After Jesus was baptized by John, he went to spend time in the desert lands east of the Jordan River, to begin preparing for the work he was going to do. While he was there in the wilderness, he got word that John had been arrested and killed. It was then that he decided it was time to come back to Galilee and get to work.

He traveled around Galilee, which is not a big place, and began preaching and teaching, picking up where John the Baptist had stopped. We could spend a lot of time talking about John’s relationship with Jesus or debating about the meaning of the things John had said about Jesus when he baptized him. We could also spend time analyzing the words we hear in the reading today; they were some pretty strong words at times. We could debate about whether these words were actual…