REFLECTIONS

Road to Jerusalem

The road to Jerusalem would be long and difficult. Leaving his Capernaum home for the last time, traveling between Galilee and Samaria through Perea with stops along the way, his destination, indeed his destiny weighed heavily on his mind. The journey began the closing period of his earthly time; but the finale is the reason he came here.

Along the way, Jesus stopped for a time at the place John had baptized him and preached his sermons of repentance. He journeyed through Jericho where he asked Zacchaeus, the wee little tax collector, to climb down from a tree. Then a summons to Bethany interrupted his itinerary so he could tend to the death of a dear friend. Jesus comforted Martha and Mary there. And he wept before calling Lazarus from the grave.

Then resuming his journey through Perea, he healed the sick, opened the eyes of the blind, and taught using the many parables he told. All the while, resistance to his teaching mounted, and plots to kill him planned. The day neared for suffering to begin.

He passed through Bethany again, reached the Mount of Olives and looked down on Jerusalem’s walls into the city. He wept over it knowing what the future would bring, and said, “The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.” (Luke 19:43-44)

From the Mount, he could see people awaiting his entry into the city, palm branches in hand. Then he followed the road to Jerusalem down the steep mountainside through the Kidron Valley then up the steep slope to the East Gate of the city walls.

Jesus, a man; and Jesus, the Son of God, blended in human form that no one can fully comprehend, came into this world for only one reason. His mission required suffering beyond imagination, humiliation defying all human dignity, and rejection that would cause a lesser person to walk away from it all. But Jesus didn’t walk away.

Instead, he mounted a donkey colt and humbly rode through Jerusalem’s East Gate to the songs of hosanna and waving palm branches. But Jesus didn’t bask in the glory. Still fully aware of the savage cruelty yet to be suffered, he went straight to the temple and chased away those buying and selling there, admonishing them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a den of robbers.” Then he returned to Bethany for the night. He was welcome there. But he still had his job to do.

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. (John 3:16 NKJV).

He saved his goodbyes for the upper room.

You are the light of the world,

Richard +

www.reflectingthesavior.org.

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