Christmas with St Matthew 10

22.
Sometimes we relished watching Him put others in their place; other times, we were the ones being corrected. The feast was getting ready and many were called, but who would be wearing the right clothes to join? I can see it now like I couldn’t then. The right clothes were His: the humility of accepting that, without Him, you were naked. No mocking laughter, no delight in another’s failure, could ever fit beneath the robe of His humility.

23.
“Finish what you’ve started,” he called out one day to the Pharisees. What could He mean? Decrying the blood of the prophets, shed in Jerusalem. What was He after? How could our new David expect death? Scorned though the rabbis had made me feel day upon day, it seemed dangerous now to be heaping such insults upon them. And what did he mean, quoting the psalms like that? Blessed is He that comes in the name of the Lord. The crowds had already hailed Him the new King. What kind of crown did He expect to be given?

24.
When He said, “People will hate you,” it felt unsurprising. In truth, these years walking with Him had been a reprieve from the hate I had known only too well. What surprised me was that people would hate me because of Him. It was then that I began to wonder if His victory might look different to what we hoped for. I looked to the fig tree. I did not see fruit yet. He promised summer. How far away was the summer? How many abominations would we flee before then?

25.
More and more He was saying to us, “Be ready.” Not, as the Pharisees might have expected, “Be righteous.” Not, as the Zealots might have thought, “Be armed.” Simply, “Be ready.” And how did we show readiness? Not by ensuring we had met every jot and tittle, every iota, of the law. No, by loving, and using what He had given us. The grace we had received, we were to share like the extraordinary miracle that it was.