CELEBRATE THE RESURRECTION

“… They approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage on the Mount of Olives. … A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. The crowds that went ahead of him and those that followed shouted, “‘Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!’”

Matthew 21:1, 8-9

Whatan incredible moment! The long-awaited Messiah was making his way into Jerusalem!

People were jubilant, and with good reason, they thought. The people were hungry for deliverance, hungry for change. Their victor had come, so surely a victory would follow. If we were to have asked the oppressed Jews to identify the enemy, they would have shouted in unified chorus: “The Romans!”

The emperors and their agents were easy targets for Jewish anger. And Rome did a great deal to deserve it. People were largely property to them, chattel to be used, leveraged or discarded.

So, when the itinerant miracle-worker entered the holy city, the shouts of “Hosanna” rose from the crowds who believed that freedom was coming. But instead of cleansing the city of its Roman overlords, the first act of Jesus was to head to the Temple to confront greed, and all manner of religious oppression being conducted by the Jewish leaders themselves.

“Jesus entered the Temple and began to drive out all the people buying and selling animals for sacrifice. He knocked over the tables of the money changers and the chairs of those selling doves. He said to them, ‘The Scriptures declare, “My Temple will be called a house of prayer,” but you have turned it into a den of thieves!’ The blind and the lame came to him in the Temple, and he healed them. The leading priests and the teachers of religious law saw these wonderful miracles and … were indignant.”

~ Matthew 21:12-15

What the Jews needed was deliverance from an internal enemy, not an external one. They needed to repent and understand that the promised Messiah wasn’t coming as a victor in the field of politics. No! Isaiah prophesied a Messiah who would come to deliver folks from their real enemy - - sin!

“All of us, like sheep, have strayed away. We have left God’s paths to follow our own. Yet the Lord laid on him the sins of us all … I will give him the honors of a victorious soldier, because he exposed himself to death. He was counted among the rebels. He bore the sins of many and interceded for rebels.”

~ Isaiah 53:6, 15 nlt

“Listen, O heavens! Pay attention, earth! This is what the Lord says: ‘The children I raised and cared for have rebelled against me. Even an ox knows its owner, and a donkey recognizes its master’s care—but Israel doesn’t know its master. My people don’t recognize my care for them. Oh, what a sinful nation they are—loaded down with a burden of guilt. They are evil people, corrupt children who have rejected the Lord. They have despised the Holy One of Israel and turned their backs on him.’”

“‘Come now, let’s settle this,’ says the Lord. ‘Though your sins are like scarlet, I will make them as white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, I will make them as white as wool.’” ~ Isaiah 1:2-4, 18 nlt

Yes, what the Jews needed was a MIRROR. They needed to take a clear look at themselves. But instead of a mirror, what they saw was a MIRAGE. A mirage is something that is believed to be true or real but that is actually false or unreal. Our word mirage comes from the French verb mirer (“to look at”), but a mirage is a false image that might seem real, but is actually a dangerous distraction.

The Messiah they were expecting was an illusion of their own making, a false notion of reality based on what they imagined to be true and important. In fact, their faulty notion of Messiah was beyond an ILLUSION, it was a

DELUSION. They deluded themselves into thinking that the problem was someone else’s fault.

Like the first century Jews, the biggest problem we face isn’t an external enemy that can affect only the body. Our most dangerous enemy can destroy the soul.

Let us not make the same mistake they did. It is true that life is hard, and we are often oppressed by someone else’s misplaced ambitions. But the Triumphal Entry the Lord wants to make isn’t an entry into our politics, our economy, or our cultural problems. Not primarily. We need to welcome JESUS into our own hearts as the champion who defeats sin. Our sin. My sin.

Rev. Max Edwards International General Superintendent