Every now and then, I come across a reflection that doesn’t just inform me, it rearranges something inside me. This week, I read a reflection by Richard Rohr about how Jesus engaged with his own Scriptures, and it struck a deep chord. It named something that is a given but I never quite thought about much: Jesus was formed by Scripture, yet he refused to be confined by the parts that did not reflect the heart of God.
What moved me most was the paradox.
Jesus rarely quotes from the majority of the Hebrew Scriptures, yet those very texts shaped his consciousness, his imagination, his prayer. He draws from Exodus, Deuteronomy, Isaiah, Hosea, and the Psalms, books steeped in liberation, covenant, mercy, and lament. And he quietly sets aside passages that legitimize violence, exclusion, purity codes, or imperialism. Not by rejecting Scripture, but by revealing its deeper current.
Reading this, I felt a kind of spiritual permission open inside me.
Jesus reads with a discerning heart. He lifts up the one bright command in Leviticus “Love your neighbor as yourself” and lets the rest fall away. He reduces 613 commandments to two: love of God and love of neighbor. He omits the vengeance line from Isaiah and proclaims only the “year of favor.” He consistently chooses mercy, justice, and radical inclusivity over legalism, exclusion, and fear.
And suddenly I realized: This is the model for how we are invited to read Scripture, and maybe even how we are invited to read our own lives.
Jesus teaches us to look for the fruits, for what leads to love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness, and self‑control. He shows us that not all words carry equal weight, not all interpretations bear good fruit, and not all traditions reflect the God who is Love.
What struck me most is how freeing this is.
It invites me to trust the Spirit’s movement in my own discernment. It invites me to let go of readings that bind, shame, or exclude. It invites me to follow the deeper stream, the one Jesus followed, toward mercy, justice, and spacious compassion.
This reflection reminded me that Jesus is not only the Word made flesh; he is also the model of how to read the Word with a heart shaped by God. And that changes everything.
Smitten With Goodness 