Thoughts for the Day

Luke 11:53-54 When Jesus left there, the Pharisees and teachers of the law began to oppose him fiercely and to besiege him with questions, waiting to catch him in something he might say.

After yesterday’s barrage against the Pharisees, one of the experts of the law eating with them replied to Jesus, “Teacher, you insult us also.”  If it was a plea for moderation, it failed.  Jesus instead makes three more “woe to you” statements, accusing these experts in the law of loading people with burdens they won’t help them carry, opposing prophets as much as their forefathers (a particular reference, perhaps, to their rejection of John the Baptist), and hindering the people from understanding the law rather than helping them to do so.  The outcome is clear, Jesus had made enemies.  As they had rejected John the Baptist, they now reject Jesus, and, though they may not yet know it, they will hound him to the cross.  But let’s pause for a moment and return to consider Jesus’s amazing confidence in his identity and mission.   As we find him increasingly isolated from the religious leaders of his day, Pharisees, Sadducees, experts in the law and chief priests, we sense this is inevitable in God’s plan.  But it places Jesus utterly alone.  The disciples will be an encouragement to a point but cannot help Jesus discern his next moves – they rely on him to explain everything to them!  But, through all this, Jesus never “loses it”, never falters in his mission.  Grounded in scripture, yet interpreting it beyond the insight of his contemporaries, filled with the Holy Spirit, steeped in prayer, endorsed by the Father, Jesus knows with complete confidence who he is and why he is here.