23 August 2026 #fullcircle

Last week we heard that Jesus was teaching his disciples a hard-fought lesson in hope, healing, and who gets to be in his kingdom. From Tyre/Sidon he goes to back to the northern edge of the Sea of Galilee where he feeds the 5,000. Then he’s off to district of Magadan on the western shore of the Sea, where the Sadducees and Pharisees show up (yet again) to only to be humbled (yet again), and the disciples misunderstand his parable (yet again). Jesus needs a “change of scenery” as they say, and our merry-band-of-men depart for Caesara Philippi in our Gospel today, which is very close from where he started. Jesus has come full circle, in more ways than one.

If you’ve seen this episode in The Chosen, you know the area. It’s a hotbed of pagan worship; King Herod erects a white marble temple to honor the great Emperor Augustus Caesar so that his minions - ahem, people - can go and worship him. Herod dies (4 BCE), the benevolent Philip comes to power and changes the city’s name to Caesara Philippi to honor the new Tiberius Caesar (and himself).

I want to pause here for just a minute to talk about what worship looks like in the time of Jesus. Worship is the honoring of a god/the God by the giving of “first (i.e. best/choicest) fruits” across the board. Fruits, vegetables, livestock, money - it’s all there. I spent my summers on a farm where we occasionally slaughtered chickens for food; it’s smelly, messy, and incredibly chaotic. Imagine what that might look and smell like on a large scale… say, the primary white marble temple dedicated to their gods/rulers: Decaying animals, moldy wheat, rotten fruit. Incense was burned, yes to signify the gift ascending to the gods, but also to try and mitigate the stench.

This is the sacred space and place where God the Father decides to send the Holy Spirit into the fisherman/disciple Simon, have him announce that Jesus is indeed the Messiah, then have Jesus give Simon a new name and the keys to his earthly kingdom. Wow. Just… wow.

I mean, all that could have come down surrounded by the love and care of friends in their home in Capernaum. Or in front of the adoring crowd following the loaves-and-fishes miracle in the mountains. Or in an intimate setting in Bethany with Mary, Martha and Lazarus over a delightful dinner with wine. Or in the aromatic Garden of Olives. Or gosh, even in the newly-converted and joyous Sychar, the town of the Woman at the Well. If Jesus wanted to give a dose of come-uppance, he could even have had this all shake out around the Temple in Jerusalem.

Alas. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit chose this hotbed of paganism, filth, and stench to disclose this beautiful and life-giving Truth. And therein lays the lesson for us:

Jesus shows up and reveals his transformative power in the craziest of places and in the messiest of lives.

We enter this world innocent and helpless, make choices in a harsh and pagan landscape, then receive our eternal consequence. It’s that middle part of our earthly journey that should garnish the most of our attention – the choices we make to transform “nature red in tooth and claw” (Tennyson). As apprentices to Jesus, that’s our work here. To leave the world a holier place than we found it, exactly where it’s needed the most: in the messy and chaotic sacred spaces of life. #fullcircle