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Luke 13: 31-35 – Week 30 Ordinary Time, Thursday (King James Audio Bible KJV, Spoken Word)
31 ¶ The same day there came certain of the Pharisees, saying unto him, Get thee out, and depart hence: for Herod will kill thee.
32 And he said unto them, Go ye, and tell that fox, Behold, I cast out devils, and I do cures to day and to morrow, and the third day I shall be perfected.
33 Nevertheless I must walk to day, and to morrow, and the day following: for it cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem.
34 O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee; how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not!
35 Behold, your house is left unto you desolate: and verily I say unto you, Ye shall not see me, until the time come when ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.
Some few of the Pharisees now show solidarity with Jesus, warning him that Herod Antipas means to kill him. Herod has previously expressed a wish to meet Jesus (Luke 9: 9), about whom he was perplexed, wondering if John the Baptist had risen again. We do not know whether the Pharisees simply want to get Jesus to go away or if there is danger.
In calling Herod a fox, Jesus rejects Herod for his duplicity, and affirms his independent authority to perform his healing work, with the symbolic suggestion that such work tends toward the cross, and to perfection on the third day. Nevertheless, he must leave and continue to travel to Jerusalem: the hour of Jesus’ death is not to be determined by Herod.
Christ’s lament for Jerusalem shows such loving tenderness. There is such pity as he considers the fate of the prophets and the recalcitrance of the city. So much could have been done had the city authorities especially not hardened their hearts against God’s word, had they opened themselves to allow the grace of God to come to them. As it is, history is set to take a different course. The house will be left desolate.
Concluding Prayer | Love Revealed By Jesus Christ
Be merciful unto me, O God, be merciful unto me:
for my soul trusteth in thee:
yea, in the shadow of thy wings will I make my refuge,
until these calamities be overpast. (Psalm 57/56)
King James Audio Bible | Endnotes
O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Which Killest The Prophets
Luke 13:31-35 is a poignant passage that reveals the heart of Jesus towards Jerusalem, a city that had rejected and killed the prophets sent to her by God. In this passage, Jesus laments over the city, expressing his deep sorrow and love for its people, even as Jesus foretells its imminent destruction.
The passage begins with Pharisees warning Jesus that Herod, the ruler of Galilee, was seeking to kill Jesus. Jesus responds by telling them that he must continue his work of healing and casting out demons until he reaches Jerusalem, where he will meet his fate. Jesus then utters the heartbreaking words: ‘O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee; how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not!’ (Luke 13:34)
These words reveal the depth of Jesus’ love for Jerusalem, even in the face of its rejection of Jess and the prophets who came before him.
Let us consider Old Testament passages that Jesus may have had in mind when he spoke of Jerusalem killing the prophets.
In 2 Chronicles 24:19-21, we read of how the prophet Zechariah was stoned to death in the court of the temple by the orders of King Joash.
In 1 Kings 19:10, Elijah complained to God: ‘I have been very jealous for the Lord God of hosts: for the children of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, thrown down thine altars, and slain thy prophets with the sword; and I, even I only, am left; and they seek my life, to take it away.’
The killing of the prophets was not a new phenomenon in Jesus’ time but was a pattern that had repeated itself throughout Israel’s history.
Jesus’ reference to gathering Jerusalem’s children under his wings is an allusion to a metaphor used in the Old Testament to describe God’s protective care over His people. In Psalm 17:8, the psalmist prays: ‘Keep me as the apple of the eye, hide me under the shadow of thy wings.’
Similarly, in Psalm 91:4, it is written: ‘He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler.’ This imagery highlights Jesus’ desire to shelter and protect Jerusalem, just as a mother hen gathers her chicks under her wings for safety.
In the New Testament, we find that the rejection of the prophets and the killing of Jesus are intimately linked. In Matthew 23:29-36, Jesus chastises the scribes and Pharisees for their hypocrisy and warns them that they are following in the footsteps of their forefathers, who killed the prophets. Jesus then declares: ‘Behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city: That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar.’ (Matthew 23:34-35) Here, Jesus prophesies His own death and connects it to the long history of Israel’s rejection of God’s messengers.
In Acts 7, we see the stoning of Saint Stephen, the first Christian martyr, by the Jewish authorities. Saint Stephen’s speech before his death echoes the words of Jesus, as Saint Stephen accuses the Jews of resisting the Holy Spirit and killing the prophets.
Saint Stephen proclaims: ‘Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? and they have slain them which shewed before of the coming of the Just One; of whom ye have been now the betrayers and murderers’ (Acts 7:52). Saint Stephen’s death, like that of Zechariah and the other prophets, is a testament to the hardness of heart of the people of Jerusalem, who rejected the message of God’s messengers time and again.
However, despite this pattern of rejection and violence, Jesus still longs to gather the people of Jerusalem to himself. This is evident in Jesus’ words of lament in Luke 19:41-44, when Jesus weeps over the city and prophesies its destruction: ‘If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes…because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation.’ (Luke 19:42-44) This sorrowful lament demonstrates Jesus’ love and compassion for the people of Jerusalem, even as he foretells their judgment.
The theme of rejection and of a welcoming back is most powerfully expressed in the parable of the prodigal son, in which a wayward son is welcomed back with open arms by his father, despite his rebellion and rejection. This parable demonstrates the radical nature of God’s love, which extends even to those who have turned away from Him.
Luke 13:31-35 is a powerful passage that reveals the heart of Jesus towards Jerusalem and His people. Despite their rejection of Jesus and the prophets who came before him, Jesus still longs to gather them to himself, as a mother hen gathers her chicks. A pattern of rejection and acceptance characterizes God’s relationship with His people.
Jesus pays tribute to John as a great prophet, bringing the truth of God to the people, as a burning and a shining light. There is perhaps a veiled rebuke as Jesus reminds the people that they flocked to him for a period, as if theirs was a fickle and fleeting regard. Nonetheless, Jesus speaks of John now to help the people, because John witnessed Christ and that witness could help people to believe and so be saved [ … ]
We process. Glass exhibition cases, old reliquaries. A forearm here; here a nun’s fingertip. In chapel, at a glance, there are the usual faces. But they all stand to attention. Jonathan breaks from the procession to – fire the organ with oomph and dignity: Ride on! ride on in majesty! The angel-squadrons of the sky look down with sad and wondering eyes to see the approaching sacrifice. When we’ve done the readings, the Arch holds that tree in his hands to deliver the homily. He rocks quietly on his feet, some few seconds, as if balance defeated it. A way you might affect as the Spirit moves… Copying. Then he says: ‘Our palm fronds may seem to us today rather dry. I mean this not in a literal sense, but by the standards of those who originally lined the roadways in order to welcome Jesus into Jerusalem, as they proclaimed Jesus to be the Messiah, who would be clambering up and ripping their palm branches fresh from off the trees. I think perhaps also our faith is somewhat distant from that of the people there on that highroad into Jerusalem, and something of our sense of the meaning has shifted in vividness from what it was then. And of course the expectation of all those many people is markedly different, but in many important respects the same. There are the same essential qualities to all our faith in God, which springs complete from our humanity, and that is one and the same in value for all of us, and time is consistent on this point. So then, let us renew the fullness of Catholic faith, and let us ask the Lord’s blessing as we embark upon our Holy Week. ‘Our Lord enters into Jerusalem in order to refresh us. He is to die in order that we may have life. There is a living reality here, both spiritual and as entangled in the joy of our daily living. We have Ladies’ Day where I grew up. They still have it, and they close the roads off, and little children parade, dressed-up like spring brides. When I was a boy, there was a May Day festival, and there was a May pole on the field, with the people dancing, like Morris dancers might be one way of visualizing this if you’ve never seen it, with their ribbons tied onto the top of the May pole, and they would weave around each other, dressing the pole, which is what we called it. It was like a dance with red and white and blue ribbons all hung off of the top of the May pole, which stood there all year, only like a telegraph pole, but it was concreted in, and then there was a slide, and swings – one baby-swing and two you could have a go at – terrible health and safety but that’s what it was in those days. ‘There was a round-a-bout – we used to run it round and round to try to get it off its central axis. It were rusty as anything and creaked like mad – on concrete. And climb up where it was all greased up at the top. Ruth, who was big as the next four of us, used to sit there sucking on the lollipops we nicked for her from Raddies, and she’d direct matters. We were trying to destroy it, and get it to dislodge from its central axis, and fly away – roll off into that farmer’s field, which he only ever kept for silage, but we never succeeded. There was a car someone had left there so we spent forever smashing that up, until someone who lived in one of the houses there took exception to our doing that, so he put thick grease under the door handles and gave us a right talking to. ‘It would only be a few stands, hot-dogs and things like that. The man selling the hot dogs would have his records on full blast. There’d be a couple of set-up stalls. Air-rifles – that sort of thing. But we all had them, and we all went shooting, of course, if not with twelve bores then with smaller gauge. Or pay a pound – I have no idea how much it was in actual fact then – it might have only been a few pennies – and we’d get all that time smashing up the crockery the man would put up for us to smash on the dressers. That was my particular favourite thing to do at these festivals, by the way, in case you were wondering. You got a little bucket of so many cricket balls. ‘I dread to think what went into those hot dogs. Probably EE rules would forbid it now. But it was a fair mix in those days. A lot of young people then were C of E. We’ve done a lot to hang onto our young people, which is a tremendous encouragement when you consider how things are, while in recent decades the Church of England hasn’t been so successful. People still want it on feast days and what are essentially now civic celebrations. It’s strange to see, though, how all the little stands there people have are run by the police and people like that along those lines. There’s no May pole. That was a sort of faith that ran and ran beneath all the theoreticals of it in the 1960s and the 1970s and into the 1980s. The May pole isn’t there now in the particular place I’m thinking of. Considering May poles were officially suppressed hundreds of years ago – as a part of the protestant reformation. One or two of you are probably thinking I’m remembering things from that time! ‘I should have liked to say that those processionals were so hardwired into us, that even after the last thirty years, when I became a bishop, they are still with us. They were […]
In this rich Eastertide reflection, Saint Fulgentius presents the Eucharist as both the source and summit of Christian unity, drawing the Church together into one spiritual body through the bond of love. His meditation resonates profoundly with the paschal season, in which the Church celebrates the risen life of Christ not merely as a past event, but as a present, living reality—embodied in the Eucharist and shared through the Spirit [ … ]
