Matthew 23:29-39: a reflection

29“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the tombs of the righteous, 30and say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we wouldn’t have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.’ 31Therefore you testify to yourselves that you are children of those who killed the prophets. 32Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers. 33You serpents, you offspring of vipers, how will you escape the judgment of Gehenna? 34Therefore, behold, I send to you prophets, wise men, and scribes. Some of them you will kill and crucify; and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city, 35that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zachariah son of Barachiah, whom you killed between the sanctuary and the altar. 36Most certainly I tell you, all these things will come upon this generation. 37“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I would have gathered your children together, even as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you would not! 38Behold, your house is left to you desolate. 39For I tell you, you will not see me from now on, until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!’”

Jesus speaks hard words to leaders who honor dead prophets while resembling those who killed them. The warnings are severe, naming a long history of resistance to God's messengers that is about to reach its climax. It would be easy to hear only the sternness. But we must not miss where the passage arrives, because the woes give way to one of the most tender laments in all the Gospels.

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Jesus cries, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you. How often I would have gathered your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you would not. Behind the warnings is a heart aching to protect. The image is startlingly gentle: a mother bird spreading her wings over her young. This is how Christ longs to shelter even a city that keeps turning him away.

Hear both the seriousness and the tenderness. The warnings are real, but they come from One who yearns to gather, not to destroy, whose sorrow is that people will not come to him. That same longing is turned toward you. He still spreads his wings and invites you under their shelter. Do not be among those of whom it is said, you would not. Come to him, and let yourself be gathered.

Lord Jesus, behind your hardest warnings beats a heart that longs to gather, like a hen sheltering her chicks. You grieved over a city that would not come to you. Do not let me be among those who refuse. Draw me under the shelter of your wings, and make me willing to be gathered by the One whose deepest desire is to protect and save. Amen.