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Tuesday, April 07, 2009

Palm Sunday

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Then those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting, ‘Hosanna! Blessed is the one whom comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!” Mark 11:9-10

InsuranceHere come Jesus, triumphantly entering Jerusalem. For years he has been toiling in relative obscurity in the Israelite equivalents of Pekin, Lincoln, New Holland and Middletown. But now he is coming to the big town. His arrival is met with fanfare and celebration. The people believe their savior has arrived; and they are both right and spectacularly wrong. They believed that Jesus had come to free them form the oppression of Roman rule; that this modern-day Moses would free them from bondage and slavery at the hand of their Roman overseers. This was not what happened! Jesus did none of these things. He had no harsh words for the Romans, instead he headed straight for the Temple and wrought havoc. It was unexpected.

And so those ancient people fell into the same trap that we all do in worshipping God. They were victims of expectations. They thought Jesus would zig when he zagged; they thought he would save them from Rome but he came to free them from sin. They missed the boat. We do this all the time. We have these set expectations of what it means to follow Jesus.

 

We believe that following Jesus means we have someone to help us, someone to take us to heaven, someone to comfort us. And we are both correct and spectacularly wrong. Jesus did not come upon this earth to be our emotional teddy bear, to be our comfort food! He came to change the very substance of our lives, to free us from the constraints of the earthly world and affix our minds on the kingdom of heaven.

 

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Everytime we eviscerate him by parsing his words and softening his commands we change our expectations of his presence in our lives and in so doing we sin against God. Jesus did not come just to help us, he came to change us. We would be wise to remember this as we shout Hosanna on Sunday.

Prayer: Holy God, please change my life! Help me to see Jesus for who he is, not who I want him to be. Help me to hear your call and listen for your voice in my life. I pray in Jesus’ name.

[text from file received from Phil Blackburn]

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