Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! (Luke 13:34)
It is the Fifth Sunday in Lent, the beginning of Passiontide.
While the themes of the earlier Sundays in Lent have been penitence, repentance and the struggle against the powers of darkness, the final two weeks of Lent focus especially on the Passion of Christ—his suffering for us.
The Pharisees could denounce Jesus as a false teacher and, together with the Sadducees, pressure the Romans to crucify him. The people along the way of the cross could mock him. Yet none of this altered the truth that it was God himself who suffered there for them—and for us—so that we might have courage both in this temporal life and at the hour of death. For God so loved the world (John 3:16), and what then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? (Romans 8:31–32)
See you at church at 10:00!
