The Paradox Par excellence
The voice crying in the wilderness is stilled. The Tetrarch (the second husband of Herodias and brother of her first husband) has imprisoned him in Machaerus. The pilgrims see no more the shadow of the wild Baptizer fall across the water. He has done his work. Now he is to give way to the Voice parexcellence. He is in the prison until his head is chopped off. And his bloody head is as “almost the last dish served to the blood-thirsty woman”, the real betrayer. She wants to freely wallow in the mire of feminine lust.
Jesus, Knows full well, that His time has come. Now He has to be with His wayward and wavering people Crossing Samaria. He comes to Galilee and announces: “The time has come. The Kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe in the gospel” (Mk. 1:15). The Lord avoids Jerusalem for He is to destroy the Jerusalem of stone (She is proud and hard of heart like stone) and arrogance. He comes to combat those inhabitants of Jerusalem who glory in great cities, in the capitals and in the Jerusalems of the world.
Jerusalem has the temple and the priests. But it is also the habitat of the powerful of the world. The High Priests are the custodians of the Temple, the Pharisees, sadducees, the Scribes, the Levites, the descendants of those who pursued and killed the prophets. They were haughty and fanatic. In Jerusalem there were also the publicans with their excisemen and parasites. There were also the rich with their concubines, the merchants with their crowded shops.
Jesus is to combat all these. He is there to conquer the so- called masters of the earth-the earth which belongs to all. He comes to condemn the masters of gold, base, perishable and fatal in many respects. He comes to overthrow the soldiers of Rome who oppress the mass; the Kingdom of the priests of the Temple who repress the poor. Yes, He comes to save the suffering people in opposition to Rome, He teaches liberty, to set at naught the doctrines of the Temple. He teaches the sublime virtue of love, poverty against all the ideals of the rich.
Jerusalem is the place where His enemies, gathered together, are the strongest. Hence He does not wish to announce His message there, right now. Instead He wishes to surround the city, take it from the outside, later arrive there with a sizeable following behind Him. Then the Kingdom of heaven will have begun to slowly to lay siege to it. Its conquest (if Jerusalem) will be the last test, the supreme trial. The tremendous battle between Himself and of Jerusalem. If He should go to Jerusalem now, He would be at once taken prisoner and would not be able to sow His word.
Jerusalem, like all capitals, is inhabited by a mob of indifferent people, by an aristocracy of property owners and speculators and by a rebellious, restless ignorant crowd, controlled only by the superstition of the Temple and the fear of the foreigner’s sword. From these we conclude that Jerusalem was not at all a fit soil for sowing of Jesus.
Jesus goes back to His province. He wishes to carry the tidings of good news to those who were the first to welcome Him whole heartedly- the poor and the humble. It must be so as the tidings are especially them. More than any others, they will rejoice in them. Jesus has come to the world as poor and for the poor. Therefore, leaving Jerusalem behind, He comes to Galilee, enters into the Synagogue and begins to teach.