Holy Week: Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Days In-Betweenಮಾದರಿ

Tuesday

On Tuesday Jesus returns to Jerusalem again. Sometimes called Holy Tuesday, we see Jesus and the religious leaders going head-to-head. If you’re following Matthew’s Gospel, Tuesday plays out over six chapters. Teaching after teaching and challenge after challenge fill these pages. It’s like watching two opponents sparring, but the religious leaders are trying to punch above their weight.

Both Matthew and Mark tell us that as Jesus came back into the city, the disciples noticed the fig tree he had cursed the previous day. Now, it was shriveled to its core.

It’s symbolic of what Jesus will tell us on Thursday: “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers” (John 15:5-6). God wants us to be a mighty, flourishing tree. We are dependent on Jesus for it. The religious leaders rejected him. Despite their prominence, façade of power, and clout, they were only an empty temple and withered tree. It’s a warning to us all.

Two days earlier, on Palm Sunday, Luke tells us that as Jesus approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it. He said: “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you” (Luke 19:41-44).

God wants all to be saved and all people to turn to him. He’s willing to go to any lengths to bring it about. Even entering Jerusalem to be crucified. Read what Jesus teaches this Tuesday, and you’ll find it filled with the perseverant heart of God reaching out to his people, but constantly rejected.

After one particularly bitter exchange with the religious leaders, Jesus laments: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing. Look, your house is left to you desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord’” (Matt 23:37-39).

What we see throughout Holy Week is Jesus identifying himself as Yahweh. God has returned to save his people, but do his people want him? Holy Tuesday has a message for us. God wants you with an undying passion. He seeks you and calls to you and will even confront you. Don’t delay. Turn to him. The religious leaders didn’t. It left them as a withered branch, an empty temple, a dead tree. Don’t make the same mistake.

You can read all the teachings and confrontations that happened that Tuesday in Matthew 21:23-26:5; Mark 11:20-13:37; Luke 20:1-21:38; and John 12:20-38.