Jesus was relentless, fearless, clearly on a mission from God, ready to lose anything to attain everything. After the drama of Palm Sunday and the ruckus of Jesus’ Monday morning rampage through the temple, Jesus probably should have stayed home in Bethany, or fled during the night to safety in the north where he’d come from.

But instead, Jesus walked right back into the temple to face shocked, mortified, angry clergy and laity, and began talking – at length.  He didn’t win any friends by foretelling a day when not one stone of the temple would be left upon another. The crowd had to laugh: Herod’s masons had built a seemingly indestructible temple, with flawlessly cut, massive blocks, the largest measuring 44 feet long, 10 feet high, 16 feet wide, weighing 570 tons. His words seemed ridiculous – but still caused offense.

He was only getting started that Tuesday. Matthew shares 212 verses of Jesus talking (chapters 22-25), including some of his most famous teachings.  And don’t his words carry a much heavier freight since we know he was in the final couple of days before his death?  That Tuesday, he exposed the faked religiosity of the pious Pharisees, he wept over the Holy City which had lost its way, he warned the disciples of the perils of living into the Truth.  Jesus clarified that our salvation depends on whether we feed the hungry and welcome the unwanted.  Devious men tried to trick Jesus with a question about a woman with several husbands: to whom would she be married in heaven?  For Jesus, the glory of hope is too large, too wonderful to be shrunk to earthly proportions, or limited by the way we do business down here.

We can picture him moving about within the temple precincts, stopping under a portico, then strolling down the large stone staircase, standing for a while near the gate, probing, questioning, listening and yet ruminating at length.  Take some time on this Holy Tuesday to read Jesus’ words from his Holy Tuesday: Matthew 21:23-25:40.

Prayer: “Lord, we are so grateful that on holy Tuesday you had so much to say. We need to hear and heed your thinking – although your Tuesday words are hard. We might prefer easy platitudes or simplistic spiritual niceties – but in truth we are eager to hear and embrace your deeper, riskier, more satisfying truth. I will make time to read your words, and to ponder them, even when they expose the triviality of my faith, and my lackluster half-attempts at following you.”