The past year is done. We’re waiting to start the next SpendaYearwithJesus cycle. We’re in the in-between.

In a recent conversation, I asked a question about Jesus’ schedule. My friend replied, “I picture him always teaching and healing.” I did, too, for years.

For some reason, it’s natural to assume Jesus had no in-between. But we also know that first-century experience had plenty of pauses.

First, there’s sundown. We read comments from the ancients like “work while it is day.” 2,000 years later, we say “lights out” to mean, “end the day.”

Then there’s harvest, two of them. Spring barley and wheat and fall fruit were times of busy-ness for the community as harvest times are today.

Three festivals coincided with the harvests. The adult men of Israel and also their families traveled to Jerusalem to gather at the temple mount.

The fall period between summer heat and winter rains was an opportunity for home repair and winterizing activities.

And we have to mention Sabbath. Every week Jesus’ community had scheduled down-time. They could not work.

There is plenty of in-between in life. Enjoy it. I’m sure Jesus did.

The Jerusalem economy was the temple economy. The temple employed hundreds if not thousands of people–priests and Levites who were butchers, leather tanners, singers, tailors, etc. And there were all of the auxiliary industries surrounding the temple from the farmers who raised the grain for the grain offerings to the shepherds who raised the sheep and goats for the burnt offerings. The skin of the animals most likely went to leather tanners and parchment makers. Meat offered to God for vows and peace offerings was also butchered and eaten in the temple courts.

If Jesus was a threat to that economy, then he could have put thousands of people out of work. James, the apostles, and Paul continued to worship at the temple throughout their “church” ministries, however. In this in-between, the reality of the temple economy alongside the temple worship raises many questions.

Jesus’ experience had its share of great deeds. Perhaps we could say overwhelming deeds.

So when we get to a statement like the final sentence of John’s Gospel, “Jesus did many other things” (John 21:24) we tend to generalize on the sensational; i.e. “Jesus performed many other miracles.”

At the writing of this post, my mom has been gone for two months. If I could spend just one more day with her, you know what I would like?

Really, what I would like is to talk with her at the breakfast table and drink a cup of coffee together.

For all the wonderful deeds my mom performed, the breakfast cup of coffee and conversation is what I would like with her if I could have one more hour.

Our humanity gets lost in the sensationalism of great deeds and large crowds. Jesus’ humanity gets lost. Frankly, if I’m Peter, I get my wish on the lakeshore (John 21:1).

Jesus returns and has breakfast with his friends. I can imagine them with fish juice dribbling down their fingers and beards, smiling, talking, enjoying one more morning together.

Another year of SpendaYearwithJesus is completed. Am I improved for the year I spent following Jesus’ experience?

The reality is that I am not.

In fact, life goes on at the dizzying pace that it always has…

…with 3-5 fewer daily text messages.

It occurs to me that Jesus’ original followers lived a similar reality. For all the impact we impose on their experience, what really happened to them in the day-by-day?

Maybe that’s the point. I may not recognize it, but I am just a little more understanding of others — the people around Jesus in his day as well as the people around me today who are trying to understand their own experience.

I hear Christians talk about the resurrection as if it was the definitive moment of history, but look how little changed before and after that moment in reality. A handful of people changed.

My brother died on a Friday. But it’s third-day-complicated.

There was an apartment fire on Friday morning. Three people, including my brother, were missing.

The concrete upper-story floor pad had fallen on the bed where he was sleeping, so “finding him” wasn’t simply a matter of peeking in the room.

Saturday, we waited. Excruciating, inevitable waiting.

Sunday, they rolled the stone away, and we learned what we already knew.

Jesus died on a Friday. His brothers were in Jerusalem for the Feast. They must have heard, must have responded. I wonder how they spent Saturday.

Jesus was human. Jesus’ story reveals his was not a perfect family. Mine wasn’t isn’t either.

Every person in the first century crossed the line between life and death, including Jesus. It was part of being human. We don’t need to be reminded that it still is.

Preparing to cross that [dead]line is also part of being human. We anticipate that death will change things. It will bring loss. It will also bring closure.

I have to wonder if Jesus looked at the twelve men around him and felt a sense of gravitas. He had been engaging in succession planning for three years.

• He had already communicated that he had come to fulfill the Law, thus bringing closure.
• The previous spring he had commissioned the twelve to declare the nearness of the kingdom.
• The previous summer, he began to speak of the end, though the disciples understood “dying and raising” as a metaphor.
• He could reasonably anticipate escalation of conflict in Jerusalem (since he was a wanted man for raising Lazarus).

In Jesus’ experience, he and his disciples refreshed Israel’s past by reading the Law every Sabbath day. When they read about the ordination procedures and dedication ceremony for priests, the practice reminded them of the inevitability of succession planning.

As Jesus sat with his men in the Ephraim wilderness and as he sat with his men this evening, the twelve vaguely anticipated ordination (echoing the priestly ritual) in a new kingdom. Jesus knew his dead.line loomed.

The experience was normal. What everyone would expect. Jesus, his family, his disciples, and their families walked the Jordan Valley roads along with hundreds of holiday travelers. The festive occasion: Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

Underneath the normal of that moment was the disruptive fact that Jesus was a wanted man. 4 weeks previously, in a suburb of the capital city and to the amazement of all, Jesus resuscitated a family friend. The religious authorities regarded this action as an exercise of trickery or sorcery – either was criminal – so they issued a warrant for his arrest (Talmud Sanhedrin 43a).

For 3 weeks afterwards, Jesus and his men withdrew into the hills between Judea and Samaria. Then they re-emerged to join the crowds for the feast.

Observe most people, and their lives appear normal. But like Jesus’ experience, underneath the normal are life-challenging disruptions. If attentive, we can see beyond the surface-normal, see into those challenges even as life goes on, just as it did around Jesus as he neared his own end.

“You have a short time to live.” More regularly than we like to admit, we hear of a family member or friend given that diagnosis.

If you had one week to live, how would you spend it?

Jesus knew he had a short time to live. On his way to Jerusalem, he took his closest followers aside privately. He confided to them that he would be handed over to the temple authorities, condemned, mocked, flogged and crucified (Mt 20:17-19). Jesus’ description of his own end is quite specific.

Jesus’ experience included the anticipation of his own death. But as we follow Jesus the last week of his life, we do not see him chasing a new adventure or hurrying to try a new pastime.

So how did Jesus spend his last week?

He did what he had always done: eating meals with family and friends, teaching in the temple courts, spending time with his closest followers. I notice a change in Jesus’ teaching content but not in his pace of life.

Unhurried, Jesus depletes his remaining hours engaging friends.

Does he seem like he really only has one week left to live?

One of Jesus’ followers, Paul, writing after Jesus’ death in his letter to Roman Christians begins with the phrase, “…the one who was descended from David with respect to the flesh” (Rom 1:3; also 2 Tim 2:8). Today, everyone knows that. It’s introductory.

The idea that the Messiah would be a descendant of Israel’s King David was well-established in Jesus’ day.

During Jesus’ “Kingdom Tour” and throughout his public activity, people approached his healing activity with the words of the accolade channeling their hopes as well as uncertainties.

• Two blind men asked Jesus for healing calling him “Son of David” (Matt 9:27).
• After Jesus healed a blind and mute man, the crowds around him observed, “This one is not the son of David, is he?”
• A foreigner referred to Jesus as “Lord, Son of David” when she asked for healing for her daughter (Matt 15:22).
• Two more blind men outside Jericho asked Jesus for healing using the title, “Son of David” (Matt 20:30).

During the Feast of Huts, some members of the crowd rejected Jesus observing from their Scripture (the Prophets and Writings; 2 Sam 7:12-14; Ps 2:7; 89:4; Mic 5:2) that the Messiah would come from the descendants of David and from Bethlehem (John 7:42). Wait a minute!

Jesus rode into Jerusalem at the next Passover, his final visit to the city, surrounded by crowds cheering, “Hosanna to the Son of the David” as well as “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the LORD” (Matt 21:9; a phrase from the Hallel). Were they sure?

In that final week, Jesus posed the question to some religious leaders directly, “Whose son is the Messiah?” Their response, “The son of David” (Matt 22:42). And I want to ask, To whom were the religious leaders talking?

Can we approach the story with the uncertainty of its original participants? I think we can. We only need pause for a moment and allow the fog of uncertainty in our own lives to roll in … and we connect with Jesus’ experience.

It may seem jolting if you have never considered their experience—that this glued-group of twelve mean would split up, that some would periodically leave Jesus’ side, that their families would actually trump their touring activity and take priority!

When we read the itineraries in the Gospels, we seldom visualize detours.

But to call the priority of family a detour is to undermine the Torah-world in which the disciples and Jesus lived.

In a previous post, “Rogue husbands or loyal followers,” we looked at the Torah (Exodus 21.10), the Mishanh (Ketuboth 5.6) and a letter of the apostle Paul (1 Corinthians 7.3) as three witnesses to the priority of a man’s presence with and provision for his wife.

It was lawful for Jesus to respect the schedules of his married disciples (see Mark 1:30; 1 Corinthians 9:5).

As they lived out their year, we can conclude that Jesus and his disciples honored this priority of presence and provision for one’s family, and that their itinerary adjusted accordingly.

In the context of the current events of the SpendaYearwithJesus story, “Family feast travel” was one of those moments when the disciples’ responsibilities, their touring activity and family duties, converged.