{"id":725,"date":"2009-04-06T04:01:15","date_gmt":"2009-04-06T04:01:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/markdroberts\/2009\/04\/the-ninth-station-jesus-meets-the-women-of-jerusalem.html"},"modified":"2009-04-06T04:01:15","modified_gmt":"2009-04-06T04:01:15","slug":"the-ninth-station-jesus-meets-the-women-of-jerusalem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts\/2009\/04\/the-ninth-station-jesus-meets-the-women-of-jerusalem.html","title":{"rendered":"The Ninth Station: Jesus Meets the Women of Jerusalem"},"content":{"rendered":"


\nCopyright \u00a9 Linda Roberts, 2007.
\nFor permission to use this picture and\/or others in this series, please contact Mark D. Roberts<\/a><\/h4>\n

Luke 23:27-31<\/strong>
\n27<\/em> A great number of the people followed him, and among them were women who were beating their breasts and wailing for him. 28<\/em> But Jesus turned to them and said, \u201cDaughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. 29<\/em> For the days are surely coming when they will say, \u2018Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed.\u2019 30<\/em> Then they will begin to say to the mountains, \u2018Fall on us\u2019; and to the hills, \u2018Cover us.\u2019 31<\/em> For if they do this when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?\u201d
\nReflection<\/strong>
\nGrowing up, I pictured the last week of Jesus’s life in stark, simple terms. Jerusalem, in my imagination, no doubt colored by Sunday school film strips, was a small town of maybe a few hundreds residents. All of these people came out to hail Jesus as king on Palm Sunday. Then, all of these same people showed up at Pilate’s palace to call for his crucifixion. Though I wasn’t a hardcore anti-Semite, I believed that “the Jews” wanted Jesus dead because he had claimed to be God.
\nWhenever I pictured Jesus meeting the women of Jerusalem along the Via Dolorosa, there were just two or three women, no doubt followers of Jesus, who were weeping for him. Meanwhile, the rest of the Jewish crowd was egging on the Roman soldiers, eager to see Jesus crucified. The Jews wanted Jesus dead. Right?
\nWrong, actually. A few years ago I began to study the New Testament records of Jesus’ death with greater care. To my surprise, I saw things I had completely overlooked before, things that changed my perception of Jesus’ last hours.
\nFor example, Luke 23:27 notes that “a great number of people followed [Jesus]” as he walked to Golgotha. Luke gives no indication that they were crying out for Jesus’ death. In fact, by mentioning the women weeping for Jesus, Luke implies that the “great number of the people” were upset by what was happening to him. There’s no evidence that that were egging on the Roman soldiers, as I once imagined. (In fact, this “egging on” scenario I had imagined makes no sense in light of the unpopularity of Rome among first-century Jews, especially Roman soldiers.)
\nLuke makes this even clearer a few verses later, after Jesus’ death: “And when all the crowds who had gathered there for this spectacle saw what had taken place, they returned home, beating their breasts” (Luke 23:48). Since was a physical sign of extreme grief, Luke shows us that the great majority of Jews who had witnessed Jesus’ crucifixion were horrified, not happy<\/em>, to see him die. They were certainly not among those who had earlier called for his crucifixion in Pilate’s courtyard.
\nThe fact that only a small minority of Jews in Jerusalem actually wanted Jesus to be killed is confirmed by another passage in the Gospels that I had once overlooked. In Matthew, as Jesus is teaching in the temple during the days before his death, we read:<\/p>\n

When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them. They wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowds, because they regarded him as a prophet. (Matthew 21:45-46)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Jewish leaders wanted to arrest Jesus, but “they feared the crowds.” Why? Because the crowds “regarded him as a prophet” and, by implication, would have been horrified to see him arrested and crucified.
\nMy close reading of the Gospels, combined with study of first-century Jewish history and culture, has corrected my youthful misunderstandings. I now realize that Jerusalem wasn’t a small village, but a substantial city of perhaps 30,000 or more residents. During the Jewish holidays, such as Passover, the population would swell to as much as ten times this amount. This means that a tiny percentage of the Jews in Jerusalem were directly involved with or actually called for the crucifixion of Jesus. His death was surely engineered by the Jewish leaders in collusion with Pilate and his Roman cohort. As far as we know, the vast majority of Jews in Jerusalem were either horrified by or unaware of what was going on with Jesus.
\nI think it’s important for us to understand what really happened in the death of Jesus for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the sad history of anti-Semitism among Christians. For too long it was acceptable to utter the familiar refrain, “The Jews killed Christ.” And for too long, many Christians used this as an excuse to persecute Jews who lived centuries after the death of Jesus, and who therefore had nothing to do with his death. In fact, some<\/em> Jews were involved in the death of Jesus, mostly the leaders of Jerusalem. But Pontius Pilate alone had the authority to crucify Jesus. According to the Gospels, the majority of Jews who had any awareness of Jesus’ death were grieved, not glad. If we blame “the Jews” for the death of Christ, we’re making an historical mistake. If we hold contemporary Jews liable for the death of Jesus, we’re compounding the error.
\nAnd, of course, we’re also missing the main point. Jesus did not die primarily as a helpless victim of Roman or Jewish injustice. He chose to die on the cross in faithfulness to the Father’s will so that he might bear the sin of the world. If anyone is to blame for the death of Jesus, we are<\/em>, because we have sinned. Thus in looking upon Jesus’s death, we join the women of Jerusalem in weeping, not only for Jesus, but also for ourselves. In the death of Jesus we see what we deserve, and we rightly feel appalled.
\nThen the mystery of grace astounds us. We realize that Jesus is bearing our sin so that we might be forgiven, that he is dying in our place so that we might live in his place. We sense the mystery expressed in 2 Corinthians 5:21: “For our sake [God] made [Christ] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might because the righteousness of God.” What a wonder!
\nPrayer<\/strong>
\nDear Lord, to whatever extent there are remnants of anti-Semitism in me, please forgive me and cleanse my mind and heart. Help me not to blame others for the death of Jesus, but to see my own sin as sending him to the cross. Even more, help me to grasp the mystery of your grace, to see in the death of Jesus that which gives me life. May my weeping over the suffering of Jesus, and my sorrow over my own sin, turn to joy when I recognize the majesty of your mercy. Amen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Copyright \u00a9 Linda Roberts, 2007. For permission to use this picture and\/or others in this series, please contact Mark D. Roberts Luke 23:27-31 27 A great number of the people followed him, and among them were women who were beating their breasts and wailing for him. 28 But Jesus turned to them and said, \u201cDaughters…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":214,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[70],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stations-of-the-cross"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Ninth Station: Jesus Meets the Women of Jerusalem - Mark D. Roberts<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts\/2009\/04\/the-ninth-station-jesus-meets-the-women-of-jerusalem.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Ninth Station: Jesus Meets the Women of Jerusalem - Mark D. Roberts\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Copyright \u00a9 Linda Roberts, 2007. For permission to use this picture and\/or others in this series, please contact Mark D. Roberts Luke 23:27-31 27 A great number of the people followed him, and among them were women who were beating their breasts and wailing for him. 28 But Jesus turned to them and said, \u201cDaughters…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts\/2009\/04\/the-ninth-station-jesus-meets-the-women-of-jerusalem.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Mark D. Roberts\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-04-06T04:01:15+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Mark D. Roberts\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Ninth Station: Jesus Meets the Women of Jerusalem - Mark D. Roberts","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts\/2009\/04\/the-ninth-station-jesus-meets-the-women-of-jerusalem.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Ninth Station: Jesus Meets the Women of Jerusalem - Mark D. Roberts","og_description":"Copyright \u00a9 Linda Roberts, 2007. For permission to use this picture and\/or others in this series, please contact Mark D. Roberts Luke 23:27-31 27 A great number of the people followed him, and among them were women who were beating their breasts and wailing for him. 28 But Jesus turned to them and said, \u201cDaughters…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts\/2009\/04\/the-ninth-station-jesus-meets-the-women-of-jerusalem.html","og_site_name":"Mark D. Roberts","article_published_time":"2009-04-06T04:01:15+00:00","author":"Mark D. Roberts","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts\/2009\/04\/the-ninth-station-jesus-meets-the-women-of-jerusalem.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts\/2009\/04\/the-ninth-station-jesus-meets-the-women-of-jerusalem.html","name":"The Ninth Station: Jesus Meets the Women of Jerusalem - Mark D. Roberts","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-04-06T04:01:15+00:00","dateModified":"2009-04-06T04:01:15+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts\/#\/schema\/person\/1ff094a57b7e41f534434b1723df3d73"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts\/2009\/04\/the-ninth-station-jesus-meets-the-women-of-jerusalem.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts\/2009\/04\/the-ninth-station-jesus-meets-the-women-of-jerusalem.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts\/2009\/04\/the-ninth-station-jesus-meets-the-women-of-jerusalem.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The Ninth Station: Jesus Meets the Women of Jerusalem"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts\/","name":"Mark D. Roberts","description":"Mark D. Roberts: Thoughtfully Christian Reflections on Jesus, the Church, and the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts\/#\/schema\/person\/1ff094a57b7e41f534434b1723df3d73","name":"Mark D. Roberts","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/f2d\/f2ddf5f080861f66ea230384f9d1bab2x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/f2d\/f2ddf5f080861f66ea230384f9d1bab2x96.jpg","caption":"Mark D. Roberts"},"description":"The Rev. Dr. Mark D. Roberts is a pastor, author, retreat leader, speaker, and blogger. Since October 2007 he has been the Senior Director and Scholar-in-Residence for Laity Lodge, a multifaceted ministry in the Hill Country of Texas. Before coming to Laity Lodge, he was for sixteen years the Senior Pastor of Irvine Presbyterian Church in Irvine, California (a city in Orange County about forty miles south of Los Angeles). Before his time at Irvine Pres, Mark served on the staff of the First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood as Associate Pastor of Education. (Thanks to Janel Pahl for taking the photo to the right.) Mark studied at Harvard University, receiving a B.A. in Philosophy, an M.A. in the Study of Religion, and a Ph.D. in New Testament and Christian Origins. He has taught classes in New Testament for Fuller Theological Seminary and San Francisco Theological Seminary. Mark has written several books, including No Holds Barred: Wrestling with God in Prayer (WaterBrook, 2005), Dare to Be True (WaterBrook, 2003), Jesus Revealed (WaterBrook, 2002), After \"I Believe\" (Baker, 2002), and Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther (Word, 1993). His most recent book is Can We Trust the Gospels? Investigating the Reliability of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John (Crossway, 2007). He is currently working on a commentary on Ephesians that will be published by Zondervan in 2014. Mark writes a devotional for The High Calling of Our Daily Work, a website associated with Laity Lodge. His \"Daily Reflections\" can be viewed online or sent as a daily email. If you wish to receive this email, just visit TheHighCalling.org and sign up. Mark serves on the editorial board of Worship Leader magazine, where he publishes articles and reviews, including his regular column \"Lyrical Poetry.\" Additionally, he has published dozens of articles in leading magazines and journals. He often speaks for churches and other Christian groups, and has been interviewed on over seventy-five radio programs nationwide. Mark is married to Linda, who is a Marriage and Family Therapist, a Spiritual Director, and a retreat speaker. They have two children, Nathan and Kara.For Publicity Photos and Bio Statements for Mark, please check here. Mark's Dossier Professional History: Senior Director and Scholar-in Residence, Laity Lodge, October 2007 to present. Senior Pastor Irvine Presbyterian Church, June 1991 to September 2007 Adjunct Assistant Professor Fuller Theological Seminary, 1994 to 2007. Courses: New Testament Theology and Exegesis. Adjunct Instructor San Francisco Theological Seminary, 1995 to 2001. Courses: New Testament Greek and Exegesis Associate Pastor of Education First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood, 1987-1991 Teaching Fellow Harvard University, 1980-1983 Education: Ph.D. in the Study of Religion. Harvard University, 1992. Area: New Testament and Christian Origins M.A. in the Study of Religion Harvard University, 1984. A.B. magna cum laude in Philosophy Harvard University, 1979. Phi Beta Kappa; Danforth Fellowship Books: Can We Trust the Gospels? Investigating the Reliability of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Crossway, 2007 No Holds Barred: Wrestling with God in Prayer. WaterBrook, 2005 Dare to Be True: Living in the Freedom of Complete Honesty. WaterBrook, 2003. Jesus Revealed: Know Him Better to Love Him Better. WaterBrook, 2002. After \"I Believe\": Experiencing Authentic Christian Living. Baker, 2002. Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther in the Communicator's Commentary Series. Word, 1993. Contacting Mark: You can reach Mark at: E-mail: mark@markdroberts.com mroberts@laitylodge.org Phone: Laity Lodge: (830) 792-1216 Address: Laity Lodge 719 Earl Garrett Kerrville, TX 78028","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts\/author\/mroberts"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/214"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}