Teaching Tuesday

According to this handy little "Harmony of the Events of Holy Week" Chart, Tuesday was a day of teaching:  teaching on the power of faith in an all-powerful God, teaching on Christ's role as Savior and Messiah, teaching on the Resurrection & the Second Coming, teaching on the Great Commandment, and teaching on how Christ's followers live in this non-Christ-following world.  Like yesterday and the day before, Jesus and His disciples walked from Bethany into Jerusalem and out again.  Something drew Jesus into the city He loved, the city for whom He came to die, the city that would kill Him, again and again and again.

It seems like Jesus was trying to pack in as much as He could in His last week.  Or perhaps He always taught that way, but the week's end so burned the events of their Master's final week into His followers' minds that they remembered far more of these teaching sessions than any other week's.

I just started Walt Wangerin Jr's Ragman (so far it is wonderful), and the part of its invocation struck me as perfect for a Holy Week meditation (especially as a city-dweller):

"...where can I look and I do not see You?

The city?  Hot with human enmity, cold with old mortality, the city?  Busy and fatigued; kissing below back alley stairs, lips as limp as rotten violets; and children cursing like their parents, parents careless; parties for wasted wealth on Saturday night, exhausted Sunday morning; cars and lights and sirens; ointments, rouges, polishes, colognes and coin-- the city?  Turning to the city do I turn from You?

No, my Lord, for You are in the city.  In all the affairs of humankind, You are there.  You were not ashamed to be born of a woman, flesh like hers and mine, troubled as she and I by all the bruises of that flesh.  You emptied Yourself to enter the city, and though Your coming may not make it good, it makes You cry, and there You are."