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| Return of Christ to Jerusalem -- Giotto (1320) |
The Gospel for this Sunday is short and puzzling, just seven
sentences with no very obvious connection between them. Perhaps the most
perplexing of them is this: “Today,
tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a
prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem”. What can this mean? Is Jesus saying
that faced with threats from Herod, he will be safe if he avoids Jerusalem?
That is a natural way to read it, until we remember that Jesus is already on his way to Jerusalem, and rejecting
those who want to warn him off. A different translation renders the meaning
more clearly. “It is unthinkable for a prophet to meet his death anywhere but
in Jerusalem”. In other words, Jesus knows his death is approaching and that it
has to take place in Jerusalem. So sooner or later he must press on there. But
why?
It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of Jerusalem,
and especially the Temple, for Jews at the time of Jesus. For Muslims, Mecca
figures in something like the same way. Christians, on the other hand, have no
equivalent. At the heart of the Temple was the Holy of Holies, God’s own
dwelling place, a place to be entered very occasionally, only by specially
appointed people, and with the utmost awe. Now it is about this exceptionally
sacred place that Jesus says “Your house is left to you”, or in another
translation, “There is your temple, forsaken by God”. It does not take much
imagination to feel the deep outrage that such a declaration would cause among
the devout and faithful.
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| The Destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem -- Nicholas Poussin (1637) |
His point is this. The religion of the Jews has become
ossified. Their faith in the one true God has been dissipated in an unhappy mix
of ritualism, political compromise and nationalistic fervor, and distorted by a
profoundly mistaken conception of the Messiah who is expected to put it right.
Renewal and redemption will come only through the death of a prophet in the
heart of the holy City.
Our faith too, of course, is easily ossified. We tailor it
to our requirements, adjust it to our convenience and smother it with
familiarity. No less than the Pharisees, we need a redeeming sacrifice to renew
and restore us. That is why the events of Holy Week and Easter have to happen
again for us, and why it is so important to make Lent a period of preparation
for their happening.
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