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 Here 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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