Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“It was two days before the Passover and the festival of Unleavened Bread. The chief priests and the scribes were looking for a way to arrest Jesus by stealth and kill him; for they said, ‘Not during the festival, or there may be a riot among the people.’”
NL Daily Devotion for Wednesday, March 20, 2024
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
Talk about insidious. In order to kill Jesus, the chief priests and scribes were going to have to bide their time and then whisk him away under cover of night (which they eventually did). Had they acted immediately upon his entering Jerusalem, or at any time “during the festival” they knew the crowds, still in a state of adulation and being utterly convinced Jesus was the messiah riding into town to overthrow Rome, would riot—not something the Jewish authorities wanted to have happen for a lot of reasons (including that there probably would have been a severe crackdown by the Roman military on Jewish life). It all goes to show just how calculated it was. The chief priests and scribes would do everything they could to make Jesus disappear and be quickly forgotten.
Of course that’s not what happened. I mean, yes, they did arrest him in the middle of the night surrounded by only a handful of followers. Yes, they did publicly execute him so that anyone who might have believed he was the conquering messiah would see they were quite wrong. But in spite of all their planning, Jesus would not simply go away and be forgotten. Not in a couple of days. Not in a couple of millennia. It’s a hopeful reminder that no matter what plotting and planning people might try to do to squash the movement toward justice and liberation for all God’s children, it simply will not be squashed.
What gives me hope that God’s will can be done in this world?
