HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, November 29, 2024 – It’s worth keeping in mind that Jesus was killed by his own people. It wasn’t the occupying Roman forces that wanted Jesus arrested and tried; it was the Jewish elders. It wasn’t Pontius Pilate who called for the death penalty for Jesus; it was the Jewish elders. It wasn’t random Romans who gave false and conflicting evidence at Jesus’ trial; it was the Jewish elders. It was Jesus’ own people who put a target on his back and a price on his head and ultimately had him tortured and killed.

And it was one of his closest disciples who betrayed him to those elders.

We need to keep these facts in mind because Jesus said that the same thing that happened to him will happen to us, and that those who kill us will believe they’re doing God’s work. We can count on being betrayed not by Jews or Muslims or atheists, but by people who call themselves Christians. History bears Jesus’ prophecy out. For the past 2000 years, Christians have hunted down, persecuted, tortured, and murdered countless born-again believers who refused to submit to the dominant Christian authority of the time. For instance, for the better part of the past 1000 years, the Roman Catholic organization, under the auspice of various inquisitions, has made a sport of hunting down and torturing God’s children in gruesome ways, aiming to break their spirit. We’d be naïve to think they’ve stopped doing this just because they say they have.

Jesus predicted that our worst enemies will be those in our own house, meaning members of our extended family or what we think of as our tribe. Recall that Jesus’ own family didn’t initially believe he was the Messiah. The Gospels record an interaction between Jesus and his brother James, with James mocking Jesus for claiming to be a prophet. The Gospels also record a visit that Jesus’ mother and sisters made to Capernaum, planning to bring Jesus back to Nazareth for his own protection. In other words, Jesus’ mother and sisters went to Capernaum with the sole intention of stopping Jesus’ ministry work. And who can forget the momentous occasion of Jesus at the synagogue in Nazareth proclaiming to be the fulfillment of Isaiah’s Messianic prophecy, only to be chased out of town and threatened with death by the same people he’d grown up with. The only reason Jesus lived to tell that tale is because God miraculously rescued him.

The world can be a dangerous place when those who are closest to you in blood and belief want you dead. Like Jesus, we’re not meant to stay here very long or to have a comfortable run of it. After God gives us our mission, he gives us just enough time and resources to carry it out, and then he takes us home. There’s no reason to want to stay on Earth any longer than we need to. Jesus didn’t want to stay here and wasn’t only eager but impatient to be gone. He knew exactly what was waiting for him when he finished the work God gave him to do, and he knew that nothing on Earth was comparable to his heavenly reward.

We, too, should be impatient to be gone. Other than for the Kingdom, there’s nothing of value for us here, only wolves in sheep’s clothing waiting for the signal to betray us.