It is difficult for us to imagine just how different Jesus would have been in the religious culture of his day. Jerusalem was largely dominated by the chief priests of the Temple. As you moved away from Jerusalem, the synagogues in the towns and villages were dominated by the party of the Pharisees, many of whom were rabbis and experts in the law. And for many of the most influential Pharisees, the world was divided into two camps. You either followed them and all their legal requirements, or you were considered a “sinner.” And people in the class of “sinners” were worthy of disdain and contempt. I suspect their expectation of the Messiah was that he would be a Pharisee-on-steroids. Just like them, only more zealous for the laws, and even more zealous about drawing that line between the “righteous” and “sinners.”

Hardly a day goes by that we don’t hear about some tragic death.  The news is filled with stories of war-casualties and natural disasters and murder and overdose.  There is a human tendency in these moments to speculate.  We wonder why it happened to “those” people.  There is an underlying assumption beneath much of the speculation.  The underlying assumption runs something like this:  “Good things happen to good people; conversely, bad things happen to bad people.”  The logic is then simple, cold, inescapable:  That person met with a bad end so they must have been a bad person. 

We have before us today in our text a study of contrasts.  A sharper contrast can scarcely be imagined.  It is the contrast the Lord God first mentions in the Garden of Eden after the Fall into sin.  He spoke already then of the “seed of the woman” and the “seed of the devil.”  It is the contrast between children of light, and those who walk in darkness. 

It is time to make our yearly journey to Jerusalem.  The one we make each year in heart and soul.  That is why the words we hear Jesus speak to us this Ash Wednesday are pleasing to our ears.  He says to his friends, Look, we are going up to Jerusalem. (v. 31)  Jesus says “we.”  He wants his friends to come!  He wants the company!  He wants you and me to join him on this journey!

The whole scene is too delicious!  It couldn’t be scripted any better.  It sets up to be the ultimate story of revenge.  There are the brothers.  They are before the one they believe to be the second-in-command in all the land of Egypt.  They believe his name to be Zaphenath-Paneah (Genesis 41:45).  Little do they know the man is really their own brother, Joseph!  Their brother Joseph whom they had cruelly sold 22 years earlier.