Palm Sunday has passed: Jesus has entered Jerusalem to shouts of "Hosanna," and now we're getting ready for the Passover feast.
Father David spoke about how we need to walk through the gates with Jesus so that we, too, can taste salvation. How little we need to do to receive the promise of God's everlasting love! Like the prodigal son, all we have to do is take that little step -- to realize that we've strayed -- and God the Father will come running to embrace us while we are still just a speck on the horizon. One little step to follow Jesus through the gates and we will be with him through it all!
When you put it like that, it sounds so easy. But it isn't. It's easy to take that first step through the gates when people are cheering for you, when they're throwing their cloaks and palms in front of your procession. It isn't so easy to walk through those gates when you know everything that's coming after.
Jesus could so easily have stayed outside the city, refused to step forward into a crowd he knew would turn on him so quickly. But knowing all the pain that would follow, he did it anyway.
This Holy Week, that's the same choice we all have to make: to step through the gates into all of it, or to stay outside. To be with Jesus in his glory we have to be with him in his suffering.
He went through it all because of his love for us. In the same way, we have to be willing to make sacrifices in Jesus' name. We, too, must be willing to love Jesus as he loved us. We must be willing to make the hard choices that come from following Jesus -- our Lord who was willing to suffer death, even death on the Cross. Our Lord who was highly exalted because he stepped through those gates, leaving behind him the palm leaves and the cloaks, trampled into the dust by the feet of his donkey and by his followers.
What do the gates of discipleship look like today?
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thanks to anonymous for the update! It is great to be kept up to date on the sermons. Sounds like a good one! Yes it is easy to be a Christian when everyone is supporting you; but we are all called to make those decisions that do not necessarily fit in with the rest of the world's views, and that does lead to some harsh criticism at times BUT staying true to God's purpose, we must not fold! Stay true to the message of unconditional love!
ReplyDeleteWhile listening to Father David, the cliché "no risk, no reward" kept going through my mind. Or if you want to take it to a John Wayne level, no guts, no glory. In this vein, I thought Father David's challenge is very appropriate, and is a wake-up call to our largely spiritually complacent society. The gory, graphic way that Jesus died is an all-too necessary reminder that there is risk to belief and greater risk to evangelism.
ReplyDeletePeople are still dying for their faith around the world today. Millions of Christians died in the "enlightened" 20th century, and more are added to the community of martyrs (rev. 6:9-11) every year.
Yet our only risk it seems is ridicule by an increasingly secular society. The radical part of me would welcome some persecution, as the church has thrived historically in times of crisis.
Jeff A.