Why Jesus Went to Jerusalem

Jesus and Peter have an argument in Mark's gospel when Jesus tells Peter that he must go to Jerusalem, suffer, and be executed.  Peter tells Jesus not to go.  Jesus rebukes Peter and emphasizes the necessity of his sacrifice in Jerusalem.

Jesus and Peter's dispute, boiled down to its essence, is really a dispute about the relative valuation that they place on life in this world.  Many of those in Jewish culture in Jesus' day did not believe in an afterlife.  If someone held to this belief, this would naturally lead to a relative high valuation of life in this world (i.e. if this life is all that there is, then this life has enormous value and significance).  Similarly, if one believed in the eternity of the soul and that this life was, in contrast, only a fraction of an instant in that eternity, then the way that we perceive the value of this life radically changes.

Today, materialism is fast becoming the prevailing worldview in Western culture; the belief that this physical universe is all that there is, and that we are, literally, our bodies, and that consequently, when our bodies die, that is it.  Materialism, like other ideologies, has a way of finding its way into the belief system of the Church without the Church realizing that it is finding its way in.  For example, we always seem more preoccupied with the state of our physical bodies in Church than our souls; I literally cannot remember the last time that anyone sought prayer for anything besides a physical illness.  In many expressions of Christianity, there is a preoccupation with the accumulation of wealth; even going so far as to suggest that God wants us all to be wealthy.

As always, our example is Jesus.  Seeing through God's eyes, Jesus knew that this life is an instant in our soul's eternity.  Consequently, all that matters in this life is to do what will nurture our souls.  We are eternal spiritual beings having a brief temporary experience in a human vessel.  Our lives should reflect this.