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Jerusalem and the Temple: Jerusalem drew its significance primarily from the fact that the Temple was there and that it was believed that God dwelt in it. Thus the Temple was the place linking the two worlds of the primordial tradition. Because it was God's dwelling place, many believed that the Temple and Jerusalem were secure, their protection guaranteed by God.
Such a belief reached far back into Israel's history and still existed at the time of Jesus. Thus the Temple had become the center of an ideology of resistance to Rome, it being firmly believed that God would defend the divine dwelling place against all enemies.
This ideology was reinforced by the evidence of the senses. Jerusalem had massive defensive walls making the city itself a fortress. The temple area at its center was an even more formidable fortress. Rebuilt by Herod the Great in the decades before Jesus' birth, it stood on a large raised platform, its walls ranging from 98 feet high in the west to over 300 feet at the southeast corner. Both Jerusalem and its Temple certainly looked to be impregnable. But history shows it was not. After 70 A.D. the Temple was no more.
The Call to change
Jesus' movement and message were to a new way of life marked already by joy even while the shadows were lengthening on the social world of his day. Two paths lay before the people to whom Jesus spoke, the broad way of conventional wisdom and its loyalties, and the narrow way of transformation to an alternative way of being. The broad way would lead to destruction, the narrow way to life. The message of the two ways led Jesus, as prophet, sage, and renewal movement founder, to make his final and climactic journey to Jerusalem, the center of his people's life.
Jerusalem and death. In the spring of A.D. 30 at the season of the Passover, Jesus deliberately "set his face to go to Jerusalem," a resolve that led to his death. The miracle-worker who drew crowds, the teacher who challenged the conventional wisdom of his day and taught an alternative path of transformation, the prophet and revitalization movement founder who indicted his people's corporate path, took his message and his itinerant group of followers to Jerusalem.
Why did he make that final journey? Some have thought that he did so in order to die, that is his own death was intended. Such is implied by the popular image of Jesus--he went to Jerusalem deliberately to offer his life as a sacrifice for sin. However that outcome was not the purpose of the journey.
Jesus went to Jerusalem there to make a final appeal to his people. In doing so he became one more of those prophets "sent" at precisely the time of the year when the city was most comprehensively represented at the center of their social world, and he went there to issue the call to change. (TUB 171, 172)
From The Urantia Book: "Then turning to his apostles, Jesus said: "From olden times the prophets have perished in Jerusalem, and it is only befitting that the Son of Man should go up to the city of the Father's house to be offered up as the price of human bigotry and as the result of religious prejudice and spiritual blindness. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which kills the prophets and stones the teachers of truth! How often would I have gathered your children together even as a hen gathers her own brood under her wings, but you would not let me do it! Behold, your house is about to be left to you desolate! You will many times desire to see me, but you shall not. You will then seek but not find me." And when he had spoken, he turned to those around him and said: "Nevertheless, let us go up to Jerusalem to attend the Passover and do that which becomes us in fulfilling the will of the Father in heaven."
The Message to Jerusalem: The final week of Jesus' life was filled with a series of dramatic actions, confrontations, and events, all flowing from his involvement in his people's direction and future.
At that time, Jerusalem had a population estimated between forty thousand and seventy thousand. It was also occupied by a garrison of Roman troops which was reinforced at the time of major festivals. Thus, at the season of the Passover, Roman troops arrived at Jerusalem from the west in a procession led by the Roman governor, and accompanied by all the trappings of imperial power.
Jesus and his followers arrived from the east, possibly on the same day. As they entered the city, Jesus performed the first of two prophetic acts. According to the gospels, he deliberately made arrangements to enter the city on a donkey's colt, cheered by followers and sympathizers. The meaning of the act becomes clear when we realize he was intentionally enacting a passage from the prophet Zechariah which spoke of a king of peace "riding on a colt, the foal of an ass." His entry was a planned demonstration, an appeal to Jerusalem to follow the path of peace. (TUB 172:5.5)
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