Thomas reflects on a most disturbing encounter…

I have just been party to the most disturbing of conversations.  Initially, Jesus fended off the threat with a response that was so cutting it almost had us in stitches!  But then he continued with more chilling predictions of his own, painting a tragic scenario, the sadness of which still haunts my soul.

It all began with the Pharisees. Again!  This time they came warning us to leave, because they had heard that Herod was out to get Jesus.  

But the trouble with the Pharisees is that you just don’t know how to take them.   They have been so devious – well at least most of them have (there are the odd exceptions).  None of us knew what to make of these one who came with the message today.  Some of us were convinced they had made the whole story up in order to frighten us off, while others saw them as gleeful but gloating bearers of bad news.  For my part, I thought they might have been genuine but, apparently, I always think too kindly of people and am told not to be so naïve.

Whatever the truth, it did not matter.  Jesus wasn’t fazed at all by their warning.  In fact, he gave it short shrift, dismissing Herod entirely.  His language was blunt and shockingly forthright; so much so, as I have said, it was hard not to laugh when he came out with it!  Herod, he said, was a fox.  A sly, but insignificant figure. Whatever his blustering’s, this so called ‘king’ would have no impact at all on Jesus’ reckoning. “You can go and tell that nobody that I will go on doing God’s business, healing and delivering people, regardless of what he might have to say about it!  And I’ll do the same again tomorrow. And the day after that!  He will not – he cannot stop me.”

If Jesus had only ended it there, I am sure we would all have stood and applauded.  But he didn’t, did he?  He had to go on!  And if the Pharisees’ warning had been chilling, Jesus’ own words now plunged us into deeper, icier water. 

“No prophet can die outside Jerusalem!”    What kind of an answer is that?    OK…  it’s fine… we are not in Jerusalem right now, so no immediate danger.  But you can’t tell me he never intends going there? He is bound to!  And why does he still go on about dying?   ‘Not here’, he says. ‘Not now’.  But in Jerusalem?  Does he think that it is his destiny to die in Jerusalem?

Now don’t get me wrong. Chilling as I find this, I’m committed to go all the way with Jesus.  I’ll die with him, if it comes to that. But why does it have to come to that?  We have always been brought up to think of Jerusalem as a good place; a holy place.  All our lives we have prayed for her peace and prosperity. Our songs are some of the happiest when we sing about visiting her.  That pilgrimage is a delight because Jerusalem is God’s city – Jerusalem is where God lives in his Temple, and because he does, everything is right, as it should be.

But clearly the song in Jesus’ heart called ‘Jerusalem’ rings with a very different tune.  His is a mournful lament with counter-tones of seeping darkness. It carries a tragic melody of love spurned and needless loss.  To Jesus, Jerusalem is the city that routinely kills the prophets and stones God’s messengers.  And yet, he does not say that bitterly.  His damning assessment does not diminish his love, nor dampen his compassion.   In his heart, he longs to save her children, calling them to run to him for shelter, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, ‘but you would not come…’

‘But you would not come…’    Those words have haunted me ever since I first heard them.  As has the look I saw on his face as he spoke them and the memory of his voice breaking along with his heart.

‘But you would not come…’    Is that how it has to end?   Will the children of Jerusalem always reject him? 

And is that how we will always find him – Jesus – weeping over countless cities being laid to waste, with the cry: “I longed to save you… but you would not come!”?