Can apparently include devils. This wasn’t beyond Jesus’ imagination as he was building his own team.

“Have I not chosen you, the Twelve? Yet one of you is a devil!”

John 7:70

Jesus was, of course, speaking of Judas. But it would be another 11 chapters before what he meant by “devil” really became clear. In Judas’ case, it meant “betrayer.” It can also mean “false accuser” or “slanderer.”

Why willingly work someone who you know is going to betray you, or falsely accuse you, or slander you? Seems like something was overlooked in the hiring process. Most of us probably would have advised Jesus to vet his closest disciples a bit more thoroughly. This is not how winning teams are built.

But maybe Jesus has a different definition of a winning team.

Involves a sub-question: Who am I going towards? Leaving one place and moving towards another place always means leaving one person or group and going to another person or group.

When I was a kid and I went out for recess, I wasn’t just leaving the classroom and heading to the black top, I was leaving the teacher and the students I was assigned to sit near and went towards my favorite friends.

At the end of the work day, I do not simply leave my place of employment and go to my house, I leave my colleagues and go to my family.

The compassion of Jesus is amazing. Yes, to the poor, the infirm, and the outcasts, but also to his own disciples.

Jesus’ leadership was gentle and invitational, never compulsory. He led not with an iron fist, but with an open hand. His disciples was never threatened into staying, but were always welcome to notice the exit signs.

Jesus was compassionate to his disciples because he knew that following him was hard, and would continue to be hard, in a myriad of ways.

Not to Jesus. You may think you’re fooling others—maybe you are, and I’m not one to condemn that—but you’re not fooling Jesus. He is neither surprised nor disappointed. Turns out he’s a fan of the truth—all truth, even that truth about yourself that you’d rather not be true.

Your disbelief is not an eternal disqualifier. It’s not game over. The scriptures seem to say again and again, in thousands of different ways, that there is always hope. Always an opportunity for change. Always the wide open gates of God’s City.

Is the way they continue. A foundation is laid; a trajectory is set. The DNA of the future was already there at the start.

God brought the cosmos into existence by his words and his Spirit. By his communication and his breath. Everything began with a divine exhale.

All things continue to be sustained by his words and His Spirit. Learning to follow Jesus means learning to listen to his communication, to breathe in his breath as he quietly whispers to us.

He’s going to take things too far. He’s going to rub against your grain. He’s going to piss you off. He’s going to frustrate the hell out of you. He’s going to make you wonder if you made a seriously bad error in judgment in beginning to follow him in the first place.

This won’t happen every day, but it will likely happen a good handful of times during a lifetime of really following hard after Jesus. It’s all part of the package.

I believe in miracles. Or perhaps more truthfully, I believe in a God who does miracles. Not all the time. But sometimes. In some places. In some situations. For some people. The unpredictable and uncontrollable nature of miracles, I think, is meant to keep things interesting. It keeps us on our toes, longing and expectant.

Sometimes we can hold onto the miraculous ways of God from a previous generation, not realizing that it was the manna provided to get them through their desert. It was what they needed in their time and place. What we need in our time and place, to get through our desert, is likely to be something rather different.

What nutrition science knows is that what you consume stays within you. That it becomes a part of you. Food is not merely fuel. The overall health of your eating patterns affects every cell in your body because it all becomes your body. What you eat determines the quality and longevity of your life because what you eat literally becomes who you are.

In the same way that rhythms of healthy eating affect your body, so do rhythms of “consuming” Christ.

Jesus was lifeless in the tomb. Stone cold, stone-sealed.

His disciples were also lifeless. Their inner lives executed along with their rabbi, their physical lives under threat of the same kind of death.

The Eucharist is partly a remembrance of Christ’s death. “Whenever you eat this, remember me.” It is also a re-identification with his death. “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.”

The old, “Is Jesus talking about cannibalism?” question. It’s crazy talk. It really is. So I find it rather disingenuous and judgy to come down hard on those who couldn’t really swallow what Jesus was saying. (Pun intended).

We have the benefit of hindsight. We have the story of the Last Supper. We have been handed down the practice of the Passover meal transformed into the Eucharist. We are mostly inoculated to the shock of the flesh-blood metaphor.