Last night we watched The Chosen Season 2, Episode 1. My favorite episode. If you have never watched The Chosen and want to watch a depiction of what it would have been like to live and learn from Jesus as experienced by the disciples in all their very human flaws, then this will stitch time together and it will feel like you are there.

It opened with the disciples, now Apostles, gathered together for Shiva, a 7 day period of mourning, for the Apostle James who had been martyred. They were many years past the time Jesus was with them in person and John was writing down their personal memories of when they first saw Jesus and His impact on their lives. They were getting older and memories subject to changes with aging and who knew when any of them would be killed as was James. John felt it was important to write down everything because they knew what His voice sounded like, they knew His touch, His laugh, His rebuke, His love. John was talking with Mary and trying to decide where to start? The beginning…His birth?…before that?…creation?…By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, their starry host by the breath of his mouth. Psalm 33:6. Rain was falling outside and they heard thunder.

The episode then segues to when they were in Samaria. Samaria was where Samaritans lived and they and the Jews hated one another even though Samaritans were half Jewish. Do you remember the parable of the Good Samaritan that Jesus told his followers and found in Luke 10:30-36? A Jew was attacked and robbed of his clothes, valuables, horse and left for dead. 3 people pass by the man but only the Samaritan stopped to tend him and take him to an inn where he paid for his care. In The Chosen we experience this parable from the viewpoint of one of the ones who attacked the man and left him for dead. Jesus and the disciples are all sitting around a fire outside of a humble home with a man and his wife and daughter, a Samaritan family. The disciples are sharing their stories of first meeting Jesus. Then Jesus turns to the man and asks him about his broken leg. He’s embarrassed. Jesus and the disciples brought the very food they ate for supper, John and James had prepared the ground and planted seed earlier in the day though they never would have dreamed it would have been done for a “Samaritan”. He’s ashamed. He tells about being in dire straights and with another attacking a Jew and leaving him for dead after stripping him of everything. He rode the horse to sell to Roman soldiers for the money and was thrown off the horse, his leg broken. He said not a day went by when he didn’t think about that man he killed. Jesus told him quietly that he lived. The man asked him, “How do you know?” Jesus said, “I know.” The disciples were stunned. Here was an enemy of the Jews who admitted robbing and harming one of their own and Jesus was caring about him. He showed him love as only Jesus can.

Jesus also had to show love to John and James when they were incensed by a group of Samaritans who threw rocks at them and Jesus and spit at John! Jesus had to physically stop the brothers from retaliating in anger for that humiliation. They wanted Jesus to call down fire upon those men and their whole town and probably that whole nation and kill them! Jesus asked them if they thought they were better than those men and he told them resoundingly…YOU ARE NOT!

There were times in Scripture when Jesus was angry and The Chosen depicted one of those times and I could feel that rebuke. It wasn’t just words on a page that jarred me, I could feel that and feel humbled. John and James were humbled. How could they not be? They were loved enough to be taught by Jesus when they were wrong and their hearts needed to be made right. He was then able to joke with them…Fire? Really? So he called them “Sons of thunder”.

The Samaritan needed forgiveness and the healing that brings. John and James needed correcting. Both were done in love.

Back to John writing down notes for his book of the Gospel John. By the word…In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. John 1:1-5.

The light shines in the darkness and in that light are forgiveness, love, correction, life. We are not better than those who hate us when we hate in return. Hate is darkness.

The Apostles gathered that night to share their memories with John found that sharing painful because they missed Jesus so much. Can you imagine living with Jesus? I can imagine it a little better today because God inspired the making of a show that depicts the life of the disciples before, during and after Jesus was with them. I feel like I’m in that room hearing the fall of rain, the sound of thunder, the faces of those transformed by a love so pure and healing they could never forget. I’m so very grateful for their dedication to write down memories so precious and life giving for us today.

Heaven and earth will pass away; but my words will never pass away. Matthew 24:35. Thank you.