When the authorities confront Jesus in the Temple, they find a popular teacher warning them not to choose the way of death.
every day teaching in the temple
Luke 20-21
One of the unique things about Luke’s telling of Jesus’s last week is that we don’t get a sense of how many days go by.
In Mark’s gospel, the author is very specific. Monday is the “cleansing” of the Temple. Tuesday is the teaching day. Wednesday, he stays in Bethany.
But in this gospel, Jesus spends several days at the Temple; we’re not sure how many. This whole section accounts for two whole chapters of Luke, chapters 20 and 21. At the end of 19, which we read yesterday, it said
“Every day he was teaching in the temple.”
And at the end of chapter 21, it says
“Every day he was teaching in the temple, and at night he would go out and spend the night on the Mount of Olives, as it was called. And all the people would get up early in the morning to listen to him in the temple.”
Rather than get specific about the time here, the writer of Luke gives us a more broad picture of a daily pattern, of an ongoing arrangement.
Jesus gets up and goes to the Temple, then spends the night on the Mount of Olives. Then again the next day.
And what he does each day is teach. And what the people do is to go listen to him. Because the people loved him and couldn’t get enough of it.
There’s something about this rhythm of daily moving. Going down to the temple then back up to the Mount Olives. Then back down the next day. Teaching, learning, being together in the temple: teacher and student.
Approaching Holy Week with this rhythm seems natural. But it’s even more important in its context.
The Teachings
The teachings we get aren’t in a syllabus handed out at the beginning of a semester. Jesus has to respond to what he encounters.
He’s confronted by elders about authority. Confronted by spies about paying taxes. And Sadducees try to trap him about marriage and the afterlife.
He tells a parable about the wicked tenants, denounces the scribes, and condemns the way the Temple exploits a woman in her poverty, all with a loud voice.
Then he warns his followers about the city and the temple, how he cried over its future, telling them all that is to come.
This isn’t a happy/sunshine day for the disciples.
But it’s not supposed to be.
The Warning
What the author describes in these two chapters is a warning. And it’s one that doesn’t hit everyone’s ears like good news (even though it is).
He warns the elders that they’re not doing good by condemning him. They aren’t following The Law. It isn’t just. Condemning him will condemn them.
He warns the people that Rome, the leaders, the current system won’t prevent their deaths. Nor will the rebellion to come in 30 years give them freedom. Their use of the sword will condemn them to die by it.
He warns the disciples and the crowds not to trust the scribes because they support a system which directly harms the poor and oppresses the weak.
And since we have received the whole story, we get a warning, too. He warns us about the opposition.
Not The Opposition, like opponents on a playing field, but the opposing forces who would prevent the kin-dom from coming close, or would cause us to stumble.
The point of the warning is not about condemning a type of person or all those with a certain job. It isn’t condemnation of governments, Jewish leaders, or people who are different from us.
It is a warning, that’s all it is!
Beware!
And specifically, beware of all things which don’t restore creation, bring equality, or offer freedom to the oppressed.
This is the warning!
There will be people who will protect the status quo because they’re worried about where their income will come from! These aren’t “bad people,” but they will protect an unjust system.
This is the warning!
Violence can’t bring peace! Violent revolutions only bring death. Don’t trade one evil for another!
This is the warning!
You know the way of peace, but you can’t see it! Others put themselves in the way of peace!
This is the warning because you know what we have to do! Because you already know what is at stake!
We came to Jerusalem to love the death out of this world.
Jesus warns us that evil will make us think it’s our fault. That we brought the pain upon ourselves or that we deserve our persecution.
We don’t deserve it. But we have to speak up anyway. Even though we know what will happen. Even when we know others will retaliate.
We’ve brought the light of Christ into the shadow of death, fearing no evil. And we’ve done so knowing this valley is also a mountain—the place Moses encounters God in a bush becomes a place of sorrow.
The tears we will shed, that we may shed knowing what is to come in a few days, those tears of regret and shame and sadness; the tears, like Jesus, for our knowing “the things that make for peace”.
May the tears come! May we weep! And may we keep going, heeding the warnings, justified in the truth, and committed to Christ’s way of love. But let those tears come because we know! Let them come because we love! Because we long for justice. And because we are so full of the Spirit that God’s love is magnified through us.
May those tears come, cleansing, restoring, empowering us for the days ahead.