The Year of Adversity
The Year of Adversity
Having returned to Capernaum on the other side of the lake, Jesus preached a sermon in the synagogue, using the miracle of the loaves and fishes as his text. He had not come to be a political revolutionary. He was the bread of life, he said. Anyone who came to him and believed in him would never again be hungry or thirsty. And the bread he would give for the life of the world was his flesh. Immediately a dispute broke out among the Jews:
How can this man give us his flesh to eat?
Even his disciples found it a hard saying, and many of them turned back and no longer followed him (John 6:52, 66).The tide had turned.
So now Jesus again “withdrew” and made more distant expeditions, beyond the boundaries of Galilee. He went to Tyre and Sidon in the northwest (Mark 7:24), and to the Decapolis, a region southeast of the lake (Mark 7:31). Then later he traveled north again, this time to Caesarea Philippi, in the foothills of Mount Hermon (Mark 8:27). Here a very important incident took place, which forms a kind of watershed in the Gospel narrative. Jesus asked the Twelve who men were saying he was, and they gave him the answers of popular speculation, that he was John the Baptist, Elijah or one of the prophets. But who did the Twelve say he was? Immediately Peter replied, “You are the Christ.”
Our Lord’s rejoinder comes as a shock to many readers, for he commanded them to tell no one about him (Mark 8:30). But the next verse explains the riddle:
Jesus’ command to silence, repeated after several of the miracles, was due to his desire to keep his Messiahship secret so long as the people misunderstood its nature, as exemplified in their attempt to make him a king by force. But now that Peter had clearly confessed his faith, Jesus “began” to teach the necessity of his sufferings and to do so “plainly”—that is, openly. At first Peter could not accept this truth. But Jesus insisted on it and added that the same pattern of glory through suffering or life through death would be the experience of his followers as well (Mark 8:34–38).
Six days later according to the synoptic evangelists Jesus took Peter, James and John with him up a “high mountain” (perhaps Hermon?) and was transfigured before them, his face and clothing becoming suffused with a bright light. It was a preview of his glory, the glory of his kingdom and of his resurrection body, the glory to which he would one day come through suffering.
When Jesus returned to Galilee it was for a largely private visit, since he was continuing to teach the disciples about his coming sufferings, and subsequent resurrection (Mark 9:30–31). Soon after he began his journey south (Mark 10:1). Indeed, he “resolutely set out for Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51), and on the way continued to emphasize the same things (for example, Mark 10:32–34, 45). Luke supplies a number of details about this journey and its accompanying instruction which the other evangelists do not record (see Luke 9:51–18:14). He tells us that Jesus referred to a baptism of suffering which he had to undergo and to his sense of distress until it was accomplished (Luke 12:50). Later he said:
We are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written by the prophets about the Son of Man will be fulfilled. (Luke 18:31)
The approach to Jerusalem was through Jericho, an oasis not far from where the Jordan flows into the Dead Sea. Here Jesus gave sight to blind Bartimaeus and salvation to Zacchaeus the shady tax collector (Luke 18:35–19:10). Then came the steep ascent along the desert road towards the holy city.
The impression conveyed by the synoptic evangelists is that Jesus went straight to Jerusalem and to the events of his last week. We know from John’s Gospel, however, that he spent about another six months in Judea, which included visits to Jerusalem for the Feast of Tabernacles in October and the Feast of Dedication in December (John 7:2, 10, 14; 10:22–23). Exactly where he was staying during this period is not clear, but sometimes it was in the wilderness of Judea and sometimes even the other side of the Jordan near the scene of his baptism (John 10:40; 11:54).
When he appeared in public for the festivals, his claims (attested by his signs) became clearer and bolder. He was the bestower of living water, he said, the light of the world (as evidenced in giving sight to a man born blind), the great “I am” who lived eternally before Abraham, the good shepherd who would lay down his life for his sheep and (when he raised Lazarus from death) both the resurrection and the life (John 7:37–39; 8:12; 9:5; 8:58; 10:11; 11:25–26). The Jewish leaders found these claims increasingly provocative, and it is several times recorded that they tried to arrest and kill him (John 5:18; 7:30, 32; 8:59; 10:39; 11:53, 57).
Already during his Galilean ministry, although the crowds gave him tumultuous support, he did not escape the carping criticisms of the scribes and Pharisees. Mark assembles a series of four “controversy stories” in which Jesus was accused first of blasphemy (for daring to forgive a man’s sins), then of fraternizing with sinners, thirdly of religious laxity in failing to fast and lastly of breaking the Sabbath (Mark 2:1–28). In defending himself against these charges Jesus had only made matters worse in his critics’ eyes by claiming to be the Son of Man with authority to forgive, the physician who had come to heal sick sinners, the bridegroom in whose presence the wedding guests could not fast and the Lord even of the Sabbath.
As time passed he had gone further. He had condemned the Pharisees for their hypocrisy (for example, Luke 11:37–52) and for exalting their man-made traditions above God’s commandments (Mark 7:1–13), and was later to rebuke the Sadducees for their ignorance of God’s Word and God’s power (Mark 12:18–27). Gradually the tension grew. The Jewish leaders were jealous of his reputation with the people, wounded by his exposure of their superficiality and put to shame by his own transparent integrity. It was only a matter of time before the final collision.
When Jesus approached Jerusalem for the last time and reached the point on the road round the Mount of Olives where the city came into view, he could not restrain his tears. He wept and said:
If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. (Luke 19:41–42)
Nevertheless, despite what it seemed would be the city’s certain rejection, he issued one last appeal. By a careful prearrangement he was able to ride into Jerusalem on a borrowed donkey, in order deliberately to fulfill the prophecy of Zechariah:
Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion!
Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem!
See, your king comes to you,
righteous and having salvation,
gentle and riding on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey. (Zech. 9:9; Matt. 21:5)
The crowds that were accompanying him were eager to acclaim him. They cut branches from the trees and took off their cloaks to make a carpet for him to ride over. They waved palm branches in the air and shouted their Hosannas. For this was his “triumphal entry” into Jerusalem. But his triumph was not shared by the authorities, and it was short-lived. He antagonized them by cleansing the temple for the second time (Mark 11:15–19), and during the next three days, from Monday to Wednesday, their hostility to him became increasingly intense. They engaged him in controversy, theological and political, although they could not fault him in argument (Mark 12). He for his part castigated the Pharisees for their religious pretense in a series of devastating “woes” (Matt. 23), and warned his apostles of the coming destruction of Jerusalem and of the opposition they must expect before his return would bring history to its end (Matt. 24; Mark 13; Luke 21).