We’re still in Holy Week, racing toward the cross. Jesus knows it. Sanhedrin leaders are plotting for it. The Romans are uneasy. The disciples are confused. Yet in the midst of everything happening this episode had many laugh out loud moments.

As with the previous episodes of the season, this one is also framed by the opening conversation from Jesus’ Upper Room Discourse. This time most of what he says is taken from John 14. Curiously one of the things onscreen Jesus says is exactly opposite what John 14:17 Jesus says. In the Bible we read Jesus saying of the Holy Spirit, “He lives with you and will be in you.” In this episode Jesus says, “He dwells in you and will be with you.” The key difference is in the tense of the verbs. “Lives” and “dwells” are both acceptable translations of the Greek verb we see in the text. Reading the rest of Jesus’ teaching here in John, seeing the outpouring of the Spirit on Pentecost in Acts, and reading teaching elsewhere in the New Testament, the future tense of the second clause makes more sense. The Holy Spirit is currently with them. In the future, after Jesus’ death and resurrection, the Holy Spirit will be in them. So it looks like the movie got this exactly wrong by having Jesus say the Holy Spirit was currently in them. But then I pulled out my Greek New Testament and saw that there was a textual variant there. What they had Jesus say fits with one of the variants (a variant I haven’t seen used in the main English translations I’ve looked at). Here’s the textual note from the NET Bible:

tc Some early and significant witnesses (P B D* W 1 565 it) have ἐστιν (estin, “he is”) instead of ἔσται (estai, “he will be”) here, while other weighty witnesses (P א A D L Θ Ψ ƒ 33 M as well as several versions and fathers), read the future tense. When one considers transcriptional evidence, ἐστιν is the more difficult reading and better explains the rise of the future tense reading, but it must be noted that both P and D were corrected from the present tense to the future. If ἐστιν were the original reading, one would expect a few manuscripts to be corrected to read the present when they originally read the future, but that is not the case. When one considers what the author would have written, the future is on much stronger ground. The immediate context (both in 14:16 and in the chapter as a whole) points to the future, and the theology of the book regards the advent of the Spirit as a decidedly future event (see, e.g., 7:39 and 16:7). The present tense could have arisen from an error of sight on the part of some scribes or more likely from an error of thought as scribes reflected upon the present role of the Spirit. Although a decision is difficult, the future tense is most likely authentic. For further discussion on this textual problem, see James M. Hamilton, Jr., “He Is with You and He Will Be in You” (Ph.D. diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2003), 213-20.

In a previous episode when Jesus has done something astonishing, something that challenges the status quo, he was asked, “By whose authority do you do these things?” His answer then was, “My own.” The same question and the same answer happen in this episode, this time with reference to his cleansing of the temple. Having not seen that in any scriptural texts, I’ll again say that if I were making the movie I wouldn’t have put those words in his mouth.

Shmuel, confronted with the possibility that when Jesus says, “Tear down this temple and in three days I will raise it up,” he is not threatening the temple but prophesying its destruction, turns to Jeremiah. “Jeremiah,” he says, “was the last person who prophesied the destruction of the temple. See what that led to – they threw him in a pit!” (Paraphrased) I couldn’t what Shmuel thought about Jeremiah’s action – whether he should or shouldn’t have spoken the word of the LORD against the temple. I was also left wondering why such a thought didn’t at least raise the possibility Jesus could be following in the steps of Jeremiah – as a true prophet.

I notice that Jesus doesn’t give the disciples much in the way of a heads up as to what to expect. Sure, he’s already told them several times that he’s going up to Jerusalem, that the leaders of the people will reject him, beat him, kill him, and that he’ll rise on the third day. For all the good it did them at the time, he might as well have been speaking in Chinese. We do see Judas, however. As Bible readers we know where he’s going. Reflecting on Jesus’ confrontation with the leaders of the people, Judas says mournfully, “This week there is a chance for the Messiah to unite all the people.” So far in his eyes, Jesus is blowing that opportunity. It looks like he’s being set up to try to force Jesus’ hand.

At the end of the episode Jesus is on the Mount of Olives. For a brief time a few of his disciples join him and we hear the content of the Olivet Discourse. Then after they’ve left him alone (at his request) he weeps over Jerusalem. He knows what they’re going to do. He knows what they’re missing out on. He knows what’s going to be coming their way. His heart of love is broken for them.

I see Jesus acting that way toward Jerusalem and I wonder if his followers in this age will be willing to have a broken heart for those we reckon as opponents today. It sure looks like we’re much happier with angry, “flip the tables,” proclaim judgment Jesus, than the weeping Jesus.