Jesus’ experience included a series of withdrawals his last year. During the summer months, he traveled in and out of Galilee.\u00a0During the winter, he visited Jerusalem and withdrew\u00a0multiple times.<\/p>\n
This pattern of\u00a0engagement and withdrawal points to the mounting tension\u00a0between Jesus and the religious authorities.<\/p>\n
The perception of Jesus as a dynamic, likable teacher-leader\u00a0is true enough. But often in our focus on Jesus,\u00a0we\u00a0ignore the feelings of all of the other dynamic leaders around him who were competing for public interest, let alone those who were\u00a0attempting to preserve\u00a0the power they had already attained.<\/p>\n
The leaders in Nazareth and Capernaum and other towns\u00a0in Galilee\u00a0turned against Jesus. Not long afterwards in Jerusalem at the Feast of Huts, the religious leaders sent the temple guards to arrest him. And a few months later, on Jesus’ next feast-visit to Jerusalem, some of his listeners\/competitors intended once again to seize him.<\/p>\n
Jesus lived in this mounting tension of\u00a0rejection\u00a0and hostility\u00a0for months. Yet he never lost his nerve or his focus.<\/p>\n
If we tell the story\u00a0overlooking this tension, we do it\u00a0not because the circumstances demand it, but because we are so overawed by Jesus’ calm in the face of unrelenting opposition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jesus’ experience included a series of withdrawals his last year. During the summer months, he traveled in and out of Galilee.\u00a0During the winter, he visited Jerusalem and withdrew\u00a0multiple times. This pattern of\u00a0engagement and withdrawal points to the mounting tension\u00a0between Jesus and the religious authorities. The perception of Jesus as a dynamic, likable teacher-leader\u00a0is true enough. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-telling-the-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spendayearwithjesus.com\/djp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spendayearwithjesus.com\/djp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spendayearwithjesus.com\/djp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spendayearwithjesus.com\/djp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spendayearwithjesus.com\/djp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spendayearwithjesus.com\/djp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spendayearwithjesus.com\/djp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spendayearwithjesus.com\/djp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spendayearwithjesus.com\/djp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}