As we approach Palm Sunday, there is something we should never forget: the discontinuity between what the people in Jerusalem wanted and expected from Jesus as he entered the city and what his actually mission was and why he entered into Jerusalem. In one sense both were true at the same time, but what the people forgot or did not comprehend, was the order of their occurrence.
The triumphant King would not come when, where, and how they expected and fiercely wanted. That will have to wait until his Second Coming, something we, like them, desperately want to see. Like them, we have to wait, much to our chagrin and periodic date setting, all to no avail.
This First Coming was a the Suffering Servant of Isaiah, The sacrificial Lamb of God who would pay for them (and us) give them (and us) the freedom they (and we) truly needed and that is freedom from the debt of sin and our membership (citizenship) in the true Kingdom of God.
The lesson we all need to learn is that God does everything on his timeframe, not ours, no matter how hard we desired it. It is one of the greatest tests of the Christian faith and discipleship: accepting God’s timetable and his path for our life. In the end what we want determines nothing and is one of the hardest lessons we have to learn.
So frequent in my life I have heard people say, “But my God would not act that way.” The only answer to that is harsh, I know, but necessary and that is that if your God IS God, then you can never say that but instead reply as Jesus did in the garden, “Remove this cup from me, yet not my will, but your will be done.” When we pick up our cross to follow Christ as he commanded, we must follow him in this also. We must surrender our will to His will, so that as Paul could say, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives within me.” We like him must put down the “old man” and take up the new creation in Jesus Christ, his life within us. That is the lesson from Palm Sunday we all need to learn. It is one of the hardest lessons there is.
Pray God gives you the strength and willingness to learn it.
