Mark 10:33-34  “We are going up to Jerusalem,” he said, “and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles, ³⁴ who will mock him and spit on him, flog him and kill him. Three days later he will rise.”           

Jesus and his disciples were on their way to Jerusalem when He told them this.  Can you imagine what their response was?  He had told them this before and it just never made sense to them.  How could it be?  They were so distressed by the words about his death that the words about rising thee days later never seemed to register with them.  Later, when they saw the empty tomb, John records in 20:9 (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.)

Even though they knew the Jewish leaders had such animosity towards Jesus, this ‘ending’ that Jesus spoke of would have seemed unbelievable.  Their frustration had to be amplified by the fact that they couldn’t talk him out of it.  Imagine if we had been some of his disciples; had been with him for three years and had seen and heard everything that had happened.  We would have been in denial about this too.

Then there was the triumphal entry of Palm Sunday.  How could someone who was receiving such acclimation become the object of condemnation and death?  The Pharisees have even described the situation as “the whole world going after him”.   Each day Jesus was teaching in the Temple, surrounded by crowds amazed by what they were seeing and hearing.

As we go through Holy Week, let’s put ourselves in the position of his disciples.  On the one hand we see all of the positive going on; the crowds, the teachings, the magnitude of the response to Jesus – from early morning until evening.  On the other, we have the nagging apprehension of his brutal words about his death.  It strikes me like trying to grapple with mutually exclusive ideas.  How could both be true?

We have the advantage of knowing the ending of this week.  But let’s try to grasp what the disciples were going through; caught between the crowds and the leaders; struggling with the words that Jesus himself had told them.  They did not understand what was going on.  They even had to contend with Jesus’ words – how they all would flee from Him (Mark 14:27).  Imagine the pain of being told that you would betray the one you loved – being afraid that what Jesus said would be true.