Jesus’s Bible was what we call the Old Testament (Tanakh in Hebrew). Before Paul started writing his letters and the Gospels got written, the Church’s Bible was the Old Testament. Jesus’s God is Yahweh, for which the LORD (all caps) is usually substituted for the name revealed to Moses — I AM. And the Gospel, the Good News of Jesus Christ lurks in the story of God’s relationship with God’s chosen people of the Old Testament, as it does in today’s Old Testament reading.

To be a saint is to be made new or in the process of being made new. To be a saint is to be hallowed, holy, set apart from those on the earth that don’t want to be made new, but want only survival and self-maintenance at all costs. To be a saint is to recognize that to become the person God made us to be, we must pass away, not to nothingness, but to the new person who is the same as the first but infinitely better. T

“What do you want me to do for you?” Twice we have heard Jesus ask that question. Last week, he asked James and John, “What do you want me to do for you?” Basically they answered by asking: When you inherit the kingdom we know that’s coming to you, we want the most direct access to your power. Today, Jesus asks that question again, “What do you want me to do for you?”

My New Testament professor at Virginia Seminary taught that each of the four gospels has a key verse. In his opinion, we’ve heard the key verse of Mark’s Gospel: “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

In Jesus’s promise that his disciples would inherit a family beyond their imagining was a material reward — now in this present time — responding to the concrete things Peter reminded him they had given up. Family was one’s safety net.