We continue this week to pause a moment throughout this  season of Lent to go beyond the words and look at the places that are a part of Christ’s journey to the Cross.  Just a quick search gives me 24 places to look at. But on this day I picked out three. Nazareth, Bethany and Gethsemane. I start with… Nazareth because that was His “boyhood home”,  (Luke 4:16). Jesus was often referred to as “Jesus of Nazareth”. In Bible times people were often identified by their native area or place of residence. The man who carried Jesus’ cross was called Simon of Cyrene, noting his name and his place of residence. After having fled to Egypt to protect Jesus from Herod, Joseph returned and settled his family in Nazareth. When we read Isaiah 53; and Psalm 22 most commentaries read that Jesus the coming Messiah would be of humble origin and would be despised and rejected. I am going to skip over some of the discussions had by some commentators and just make note of the fact that when… note that the following is taken directly from gotquestions.com  …. Matthew says, therefore, that the prophecies were “fulfilled,” his meaning is that the predictions of the prophets that the Messiah would be of a low and despised condition and would be rejected, were fully accomplished in His being an inhabitant of Nazareth. It was here that a major event in Jesus’ life occurs. As an adult, He returns to Nazareth and at the synagogue He confesses to be the fulfillment of the prophet Isaiah’s words, Luke 4:1819…18 “The Spirt of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, (19) to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” …

To those in the synagogue that day he also said … “but I tell you the truth, no prophet is accepted in his own hometown.”(Luke 4:24)   

 Bethany, located on the eastern side of Mount of Olives, was the hometown of Mary, Martha and Lazarus, close friends of Jesus. Jesus visited there often and when Lazarus died he was raised from the dead by Jesus (John 11:1-45). Bethany was not that far from Jerusalem and it is here that everyone got to see Jesus’ divine power as the Son of God, as Lazarus raised up by Jesus. But something else happened here that is often not mentioned. The biblical phrase “Jesus wept”…John 11:35  is the shortest verse in the Bible, occurring in the context of Jesus’s arrival in Bethany after the death of his friend Lazarus, where he wept with Mary and Martha over their grief. The humanity of our Lord was there for all to see. One last note before we move on to Gethsemane. Bethany is also the place from where Jesus ascended into Heaven. 

Garden of Gethsemane   One way for us to better visualize the location of the Garden and its close proximity to Jerusalem is to consider this…It is just across the street there.  Gethsemane literally means “oil press,” the garden is located on a slope of the Mount of Olives just across the Kidron Valley from Jerusalem. Don’t be misled by the name Kidron Valley it is not that expansive. A garden of ancient olive trees stands there to this day. As written in John 18:2, Jesus went there often with the disciples to pray. The garden was where on the night before His crucifixion Jesus was betrayed. There are four accounts of this in scriptures, Matthew 26:36-56, Mark 14:32-52, Luke 22:40-53 and John 18:1-11)  reading these will give an accurate picture of that night in full. What happened that night in the Garden of Gethsemane have traveled through the centuries. We often refer to it as the Passion of Christ… There have been books, music and movies made of that event in that garden and are the prequel to cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Thank you for being in “The Pew” this week, please come back.

Life is Good

jk