Read: Matthew 22:1-14
You often hear stories of people who know their death is imminent and how they choose to spend their final days. People with terminal illnesses may travel, spend time with family, check items off their bucket list, or impart wisdom to those closest to them. The Last Lecture is perhaps one of the best-known examples of a final speech by a university professor with terminal cancer, later published as a book.
On Holy Tuesday, it seems Jesus is doing the same. He is only days away from a brutal death on the cross, and he knows it. Yet rather than wasting his final days, he steps back into a familiar role: that of a teacher. Perhaps these final parables and teachings (like the one we just read in Matthew) were Jesus’s last lecture, in a way.
When Jesus returns to the temple and later teaches on the Mount of Olives, it becomes clear what is pressing on his heart: the kingdom of Heaven. Through multiple parables about the coming Kingdom, Jesus teaches with the urgency of someone who knows his time is short—and someone whose hope is ultimately in heaven. His teachings show how desperately he wanted others to know that hope as well.
Holy Week reminds us that death is not an if but a when. And when faced with the reality of our mortality, we, too, like Jesus, have a choice. Do we live for ourselves, trying to soak up as much pleasure as we can out of this life? Or will we live as Jesus did in his last days—choosing to make the most of our time, loving and pouring into others? Do we let our mortality draw us deeper into grief or higher toward heaven?
Jesus’s teachings—and the way he lived them out—show us the better way.
Not to skip too far ahead in the story, but on Resurrection Sunday, we see something interesting. In John 20:16, we read about Mary Magdalene’s reaction when she first encounters the risen Jesus: “She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, ‘Rabboni!’ (which means ‘Teacher’).”
Not Savior. Not friend. Not Messiah. Not even Jesus. But Teacher.
In a time when women weren’t really taught, respected, or considered intellectual equals to men, Jesus hadn’t shied away from teaching them. He said, “whoever has ears to hear, let them hear” (Mark 4:9). He taught whoever was willing to listen and learn from him—not just the qualified, the men, the rich, the religious. Perhaps that resonated with Mary. Or perhaps, upon seeing him alive again, she realized his teachings were already coming true.
While we won’t know for certain why she chose that term, we can know that Jesus is still our great Teacher today. He is still teaching us, still showing us how to live, how to serve, and how to make the most of the time we do have on this earth—however long or short it may be.
The question is: are we willing to learn from him?