After feeding the crowd and sending them away, Jesus travels to Dalmanutha. Until recently that town had been lost to history, but lately they believe they have found the ruins. It’s about 500 yards from Magdala, where Mary was from. 500 yards doesn’t seem far enough away for another small town to crop up. I wonder if these “towns” were more like oversized kibbutz? I looked up the kibbutz and discovered that they didn’t come into existence until 1909, and some of them have become fairly large, communal communities that have self-contained specialized industries, earning hundreds of thousands of dollars each year.
The yeast of the Pharisees is the legalistic inaccurate teaching they espoused. The Pharisees should have been Israel’s teacher, but instead they became a bloated religious organization that was more interested in controlling the people and feeding their own ego than they were in helping the masses find God. In fact, I think they had almost forgotten what they were there for, and had taken on different motivations for surviving. That’s why when Jesus (the one they should have pointed to, as John the Baptist did) showed up, they resisted him instead of embracing him.
I wonder if some churches make the same mistake? We become so caught up in worldly affairs that we forget what our main focus was supposed to be. Our mission, given to us by Jesus, is to make disciples who make disciples. You can’t do that when you are busy berating women who have had abortions or homosexuals, or democrats, or…whatever. I certainly am not in favor of abortion or homosexuality, but lately I realize that my mission is to those people, just the same as it is to other people. We are called to make disciples of all people. Yes, that will require a change of life, mind and practice for anyone we disciple. As Jesus says in this passage, anyone who wants to follow Him will have to pick up their cross and follow Him. I suggest that means there will be things that we consider valuable that we must lay down, and life values that we must surrender. Following Jesus is relatively simple, but it isn’t easy. The Pharisees will try and confuse the issue, get us talking about the elections, the social gospel among other things. Of course those things are concerns, but they aren’t primary concerns. Jesus knew that the Jews were on track socially for the Romans to come and exercise their might against them. About 30 years after He ascended to heaven they did just that. They tore down the temple, and killed many. I notice that Jesus didn’t spend any of his time trying to change that outcome. He had far more important work to do than to be concerned about who set themselves up as temporary rulers. He was establishing a permanent kingdom, and recruiting eternal citizens.