Jesus continues in full parabolic mode in today’s reading, telling his listeners to be on their guard, ready for the coming end of the current age and the inauguration of the age to come. There’s plenty to get stuck in to here, but as I’ve read the passage again today, something else, something I’d never seen before, has reached out to me: Jesus withdrew.Jesus is,as we’ve seen recently, in a phase of much teaching and ministry. He is busy, seemingly taking every opportunity to declare and evidence the coming of the Kingdom. Anyone who’s undertaken a prolonged spell of public ministry will know how demanding it is, in every aspect of life. It seems that Jesus found it no different, He withdrew, by night, to the Mount of Olives, presumably (and I am presuming here) to rest, refuel, and to communicate with His Father as to what was coming next.
In our lives, whether we are in full time public ministry, as some of us are, or our lives themselves are our ministry (this is true for all of us), where is our Mount of Olives? Where do we go, in the midst of it all, to talk to God? To focus on Him? To hear from Him? To be fed by Him? This doesn’t necessarily need to be in silence, in fact it might well be better if it isn’t. It might not be possible for you to drop everything and disappear up a real or metaphorical hill every night to sit under the stars and talk to God, but maybe all of us need to build in to every day the time to stop what we busy ourselves with, and simply “be” with God. I don’t even mean reading scripture, doing a service or office, or any other form of active stuff necessarily, just being with God. That’s all. Jesus, the man, needed it. As we follow Him, so do we.