So, down into Samaria, always towards Jerusalem, and still healing and teaching all the while, and time and again explaining what lay before him, and why. And always the same reaction- ‘We will protect you- it would be better to avoid Jerusalem- we could contact the zealots- call a rising against the Romans-at least get you safely away to Egypt’.
We eventually came to Jerusalem, and the mood of events was changed again. Over the next five or six months, Jesus conducted a sort of punitive war against the Jewish authorities in Jerusalem. Miracles performed on the Sabbath, cures affected in forgiveness of sin, parables condemning self-righteousness, all it seems, with hindsight, part of a carefully designed programme to make it impossible for the Sanhedrin to ignore the problem of this noisy prophet, this miracle worker, this blasphemer. It was as if Jesus were shouting in their faces ‘Here I am; what are you going to do about me?’
Not that we could have stayed in Jerusalem the whole time-that would have been impractical and unpleasant. We spent most of our nights in the Jordan valley, and travelled by day into Jerusalem, Bethany, Jericho, Ephraim. Virtually every evening Jesus would talk, in part, of his remaining task and ours, but the others had no stomach for it, or no wits.
Harsh words? Then listen- At least three times before his last Passover did Jesus gather the twelve, and say what was in his heart, what must be, and what must be done- that the Son of Man must be betrayed into the hands of the priests, because they had been given ample opportunity in the last few weeks but lacked the courage to make an arrest; that he must suffer and die at the hands of the gentiles, so that in three days he might rise again, as the scriptures foretold he would do.
But no matter how many times he broached the subject, the reaction was always the same. Either everyone affected not to realise the urgency, the immediacy, the imminence of the matter, choosing to assume that Jesus was speaking of some far-off events in his or even someone else’s future, or else they put up a pathetic show of bravado, and weakly ridiculed the idea, saying ‘We will protect you, Master. We will not let them harm you’ or ‘Then we must not go to Jerusalem’.
Every time such a conversation occurred, I would sit and say nothing. I could not look at Jesus, though I felt he was looking at me, all the while, seeing deep inside me, and seeing all the terror welling up in me, as I remembered that night, almost a year before, near Caesarea Philippi.
We seemed to be caught up in a vortex, as though a great wind was blowing faster and faster, and we whirled round and round, into Jerusalem, provoke the authorities with teaching and healing, out to a farm or humble dwelling to rest and discourse, and always his words were of what was to come, what must be, and what no one else could see, and then back into Jerusalem again, to the temple, to goad the priests.
The triumphal entry into Jerusalem began the last circle, though none but he knew it, at the time. When I realised what was in his mind, I begged him to reconsider, but he simply quoted the prophet’s words-
“Behold, the King cometh unto thee
Meek, and riding upon an ass”.
When the people began to shout and laud him, throwing down their cloaks and the palm branches, we his followers were as leaves blown before the wind. We could not reason or think. The most we could do was to stay sane, and not be scattered into the crowd like stray dogs.
Then when we were almost spent, another challenge, another confrontation- the raid on the temple, the driving out of the money-changers and the sellers of sacrificial animals and birds. Oh yes, it was long overdue; it needed to be done, but not then, not by him. He was preparing the nails for his own hands. Day by day he pursued his assault on the priests- the tribute to Caesar, the word play with the Pharisees, and always the berating of the priests for their blindness, their self-righteousness, their obsession with the law, and their total rejection of the love of God, and the needs of the people.