From the Rectors Desk 8 April 2022
The Lord reigns, he is King!
This weekend we begin the Holy Week celebration, with the commemoration of the triumphant entry into Jerusalem.
As with every liturgical celebration and as with every scripture reading, it is not the recollection of a momentary event, but it is the embracing of a life truth. Palm Sunday speaks to our desire to make Jesus King for our own purposes. It is an acknowledgment that we seek a saviour from our troubles and a deliver from our enemies and we are willing to praise the God who is the Lord over all, the all powerful one, the one who will spare us from our pain and anxiety but are not willing to suffer with Him.
Jesus accepts the praise of the people in fact he says that if the people don’t shout out the stones will. Throughout this lent I have been speaking about the God who rolls the stone away, the stone being the thing that inhibits us from being the person that we want to be in Christ. How often the demons recognised that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the living God before the people did. (Mt 8: 29; Mk 1:24, Lk 4:34). In this statement about the stones, we are reminded that every knee will bow every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. (Phil 2:10,11)
There is Good News in this, the things of this earth that we fall into temptation with, are subject to the Supremacy of God. As a line in one of my favourite songs goes “ My fear will need to face the God I know.” God is bigger than my fear he is bigger than the challenges in my life, he can roll away the pain and suffering that life brings. But the Triumphant entry tells us that God is not going to do these things the way that we expect. Jesus did not enter Jerusalem to receive a worldly crown, that moth and rust could destroy, (Mt 6:19) but to lay down his life and take it up again. To die to self and to be raised in God, to unite with us in the thing that we fear most and conquer it. If Jesus became vulnerable like us in death and overcame death, Jesus can amend all and every aspect of our lives, there is no Sin that he will not carry and conquer for us. But we need to go to calvary with him. We need to accept the journey of the cross, too often we are like the people who wanted Jesus to do it their way, overthrow the Roman Government and establish them as the superior nation. The Hosana’s and the crucify him were shouted by the same people who wanted Jesus to be their King their way. Do not fall into the same temptation this Easter. Your attitude must be the same as Christs, “Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;” (NIV)
This Holy Week let us complete our Lenten journey by going all the way and fully embracing the way of Christ. Foremost amongst our actions must be a recommitment to the Church of God. During the past two years many have fallen away and while remining recipients of the Churches teaching and support, have not participated in the things of the Church. There is a lot that has collapsed in the wake of the Pandemic, and now it is time to rebuild. Now is the time to proclaim Jesus as King and to take our place as His subjects, serving him in the community through the Church and bringing honour to God’s name.
Strengthening the local church through our participation and rededication to the life of the Church is to be our duty and our joy. Recommitting to the body of Christ is an essential part of our journey of salvation. The Church is God’s chosen way of revealing himself to the world. And it is a vulnerable way to do it. Palm Sunday describes the life of the church as a mixture of self-righteousness and sinfulness, a proclamation of Hosana, and a denial of what God is doing in our midst. Every event in Holy week speaks to our interaction with the living God and it is critical that we get into the story and amend our lives as we journey to the resurrection.
My prayer is that this week will fill you with passion for Jesus and that you will recommit your life to the one who lived, who died, and who is Risen.
Palm Sunday 2022
