Up to Jerusalem

Matthew 20:18 - "See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to death,"

It ends with a comma so this is the beginning of what Jesus tells his most intimate disciples - including women. Have they already suspected that Jesus (and they) were in danger? Even so, this sounds almost as if Jesus welcomes death. If any of the people I care about were to tell me this, I would be crushed. It would be hard to hear; I might even try to talk them out of it. It would HURT. We in America tend to not want to talk about death for that reason. I like to joke with my spouse that he is not allowed to die. Of course, I know he will, it's a way of letting him know how much I love him and will miss him if he goes first.

So, Jesus is letting them know now so that they can talk about it, so that the shock will not be as great when it happens. It will still be a shock of course. When my dad died, he was sick for a year and a half. We all knew it was coming and had the chance to say our last goodbyes. It was still a shock. Jesus is letting his disciples know so that they can be as prepared as possible. Once it happens, they will be in danger as well.

This is another reason I think women were there. This is important information. This is where the rubber hits the road for them. If the twelve men needed to have this information, so did the women. As I wrote before, Jesus respected women as people. He wouldn't have stopped at that moment just because he was getting ready to die.
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