Thought for the Week

Most likely, if you are a church-goer, you have just celebrated “Palm Sunday.” I hope you were able to catch some of the enthusiasm demonstrated by the multitudes of people who accompanied Jesus on that Day of Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem. The crowd, as usual contained a vast variety of emotions. There were those who were critics. They could not stand the popularity of Jesus. Jealousy had claimed their hearts. There were the “wonderers.” They did not know what to make of this celebration. Some may have known the Scriptures but did not know how wonderfully Jesus was fulfilling them. Others who had followed Jesus and seen His miracles and heard His teachings were truly celebrating because they had become convinced this was their Messiah/Christ. I want to connect two Scriptures in which Jesus uses a different analogy from what I have been using re: a shepherd and his sheep. They are found in St. Luke in 13:34-35 and 19:41-44. As Jesus was on the way and about to enter Jerusalem with triumph, He pauses to weep over the city. He sees Himself as a hen, Who desperately wants to gather Her chicks under the sheltering safety of Her wings. (Or we could say as a shepherd would gather His sheep and lambs under His protecting rod and staff.) He knows the terrible fate that waits Jerusalem when enemy forces will come and destroy the city and its people. Their sinful rejection of Him will catch up with them and there will be terrible consequences. Jesus so desperately wanted to have people receive Him as their Shepherd; to have them fully surrender their lives to Him and make Him their Lord, their Master, their King. That is the only way to have true joy, in Christ. Today, the Church will remember Maundy Thursday. It commemorates the night Jesus celebrated the Last Passover. For tomorrow Jesus will be the eternal Passover Lamb. He will lay down His life for the salvation of mankind. He will be the Atonement for mankind’s sin. But the great sorrow He feels and the suffering that is His also contains sorrow for the squabbling and bickering of His disciples who were jockeying for places of authority in His future kingdom, for the knowledge that one of His twelve, Judas Iscariot will betray Him to His enemies this very night, and another, Simon Peter, will deny, three times, that he even knows the One he promised to be faithful to until death. His disappointment will also be that His disciples did not watch and pray with Him, in support and encouragement as He faces this great time of testing. His sorrow must have been measureless. Yet, it was likely magnified as He understands the future and sees millions who will reject Him. The church will fail to follow His command to make disciples, to preach the Gospel, to be holy people, living in the world but not living as part of the styles, standards, and systems of the world. When He wept that night, part of His tears were for us who would live in the future. Are we, like His original twelve squabbling, bickering, denying, betraying, failing to obey His commands? Are we lost from The Great Shepherd? His love is for us. I hope His tears of sorrow are not because we have despised and rejected Him. I pray His joy will be full because we have received Him. Have You?