box peering into that tiny screen listening to the Italian news commentators and struggling to hear the American commentary behind them. I’m sure that when we heard of Commander Armstrong’s death we all thought about wherever we were on that day at that moment when he stepped out of the lunar lander and became the first human being to walk on another world.
Wow! Does this look familiar? The second chapter of Job begins with a scene nearly identical to that which we considered yesterday. Satan (with other heavenly beings) presents himself in the heavenly throne room and, once again, God and Satan have a conversation about Job and, once again, the bet is made. In fact, it’s sort of “double down” time! Yesterday, I argued that although the Book of Job is fiction it (like the other forms of literature found in Holy Scripture) embodies truth.
A later selection from the Book of Job was called up by the Sunday Eucharistic Lectionary several weeks ago. In my sermon I said to the congregation that the Book of Job is fiction (which it is). You should have seen the look on one of my parishioners’ face! There’s a fellow in the congregation who is, shall we say, conservative with regard to the Bible. While I don’t believe he actually considers the Bible to be the inerrant word of God per se, he’s pretty sure that it is to be taken with the highest degree of certainty and words like “myth” or “fiction” applied to Scripture are not to his liking. I swear I thought he might have an apoplectic fit right there in his pew! But let’s be honest: do we really think that God and Satan are engaged (or have ever been engaged) in a game of chance involving the lives of human beings?
Psalm 130 is one of the seven “pentitential psalms” of the church (Psalms 6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130, and 143), a tradition that stretches back to the Sixth Century if not earlier. It is also one of the “songs of ascents” (Psalms 120-134) that are believed to have been sung by pilgrims making their way up to Jerusalem or possibly when climbing up the Temple Mount for festival celebrations. Somehow it strikes me as both odd and poignant that a song or poem beginning “Out of the depths” is called a song of “ascent” – from the deepest sloughs of despond the poet calls out the Highest. Ascent, indeed!
I think this may be my favorite psalm. It is the psalm appointed for use on the feast of St. Francis of Assisi. It is one of the psalms approved in The Book of Common Prayer for use at a funeral; it was selected by my mother to be used at her funeral. 
Saint Stephen, one of the first deacons of the church, has just preached a sermon in which he has reminded his hearers, Jewish authorities in Jerusalem, that the Jews had a history of mistreatment of prophets, Their ancestors, he has said, “killed those who foretold the coming of the Righteous One, and now [his listeners] have become his betrayers and murderers.” No wonder they were angry with him.
