The Roman Province of Judaea, which included Jerusalem and the region of Galilee, was experiencing a national emergency….The principalities and powers tried to squash Jesus’ revolution of love, and they could not. They could not, because the Jesus movement of revolutionary love cannot be squashed.

The people who were there in person were expecting victory. The scene that day in Jerusalem represents the dual reality of the first followers of Jesus as well as our dual reality: we live in the Kingdom of Empire while we work to unveil the Kingdom of God.

As we move closer to Holy Week, we are moving closer to the place of death and resurrection, our Jerusalem. The stories are the same year after year but because we are always changing, always evolving as children of God, our experience this year will be different.

I like to think if the father in this parable were at one of those meetings, he’d say to these good people: You are provided for. I love you. You have enough. These others have nothing. They cannot pull themselves up by their bootstraps the way you have, because their feet have been cut off. Can we not all be in this together?

Gardeners love the story of the fig tree. Everyone needs second and third chances, and the lives of plants provide a wonderful metaphor for that.

Jesus is on a mission. Blues Brothers fans will not need to think twice about what kind of mission this is: he’s on a mission from God. He’s on a mission to Jerusalem, a mission for the redemption and salvation of the world.

If Jesus were flying a sign on the side of the road, it might say “Jerusalem or bust.”

What tricks would the devil use to test us? With Jesus, he offered the temptations to be spectacular and powerful to distract him from his identity as the Son of God and from God’s mission of reconciliation. I think in our 21^st century Episcopal Church context, the devil tests us with messages of timidity, discouragement, scarcity, and apathy.