Surely the reader of this text must be completely distressed!  It seems to fly in the face of everything the pious follower of Jesus generally fabricates about this man.  We do, you know, manufacture many inventions about Jesus.  He is a gentle, mild-mannered, generous, kindly, even-tempered, loving and lovable, intense (but in a nice way, of course), courteous, compassionate, sympathetic, benevolent man devoted to righting the wrongs of this world. 

He does go through some hard times and his death is a really, really tortured one, but by and large he is the kind or person who knows and understands our human foibles.  He gathers the poor, the sick, the troubled, the outsiders, those who are discarded by society in general  and incorporates them into a nice little family where peace reigns, forgiveness is an everyday experience and all live happily ever after (except for those meanies who don't really catch on to who Jesus is and therefore end up killing him).  But he trumps the whole mess created by his enemies by rising again from the dead!  So there, you enemies!  Put that in your hat and eat it!

Well, perhaps that is a bit overdrawn, but it helps give perspective on what is happening in the text.  The warm, fuzzy Jesus we frequently invent with all the niceties that we fabricate about him stands shattered in our text - and in much of the chapter around the text, the exception being the "do not be anxious" section in verses 22-32.  The chapter is filled with "hard sayings," as they are frequently called, that issue from the lips of our Lord.  We know, of course, how to "tame them down" to make them palatable and to assure ourselves that we are in sync with them.  So we often do not give too much attention to them lest they "mess around" with our pious impressions and pre-suppositions.