“On the following day, when they came from Bethany, he was hungry. Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see whether perhaps he would find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. He said to it, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard it.”

“Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.”

Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.

There’s so much that I could tell you about the final week that Jesus spent in Jerusalem. That week, now called Holy Week, was packed with amazing events, deep emotions, and history that will live on forever and never be forgotten.

He is our son and nothing can change that. Nothing. But I have to admit that so much about him has changed, that we, his mother and I, feel very challenged. In some ways, we’re not sure that we know him anymore. Our world, has, in fact, been turned upside down.

“One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to eat with him, and when he went into the Pharisee’s house he reclined to dine. And a woman in the city who was a sinner, having learned that he was eating in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster jar of ointment. She stood behind him at his feet, weeping, and began to bathe his feet with her tears and to dry them with her hair, kissing his feet and anointing them with the ointment. “

It was a special week in so many ways. More than special, in fact. Yes, we always celebrated Passover during this week of the year. That, in itself, would have been special enough. But this week, this Passover, would be unlike any other, before or since.

Did Jesus ever show signs of frustration? Anger? You might think that he was always calm and that he never showed any hint of displeasure with anything or anyone. In fact, an image has been built of Jesus, the Prince of Peace, that he was always gentle and mild, even passive, and that he never expressed anything but sweetness. The Lamb of God.

I never expected it could happen to me. Things like this happened only to sinners, not Pharisees, and everyone knew that when blindness struck, it was nothing more than God’s justice for a life of sin. It should never happen to a Pharisee. Never!

You may be wondering about me. Yes, you may be wondering what happened to me. If so, please read on, because I promise you will be surprised to learn the path that my life story has taken. It has been a path with some very unexpected twists that honestly, I could never have imagined.

I wasn’t always a follower of Jesus, but I am now. In fact, you could say that for the longest time, I was his enemy. I am sorry to admit that. But God, in his great mercy, has allowed me to, as John the Baptizer would put it, “repent” and turn around from enemy to friend and eventually, to follower. And maybe, just maybe, you might even call me a disciple of Jesus.

I love Jesus. Yes, I know that he’s no longer living here with us, and that he reigns in glory in heaven. But I can still put my feelings about him in the present tense, can’t I? Because I mean, as the song says, He Lives!

We’ve all heard for years that Jesus was both human and divine. And we accept that as factual, mostly without fully understanding it. Jesus helped to feed that image by calling himself the Son of Man, while also admitting that he was at the same time the Son of God.

This story is not a story, really. Instead, it’s a confession, not just for me, one of the twelve, but also on behalf of my brother apostles. Maybe it seems odd to you that any of us would need to confess anything. After all, we’ve been declared saints (well, all except Judas). Some of us even have our names on books of the Bible. Churches and schools are named for us. There are feast days in our honor. Even the most obscure of us, like me, are famous in one way or another. I guess it’s mostly because we were all martyred, all that is, all except for John.

“Now Peter was sitting outside in the courtyard. A servant-girl came to him and said, ‘You also were with Jesus the Galilean.’ But he denied it before all of them, saying, ‘I do not know what you are talking about.’  When he went out to the porch, another servant-girl saw him, and she said to the bystanders, ‘This man was with Jesus of Nazareth.’ Again he denied it with an oath, ‘I do not know the man.’  After a little while the bystanders came up and said to Peter, ‘Certainly you are also one of them, for your accent betrays you.’ Then he began to curse, and he swore an oath, ‘I do not know the man!’ At that moment the cock crowed. 

It may surprise you to see my story included here. But once the opportunity was given to me, I just couldn’t pass it up. Perhaps you may think of me as an enemy of Jesus, but I assure you that I was not, at least not at first.

Well, here I am again, the Pharisee who wrote to you some time ago.

Since that message, many years have passed. I’m not old just yet, but I do have some gray hairs. I remain a Pharisee, and am still steeped in the traditions of our faith and in its laws, which I hold very dear.

Has anything changed? Other than the color of my hair? In a word, yes.

He was one of us. One of the twelve, chosen by Jesus himself, just like the rest. And now, he’s gone, having taken his own life. He snuffed it out like a candle. The flame of his life is gone forever, leaving us to ponder.

“Then Satan entered into Judas called Iscariot, who was one of the twelve; he went away and conferred with the chief priests and officers of the temple police about how he might betray him to them.  They were greatly pleased and agreed to give him money. So he consented and began to look for an opportunity to betray him to them when no crowd was present.”

We were all so very unlikely, but perhaps none more so than me. Our fellowship of disciples included fishermen, drawn straight out of their boats. And of course, there was a tax collector, one who was hated by most of our countrymen. Another would betray our Lord. One who would deny him. Yet another, who questioned everything. And finally, several more, ones who were so obscure that in your time, you know little about them. Gospel writers couldn’t even agree on their names!

Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. The devil had already decided that Judas son of Simon Iscariot would betray Jesus. And during supper Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from supper, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him.

The Passover, one of our oldest traditions, was always meant to be celebrated with great joy. Why? Because it commemorates God’s defining act in freeing the Children of Israel from slavery in Egypt. And our joy in this festival has never dimmed, even over many hundreds of years. It is at the heart of our faith, and especially the Passover meal, called the Seder. No Jewish tradition is more important and none is more joyous than Passover. Year after year, we look forward to it with great anticipation.

But not this one. Not this time. Not for us.