Gospel for May 28, 2023 Pentecost Sunday

START WITH SCRIPTURE:
John 7:37-39
CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

Jesus speaks these words at the temple at the conclusion of the Feast of Booths:

If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink! He who believes in me, as the Scripture has said, from within him will flow rivers of living water.

The Feast of Booths (Sukkot in Hebrew, also known as the Feast of Tabernacles, or Tents) is one of the three major Feasts of the Jewish people (Deuteronomy 16:16). These were feasts that required Jewish men to appear in person at the temple and present sacrifices, if at all possible.  These three feasts included:

• The Feast of Unleavened Bread, also known as Passover or Pesach (usually in late March or early April).
• The Feast of Weeks, known as Pentecost (fifty days after Passover).
• The Feast of Booths (in September or October) which included, among other features, the observation of Rosh Hashanah (literally the “Head of the Year,” beginning the Jewish liturgical year) and Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement, which was a day of fasting and repentance).

The Feast of Booths was quite a festive celebration, following five days on the heels of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Families constructed temporary structures out of tree branches and lived in them for about eight days.  In doing so, they remembered the wandering of their ancestors in the wilderness of Sinai after the Exodus from Egypt.

Jesus apparently notices some of the ceremonies that are unique to the Feast of Booths, and makes reference to them as illustrations of his own life and ministry.  For example, one of the features of the Feast of the Tabernacles was a water ceremony.  The priest drew water from the Pool of Siloam and poured it into a silver basin near the altar.

Jesus seems to draw on this ceremony as a visual illustration of himself as the living water that completely satisfies the thirst for God.  Jesus declares that the Scriptures have promised that whoever believes will overflow with living waters:

If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink! He who believes in me, as the Scripture has said, from within him will flow rivers of living water.

There is a parallel with Isaiah 55:1-2, when the prophet quotes Yahweh:

Come, everyone who thirsts, to the waters!
Come, he who has no money, buy, and eat!
Yes, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.

And in Zechariah 14:8 and Ezekiel 47:1, metaphorical waters burst forth from the temple and Jerusalem and overflow the land.  Jesus has applied this same imagery to those who believe in him.

This imagery is more fully explained in the next sentence in John 7:39:

he said this about the Spirit, which those believing in him were to receive.

The Holy Spirit is described as the living fountain that flows into the believer and then outwardly for the blessing of others.

Jesus, we are told, is speaking in anticipation of the coming of the Holy Spirit:

 For the Holy Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus wasn’t yet glorified.

This doesn’t mean that the Holy Spirit doesn’t yet exist.  The Holy Spirit is the eternal God, the Third Person of the Trinity — the Holy Spirit has been operative since the beginning, as we see in Genesis 1, and throughout the Hebrew Bible; and the Holy Spirit has clearly been an active agent in the conception of Jesus and in his life and ministry.

What John refers to is the sequence of chronological events that we find in the ministry of Jesus.  After his resurrection and his return to the Father, the Holy Spirit comes as the manifestation of God’s Spirit in the life of believers and in the church.  At that time, Christians will begin to experience the “fullness” of the Holy Spirit within them, like an inner fountain of water.

APPLY:  

Jesus uses vivid metaphors and images to illustrate his all-sufficiency in our lives.  Earlier in his ministry, Jesus had told the Samaritan woman at the well:

whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never thirst again; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life (John 14:14).

Water is a wonderful metaphor that describes all that Jesus means to our lives — we cannot live without water; water quenches our deepest thirsts; water washes us clean.

And by our faith in him, when we have drunk deeply of his living water, we in turn will become fountains of living water through the power of the Holy Spirit dwelling within us!

RESPOND: 

Living life in the Spirit requires a certain level of balance.  We tend to think of the infilling of the Holy Spirit as an ecstatic, exuberant experience.  But it becomes clear from Scripture that there is also a lot of waiting around!

Jesus tells his disciples to wait until the power of the Spirit has been given to them; and John’s Gospel explains that the coming of the Spirit in fullness would not be accomplished until after Jesus had been glorified.  What this suggests is that the spiritual life isn’t merely about dramatic, kairos events — events that occur in a decisive and opportune moment.   The spiritual life is also about process — the kind of slow, organic growth that Jesus speaks of in so many of his parables (the mustard seed, the vineyard, the wheat and tares, etc.)

Bernard of Clairvaux, the great mystic and Cistercian monk from the 12th century, once wrote that the best preparation for Christian witness was to sit alone and keep silence.  He writes, perhaps inspired by Jesus’ words in John 7:37-38:

If you are wise therefore you will show yourself a reservoir and not a canal.  For a canal pours out as fast as it takes in; but a reservoir waits until it is full before it overflows, and so communicates its surplus…We have all too few such reservoirs in the Church at present, though we have canals in plenty…they (canals) desire to pour out when they themselves are not yet inpoured; they are readier to speak than to listen, eager to teach that which they do not know…Let the reservoir of which we spoke just now take pattern from the spring; the spring does not form a stream or spread into a lake until it is brimful.
[Selections from the Writings of Bernard of Clairvaux, Living Selections from the Great Devotional Classics, Upper Room 1961.]

Lord, I pray that I may be a reservoir of your living water, inpoured with your Spirit.  Then, may your Spirit be poured out from me into the lives of others. Amen.

PHOTOS:
"Living Water" by KLMP is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license.

Gospel for April 2, 2023 (Liturgy of the Palms)

Note from Celeste:

Before we look at today’s lectionary reading, I’d like to draw your attention to my Holy Week Bible Study book.

Go and Find a Donkey is the latest installment of the Choose This Day Multiple Choice Bible Studies series.

The daily devotionals take 10-15 minutes and include:

• Scripture passage (World English Bible)
• Fun, entertaining multiple choice questions focused directly on the Scripture passage
• Short meditation that can be used as a discussion starter.

Use them on the suggested dates, or skip around.  Designed to be used during Holy Week, this nine-day Bible study takes you from Palm Sunday through Easter Monday.

Use this book personally during a coffee break or with the family in the car or at the breakfast table.

Order Go and Find a Donkey  today to prepare your family for this year’s Easter season!
CLICK HERE for Amazon’s Kindle book of Go and Find a Donkey.
CLICK HERE for Amazon’s Paperback of Go and Find a Donkey.

AND NOW, BACK TO TODAY’S LECTIONARY READING:

Fresco in the Parish Church of Zirl, Austria.

START WITH SCRIPTURE:
Matthew 21:1-11
CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

Jesus approaches the climax of his earthly ministry.  He has been moving inexorably and deliberately toward Jerusalem.  His pilgrimage there coincides with the annual feast of the Passover, but this week’s events will be the setting for a new “Act” in the Drama of Salvation.

Jesus and his disciples are coming into Jerusalem from the east.  Bethsphage is a village on the east slope of the Mount of Olives not far from Bethany where Jesus’ friends Lazarus, Mary and Martha live.  Bethsphage is roughly two miles from Jerusalem.

It is in Bethsphage that Jesus sends two disciples to find a donkey and her colt tied.  Has he made prior arrangements for these animals, or does he have supernatural insight?  In any event, the “password” to be used by his disciples if anyone objects is direct:

If anyone says anything to you, you shall say, ‘The Lord needs them,’ and immediately he will send them.

One thing is clear — this is a prophetic act.  Jesus knows that when he rides into Jerusalem, it is a conscious fulfillment of Zechariah 9:9:

Tell the daughter of Zion,
behold, your King comes to you,
humble, and riding on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

In one sense this is a religious act — but it is also a political statement.  When he rides into Jerusalem on the back of the donkey, he is claiming to be King — Messiah.  This is a challenge to the religious establishment in Jerusalem.  The priests and Pharisees will also present his claim to be King to Governor Pilate as a threat to the Roman military jurisdiction.

The multitude — no doubt aware of the rumors of Jesus’ miracles in Galilee and near Jerusalem — are immediately caught up in a fever of expectation.

A very great multitude spread their clothes on the road. Others cut branches from the trees, and spread them on the road.

Waving branches was a familiar practice during the Feast of Booths, which occurs in the autumn (cf. Leviticus 23:39-43). During this time, Israel was to dwell in tents (booths) made of branches in order to remember that they had been wanderers in the wilderness after their deliverance from slavery in Egypt.  But this is Passover, celebrated in the spring.  Why does the crowd wave them now?

One speculation leads us back to the prophet Zechariah, particularly his apocalyptic oracles.  In Zechariah 14, the prophet envisions a time when Yahweh will triumph over the nations that oppress Israel.  The prophecy describes Yahweh standing on the Mount of Olives to the east of Jerusalem, and the Mount of Olives itself is split by an earthquake. But ultimately every nation that remains will pay homage and tribute to Jerusalem:

 It will happen that everyone who is left of all the nations that came against Jerusalem will go up from year to year to worship the King, Yahweh of Armies, and to keep the feast of tents (Zechariah 14:16).

It may well be that when the more Biblically literate members of the crowds that day in Jerusalem saw Jesus riding on a donkey, they began to put two and two together.  If Jesus was the Messiah, then the time may have come for the Messianic celebration of the Feast of Booths!  And once a few people broke off the branches to wave, it became contagious with the rest of the crowd.

This seems confirmed when the crowd begins to shout:

Hosanna to the son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!

Hosanna may be interpreted save us now! This is a prayer for help that might be reserved for the Messiah of God, who comes in the name of the Lord.  But the real confirmation is in calling Jesus son of David.  David’s royal dynasty was the house of Judah, of which Jesus was a descendant.  And of course David’s royal line was expected to return to power, as Yahweh had promised David nearly 1000 years earlier:

Your house and your kingdom will be made sure forever before you. Your throne will be established forever (2 Samuel 7:16).

This is not merely a religious promise — this is unmistakably a political statement.  The Messiah was to come as a King and re-establish David’s kingdom.

And yet again, someone knowledgeable in the Scriptures quotes a verse from Psalm 118:26 that becomes a catchphrase for the crowd:

Blessed is he who comes in Yahweh’s name!

They may have missed the poignancy of their quote from Psalm 118, which describes the suffering and near-death of the narrator of the Psalm at the hand of the nations. And this Psalm also speaks of the corner stone, which becomes a central symbol of Jesus and his ministry:

The stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner (Psalm 118:22).

All of the excitement of Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem stirs up the city.  The news of him spreads to those who haven’t heard yet, and when they ask who he is, the crowd identifies him:

This is the prophet, Jesus, from Nazareth of Galilee.

APPLY:  

The Triumphant Entry into Jerusalem seems to be a very deliberately planned event.  Jesus leaves nothing to chance.  The donkey and her colt are requisitioned.  He rides through the gates into the city in conscious fulfillment of prophecy. And the people in the crowd who are “in the know” get it.  They are hoping for the Messiah, the Son of David, and they greet Jesus as their King who will deliver them.

Perhaps what they miss is the breadth of Jesus’ mission of salvation.  He has come not merely to relieve the oppression of the Jews by Rome.  He has come to release all nations from the oppression of sin and death.

If only they had paid attention to the rest of Zechariah’s oracle.  In Zechariah 9:9, the prophet sees the righteous King offering salvation:

lowly, and riding on a donkey,
even on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

But in the very next verse, the scope of salvation becomes global:

I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim,
and the horse from Jerusalem;
and the battle bow will be cut off;
and he will speak peace to the nations:
and his dominion will be from sea to sea,
and from the River to the ends of the earth (Zechariah 9:10).

To be sure, Zechariah’s prophecy has its share of blood and violence against Judah’s oppressors, but the most hopeful vision is peace and even salvation for all nations.

In order to interpret this symbolic, dramatic act of Jesus properly, we must follow him through the rest of the week — to the cross and the empty tomb.  And then, as if fulfilling the prophesy of Zechariah, we must hear his Great Commission to the disciples at the end of Matthew’s Gospel:

“All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I commanded you. Behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen (Matthew 28:18-20).

RESPOND: 

I remember well when I was a kid looking forward to Palm Sunday, when the ushers would hand out palm branches and we got to wave them and shout out loud during church.  I thought that was really great fun.

And I also remember preachers telling us that Jesus wasn’t a “political” figure, but a “spiritual” one.  And I bought it because of course if Jesus was a King, he would probably have come into Jerusalem on a tank, or at least in a chariot drawn by white stallions.

But now I think I understand that Jesus is both a political and a spiritual Messiah.

Spiritually, of course, he delivers us from the power of sin and its lethal consequences through his own death; and through his resurrection he gives us new birth and abundant life.

Nevertheless, I have come to understand that Jesus is also a political Messiah in the best sense possible.  He came to announce that the Kingdom of God was near, and that it was being inaugurated.  It was beginning to grow even then, like the mustard seed that begins as a tiny thing and then grows into a great tree (Matthew 13:31-32).  And the final fulfillment of that Kingdom is drawing ever nearer, when God’s will on earth is truly realized, just as we have learned to pray every Sunday:

Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven (Matthew 6:10).

Aren’t the promises of God’s Kingdom the same promises that earthly kings and politicians would like to guarantee us?  Freedom from oppression, from hunger, from suffering?  These “freedoms” and much, much more!  Except that the promises of our King will be fulfilled forever.  As the angels proclaim from heaven in Revelation:

The kingdom of the world has become the Kingdom of our Lord, and of his Christ. He will reign forever and ever! (Revelation 11:15).

That is a King and a Kingdom I would vote for!

Lord, you are triumphant over sin, death, the devil, oppression, hunger and suffering.  But I do not lose sight of what your triumph cost you — your own suffering and death. I do look forward to the day when we shall no longer shout “Hosanna!” but we shall wave heavenly palm branches and shout “Salvation be to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” (from Revelation 7:10).  Amen. 

PHOTO:
“Zirl Parrish Church-Jesus entering Jerusalem 1” by Flying Pharmacist is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

Gospel for May 31, 2020 Pentecost Sunday

START WITH SCRIPTURE:
John 7:37-39
CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

Jesus speaks these words at the temple at the conclusion of the Feast of Booths:

If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink! He who believes in me, as the Scripture has said, from within him will flow rivers of living water.

The Feast of Booths (Sukkot in Hebrew, also known as the Feast of Tabernacles, or Tents) is one of the three major Feasts of the Jewish people (Deuteronomy 16:16). These were feasts that required Jewish men to appear in person at the temple and present sacrifices, if at all possible.  These three feasts included:

• The Feast of Unleavened Bread, also known as Passover or Pesach (usually in late March or early April).
• The Feast of Weeks, known as Pentecost (fifty days after Passover).
• The Feast of Booths (in September or October) which included, among other features, the observation of Rosh Hashanah (literally the “Head of the Year,” beginning the Jewish liturgical year) and Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement, which was a day of fasting and repentance).

The Feast of Booths was quite a festive celebration, following five days on the heels of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Families constructed temporary structures out of tree branches and lived in them for about eight days.  In doing so, they remembered the wandering of their ancestors in the wilderness of Sinai after the Exodus from Egypt.

Jesus apparently notices some of the ceremonies that are unique to the Feast of Booths, and makes reference to them as illustrations of his own life and ministry.  For example, one of the features of the Feast of the Tabernacles was a water ceremony.  The priest drew water from the Pool of Siloam and poured it into a silver basin near the altar.

Jesus seems to draw on this ceremony as a visual illustration of himself  as the living water that completely satisfies the thirst for God.  Jesus declares that the Scriptures have promised that whoever believes will overflow with living waters:

If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink! He who believes in me, as the Scripture has said, from within him will flow rivers of living water.

There is a parallel with Isaiah 55:1-2, when the prophet quotes Yahweh:

Come, everyone who thirsts, to the waters!
Come, he who has no money, buy, and eat!
Yes, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.

And in Zechariah 14:8 and Ezekiel 47:1, metaphorical waters burst forth from the temple and Jerusalem and overflow the land.  Jesus has applied this same imagery to those who believe in him.

This imagery is more fully explained in the next sentence in John 7:39:

he said this about the Spirit, which those believing in him were to receive.

The Holy Spirit is described as the living fountain that flows into the believer and then outwardly for the blessing of others.

Jesus, we are told, is speaking in anticipation of the coming of the Holy Spirit:

 For the Holy Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus wasn’t yet glorified.

This doesn’t mean that the Holy Spirit doesn’t yet exist.  The Holy Spirit is the eternal God, the Third Person of the Trinity — the Holy Spirit has been operative since the beginning, as we see in Genesis 1, and throughout the Hebrew Bible; and the Holy Spirit has clearly been an active agent in the conception of Jesus and in his life and ministry.

What John refers to is the sequence of chronological events that we find in the ministry of Jesus.  After his resurrection and his return to the Father, the Holy Spirit comes as the manifestation of God’s Spirit in the life of believers and in the church.  At that time, Christians will begin to experience the “fullness” of the Holy Spirit within them, like an inner fountain of water.

APPLY:  

Jesus uses vivid metaphors and images to illustrate his all-sufficiency in our lives.  Earlier in his ministry, Jesus had told the Samaritan woman at the well:

whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never thirst again; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life (John 14:14).

Water is a wonderful metaphor that describes all that Jesus means to our lives — we cannot live without water; water quenches our deepest thirsts; water washes us clean.

And by our faith in him, when we have drunk deeply of his living water, we in turn will become fountains of living water through the power of the Holy Spirit dwelling within us!

RESPOND: 

Living life in the Spirit requires a certain level of balance.  We tend to think of the infilling of the Holy Spirit as an ecstatic, exuberant experience.  But it becomes clear from Scripture that there is also a lot of waiting around!

Jesus tells his disciples to wait until the power of the Spirit has been given to them; and John’s Gospel explains that the coming of the Spirit in fullness would not be accomplished until after Jesus had been glorified.  What this suggests is that the spiritual life isn’t merely about dramatic, kairos events — events that occur in a decisive and opportune moment.   The spiritual life is also about process — the kind of slow, organic growth that Jesus speaks of in so many of his parables (the mustard seed, the vineyard, the wheat and tares, etc.)

Bernard of Clairvaux, the great mystic and Cistercian monk from the 12th century, once wrote that the best preparation for Christian witness was to sit alone and keep silence.  He writes, perhaps inspired by Jesus’ words in John 7:37-38:

If you are wise therefore you will show yourself a reservoir and not a canal.  For a canal pours out as fast as it takes in; but a reservoir waits until it is full before it overflows, and so communicates its surplus…We have all too few such reservoirs in the Church at present, though we have canals in plenty….they (canals) desire to pour out when they themselves are not yet inpoured; they are readier to speak than to listen, eager to teach that which they do not know….Let the reservoir of which we spoke just now take pattern from the spring; the spring does not form a stream or spread into a lake until it is brimful.
[Selections from the Writings of Bernard of Clairvaux, Living Selections from the Great Devotional Classics, Upper Room 1961.]

Lord, I pray that I may be a reservoir of your living water, inpoured with your Spirit.  Then, may your Spirit be poured out from me into the lives of others. Amen.

PHOTOS:
"Living Water" by KLMP is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license.

Gospel for April 5, 2020 (Liturgy of the Palms)

Note from Celeste:

Before we look at today’s lectionary reading, I’d like to draw your attention to my Holy Week Bible Study book.

Go and Find a Donkey is the latest installment of the Choose This Day Multiple Choice Bible Studies series.

The daily devotionals take 10-15 minutes and include:

• Scripture passage (World English Bible)
• Fun, entertaining multiple choice questions focused directly on the Scripture passage
• Short meditation that can be used as a discussion starter.

Use them on the suggested dates, or skip around.  Designed to be used during Holy Week, this nine-day Bible study takes you from Palm Sunday through Easter Monday.

Use this book personally during a coffee break or with the family in the car or at the breakfast table.

Order Go and Find a Donkey  today to prepare your family for this year’s Easter season!
CLICK HERE for Amazon’s Kindle book of Go and Find a Donkey.
CLICK HERE for Amazon’s Paperback of Go and Find a Donkey.

AND NOW, BACK TO TODAY’S LECTIONARY READING:

Fresco in the Parish Church of Zirl, Austria.

START WITH SCRIPTURE:
Matthew 21:1-11
CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

Jesus approaches the climax of his earthly ministry.  He has been moving inexorably and deliberately toward Jerusalem.  His pilgrimage there coincides with the annual feast of the Passover, but this week’s events will be the setting for a new “Act” in the Drama of Salvation.

Jesus and his disciples are coming into Jerusalem from the east.  Bethsphage is a village on the east slope of the Mount of Olives not far from Bethany where Jesus’ friends Lazarus, Mary and Martha live.  Bethsphage is roughly two miles from Jerusalem.

It is in Bethsphage that Jesus sends two disciples to find a donkey and her colt tied.  Has he made prior arrangements for these animals, or does he have supernatural insight?  In any event, the “password” to be used by his disciples if anyone objects is direct:

If anyone says anything to you, you shall say, ‘The Lord needs them,’ and immediately he will send them.

One thing is clear — this is a prophetic act.  Jesus knows that when he rides into Jerusalem, it is a conscious fulfillment of Zechariah 9:9:

Tell the daughter of Zion,
behold, your King comes to you,
humble, and riding on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

In one sense this is a religious act — but it is also a political statement.  When he rides into Jerusalem on the back of the donkey, he is claiming to be King — Messiah.  This is a challenge to the religious establishment in Jerusalem.  The priests and Pharisees will also present his claim to be King to Governor Pilate as a threat to the Roman military jurisdiction.

The multitude — no doubt aware of the rumors of Jesus’ miracles in Galilee and near Jerusalem — are immediately caught up in a fever of expectation.

A very great multitude spread their clothes on the road. Others cut branches from the trees, and spread them on the road.

Waving branches was a familiar practice during the Feast of Booths, which occurs in the autumn (cf. Leviticus 23:39-43). During this time, Israel was to dwell in tents (booths) made of branches in order to remember that they had been wanderers in the wilderness after their deliverance from slavery in Egypt.  But this is Passover, celebrated in the spring.  Why does the crowd wave them now?

One speculation leads us back to the prophet Zechariah, particularly his apocalyptic oracles.  In Zechariah 14, the prophet envisions a time when Yahweh will triumph over the nations that oppress Israel.  The prophecy describes Yahweh standing on the Mount of Olives to the east of Jerusalem, and the Mount of Olives itself is split by an earthquake. But ultimately every nation that remains will pay homage and tribute to Jerusalem:

 It will happen that everyone who is left of all the nations that came against Jerusalem will go up from year to year to worship the King, Yahweh of Armies, and to keep the feast of tents (Zechariah 14:16).

It may well be that when the more Biblically literate members of the crowds that day in Jerusalem saw Jesus riding on a donkey, they began to put two and two together.  If Jesus was the Messiah, then the time may have come for the Messianic celebration of the Feast of Booths!  And once a few people broke off the branches to wave, it became contagious with the rest of the crowd.

This seems confirmed when the crowd begins to shout:

Hosanna to the son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!

Hosanna may be interpreted save us now! This is a prayer for help that might be reserved for the Messiah of God, who comes in the name of the Lord.  But the real confirmation is in calling Jesus son of David.  David’s royal dynasty was the house of Judah, of which Jesus was a descendant.  And of course David’s royal line was expected to return to power, as Yahweh had promised David nearly 1000 years earlier:

Your house and your kingdom will be made sure forever before you. Your throne will be established forever (2 Samuel 7:16).

This is not merely a religious promise — this is unmistakably a political statement.  The Messiah was to come as a King and re-establish David’s kingdom.

And yet again, someone knowledgeable in the Scriptures quotes a verse from Psalm 118:26 that becomes a catchphrase for the crowd:

Blessed is he who comes in Yahweh’s name!

They may have missed the poignancy of their quote from Psalm 118, which describes the suffering and near-death of the narrator of the Psalm at the hand of the nations. And this Psalm also speaks of the corner stone, which becomes a central symbol of Jesus and his ministry:

The stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner (Psalm 118:22).

All of the excitement of Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem stirs up the city.  The news of him spreads to those who haven’t heard yet, and when they ask who he is, the crowd identifies him:

This is the prophet, Jesus, from Nazareth of Galilee.

APPLY:  

The Triumphant Entry into Jerusalem seems to be a very deliberately planned event.  Jesus leaves nothing to chance.  The donkey and her colt are requisitioned.  He rides through the gates into the city in conscious fulfillment of prophecy. And the people in the crowd who are “in the know” get it.  They are hoping for the Messiah, the Son of David, and they greet Jesus as their King who will deliver them.

Perhaps what they miss is the breadth of Jesus’ mission of salvation.  He has come not merely to relieve the oppression of the Jews by Rome.  He has come to release all  nations from the oppression of sin and death.

If only they had paid attention to the rest of  Zechariah’s oracle.  In Zechariah 9:9, the prophet sees the righteous King offering salvation:

lowly, and riding on a donkey,
even on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

But in the very next verse, the scope of salvation becomes global:

I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim,
and the horse from Jerusalem;
and the battle bow will be cut off;
and he will speak peace to the nations:
and his dominion will be from sea to sea,
and from the River to the ends of the earth (Zechariah 9:10).

To be sure, Zechariah’s prophecy has its share of blood and violence against Judah’s oppressors, but the most hopeful vision is peace and even salvation for all nations.

In order to interpret this symbolic, dramatic act of Jesus properly, we must follow him through the rest of the week  — to the cross and the empty tomb.  And then, as if fulfilling the prophesy of Zechariah, we must hear his Great Commission to the disciples at the end of Matthew’s Gospel:

“All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,  teaching them to observe all things that I commanded you. Behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen (Matthew 28:18-20).

RESPOND: 

I remember well when I was  a kid looking forward to Palm Sunday, when the ushers would hand out palm branches and we got to wave them and shout out loud during church.  I thought that was really great fun.

And I also remember preachers telling us that Jesus wasn’t a “political” figure, but a “spiritual” one.  And I bought it because of course if Jesus was a King, he would probably have come into Jerusalem on a tank, or at least in a chariot drawn by white stallions.

But now I think I understand that Jesus is both a political and a spiritual Messiah.

Spiritually, of course, he delivers us from the power of sin and its lethal consequences through his own death; and through his resurrection he gives us new birth and abundant life.

Nevertheless, I have come to understand that Jesus is also a political Messiah in the best sense possible.  He came to announce that the Kingdom of God was near, and that it was being inaugurated.  It was beginning to grow even then, like the mustard seed that begins as a tiny thing and then grows into a great tree (Matthew 13:31-32).  And the final fulfillment of that Kingdom is drawing ever nearer, when God’s will on earth is truly realized, just as we have learned to pray every Sunday:

Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven (Matthew 6:10).

Aren’t the promises of God’s Kingdom the same promises that earthly kings and politicians would like to guarantee us?  Freedom from oppression, from hunger, from suffering?  These “freedoms” and much, much more!  Except that the promises of our King will be fulfilled forever.  As the angels proclaim from heaven in Revelation:

The kingdom of the world has become the Kingdom of our Lord, and of his Christ. He will reign forever and ever! (Revelation 11:15).

That is a King and a Kingdom I would vote for!

Lord, you are triumphant over sin, death, the devil, oppression, hunger and suffering.  But I do not lose sight of what your triumph cost you — your own suffering and death. I do look forward to the day when we shall no longer shout “Hosanna!” but we shall wave heavenly palm branches and shout “Salvation be to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” (from Revelation 7:10).  Amen. 

PHOTO:
“Zirl Parrish Church-Jesus entering Jerusalem 1” by Flying Pharmacist is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

Gospel for June 4, 2017

START WITH SCRIPTURE:

John 7:37-39

CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

Jesus speaks these words at the temple at the conclusion of the Feast of Booths:

If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink! He who believes in me, as the Scripture has said, from within him will flow rivers of living water.

The Feast of Booths (Sukkot in Hebrew, also known as the Feast of Tabernacles, or Tents) is one of the three major Feasts of the Jewish people (Deuteronomy 16:16). These were feasts that required Jewish men to appear in person at the temple and present sacrifices, if at all possible.  These three feasts included:

• The Feast of Unleavened Bread, also known as Passover or Pesach (usually in late March or early April).
• The Feast of Weeks, known as Pentecost (fifty days after Passover).
• The Feast of Booths (in September or October) which included, among other features, the observation of Rosh Hashanah (literally the “Head of the Year,” beginning the Jewish liturgical year) and Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement, which was a day of fasting and repentance).

The Feast of Booths was quite a festive celebration, following five days on the heels of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Families constructed temporary structures out of tree branches and lived in them for about eight days.  In doing so, they remembered the wandering of their ancestors in the wilderness of Sinai after the Exodus from Egypt.

Jesus apparently notices some of the ceremonies that are unique to the Feast of Booths, and makes reference to them as illustrations of his own life and ministry.  For example, one of the features of the Feast of the Tabernacles was a water ceremony.  The priest drew water from the Pool of Siloam and poured it into a silver basin near the altar.

Jesus seems to draw on this ceremony as a visual illustration of himself  as the living water that completely satisfies the thirst for God.  Jesus declares that the Scriptures have promised that whoever believes will overflow with living waters:

If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink! He who believes in me, as the Scripture has said, from within him will flow rivers of living water.

There is a parallel with Isaiah 55:1-2, when the prophet quotes Yahweh:

Come, everyone who thirsts, to the waters!
Come, he who has no money, buy, and eat!
Yes, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.

And in Zechariah 14:8 and Ezekiel 47:1, metaphorical waters burst forth from the temple and Jerusalem and overflow the land.  Jesus has applied this same imagery to those who believe in him.

This imagery is more fully explained in the next sentence in John 7:39:

he said this about the Spirit, which those believing in him were to receive.

The Holy Spirit is described as the living fountain that flows into the believer and then outwardly for the blessing of others.

Jesus, we are told, is speaking in anticipation of the coming of the Holy Spirit:

 For the Holy Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus wasn’t yet glorified.

This doesn’t mean that the Holy Spirit doesn’t yet exist.  The Holy Spirit is the eternal God, the Third Person of the Trinity — the Holy Spirit has been operative since the beginning, as we see in Genesis 1, and throughout the Hebrew Bible; and the Holy Spirit has clearly been an active agent in the conception of Jesus and in his life and ministry.

What John refers to is the sequence of chronological events that we find in the ministry of Jesus.  After his resurrection and his return to the Father, the Holy Spirit comes as the manifestation of God’s Spirit in the life of believers and in the church.  At that time, Christians will begin to experience the “fullness” of the Holy Spirit within them, like an inner fountain of water.

APPLY:  

Jesus uses vivid metaphors and images to illustrate his all-sufficiency in our lives.  Earlier in his ministry, Jesus had told the Samaritan woman at the well:

whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never thirst again; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life (John 14:14).

Water is a wonderful metaphor that describes all that Jesus means to our lives — we cannot live without water; water quenches our deepest thirsts; water washes us clean.

And by our faith in him, when we have drunk deeply of his living water, we in turn will become fountains of living water through the power of the Holy Spirit dwelling within us!

RESPOND: 

Living life in the Spirit requires a certain level of balance.  We tend to think of the infilling of the Holy Spirit as an ecstatic, exuberant experience.  But it becomes clear from Scripture that there is also a lot of waiting around!

Jesus tells his disciples to wait until the power of the Spirit has been given to them; and John’s Gospel explains that the coming of the Spirit in fullness would not be accomplished until after Jesus had been glorified.  What this suggests is that the spiritual life isn’t merely about dramatic, kairos events — events that occur in a decisive and opportune moment.   The spiritual life is also about process — the kind of slow, organic growth that Jesus speaks of in so many of his parables (the mustard seed, the vineyard, the wheat and tares, etc.)

Bernard of Clairvaux, the great mystic and Cistercian monk from the 12th century, once wrote that the best preparation for Christian witness was to sit alone and keep silence.  He writes, perhaps inspired by Jesus’ words in John 7:37-38:

If you are wise therefore you will show yourself a reservoir and not a canal.  For a canal pours out as fast as it takes in; but a reservoir waits until it is full before it overflows, and so communicates its surplus…We have all too few such reservoirs in the Church at present, though we have canals in plenty….they (canals) desire to pour out when they themselves are not yet inpoured; they are readier to speak than to listen, eager to teach that which they do not know….Let the reservoir of which we spoke just now take pattern from the spring; the spring does not form a stream or spread into a lake until it is brimful.
[Selections from the Writings of Bernard of Clairvaux, Living Selections from the Great Devotional Classics, Upper Room 1961.]

Lord, I pray that I may be a reservoir of your living water, inpoured with your Spirit.  Then, may your Spirit be poured out from me into the lives of others. Amen.

PHOTOS:
"Living Water" by KLMP is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license.

Gospel for April 9, 2017 (Liturgy of the Palms)

Fresco in the Parish Church of Zirl, Austria.

START WITH SCRIPTURE:

Matthew 21:1-11

CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

Jesus approaches the climax of his earthly ministry.  He has been moving inexorably and deliberately toward Jerusalem.  His pilgrimage there coincides with the annual feast of the Passover, but this week’s events will be the setting for a new “Act” in the Drama of Salvation.

Jesus and his disciples are coming into Jerusalem from the east.  Bethphage is a village on the east slope of the Mount of Olives not far from Bethany where Jesus’ friends Lazarus, Mary and Martha live.  Bethphage is roughly two miles from Jerusalem.

It is in Bethphage that Jesus sends two disciples to find a donkey and her colt tied.  Has he made prior arrangements for these animals, or does he have supernatural insight?  In any event, the “password” to be used by his disciples if anyone objects is direct:

If anyone says anything to you, you shall say, ‘The Lord needs them,’ and immediately he will send them.

One thing is clear — this is a prophetic act.  Jesus knows that when he rides into Jerusalem, it is a conscious fulfillment of Zechariah 9:9:

Tell the daughter of Zion,
behold, your King comes to you,
humble, and riding on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

In one sense this is a religious act — but it is also a political statement.  When he rides into Jerusalem on the back of the donkey, he is claiming to be King — Messiah.  This is a challenge to the religious establishment in Jerusalem.  The priests and Pharisees will also present his claim to be King to Governor Pilate as a threat to the Roman military jurisdiction.

The multitude, no doubt aware of the rumors of Jesus’ miracles in Galilee and near Jerusalem, are immediately caught up in a fever of expectation.

A very great multitude spread their clothes on the road. Others cut branches from the trees, and spread them on the road.

Waving branches was a familiar practice during the Feast of Booths, which occurs in the autumn(cf. Leviticus 23:39-43). During this time, Israel was to dwell in tents (booths) made of branches in order to remember that they had been wanderers in the wilderness after their deliverance from slavery in Egypt.  But this is Passover, celebrated in the spring.  Why does the crowd wave them now?

One speculation leads us back to the prophet Zechariah, particularly his apocalyptic oracles.  In Zechariah 14, the prophet envisions a time when Yahweh will triumph over the nations that oppress Israel.  The prophecy describes Yahweh standing on the Mount of Olives to the east of Jerusalem, and the Mount of Olives itself is split by an earthquake. But ultimately every nation that remains will pay homage and tribute to Jerusalem:

 It will happen that everyone who is left of all the nations that came against Jerusalem will go up from year to year to worship the King, Yahweh of Armies, and to keep the feast of tents (Zechariah 14:16).

It may well be that when the more Biblically literate members of the crowds that day in Jerusalem saw Jesus riding on a donkey, they began to put two and two together.  If Jesus was the Messiah, then the time may have come for the Messianic celebration of the Feast of Booths!  And once a few people broke off the branches to wave, it became contagious with the rest of the crowd.

This seems confirmed when the crowd begins to shout:

Hosanna to the son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!

Hosanna may be interpreted save us now! This is a prayer for help that might be reserved for the Messiah of God, who comes in the name of the Lord.  But the real confirmation is in calling Jesus son of David.  David’s royal dynasty was the house of Judah, of which Jesus was a descendent.  And of course David’s royal line was expected to return to power, as Yahweh had promised David nearly 1000 years earlier:

Your house and your kingdom will be made sure forever before you. Your throne will be established forever (2 Samuel 7:16).

This is not merely a religious promise — this is unmistakeably a political statement.  The Messiah was to come as a King and re-establish David’s kingdom.

And yet again, someone knowledgeable in the Scriptures quotes a verse from Psalm 118:26 that becomes a catchphrase for the crowd:

Blessed is he who comes in Yahweh’s name!

They may have missed the poignancy of their quote from Psalm 118, which describes the suffering and near-death of the narrator of the Psalm at the hand of the nations. And this Psalm also speaks of the corner stone, which becomes a central symbol of Jesus and his ministry:

The stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner (Psalm 118:22).

All of the excitement of Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem stirs up the city.  The news of him spreads to those who haven’t heard yet, and when they ask who he is, the crowd identifies him:

This is the prophet, Jesus, from Nazareth of Galilee.

APPLY:  

The Triumphant Entry into Jerusalem seems to be a very deliberately planned event.  Jesus leaves nothing to chance.  The donkey and her colt are requisitioned.  He rides through the gates into the city in conscious fulfillment of prophecy. And the people in the crowd who are “in the know” get it.  They are hoping for the Messiah, the Son of David, and they greet Jesus as their King who will deliver them.

Perhaps what they miss is the breadth of Jesus’ mission of salvation.  He has come not merely to relieve the oppression of the Jews by Rome.  He has come to release all  nations from the oppression of sin and death.

If only they had paid attention to the rest of  Zechariah’s oracle.  In Zechariah 9:9, the prophet sees the righteous King offering salvation:

lowly, and riding on a donkey,
even on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

But in the very next verse, the scope of salvation becomes global:

I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim,
and the horse from Jerusalem;
and the battle bow will be cut off;
and he will speak peace to the nations:
and his dominion will be from sea to sea,
and from the River to the ends of the earth (Zechariah 9:10).

To be sure, Zechariah’s prophecy has its share of blood and violence against Judah’s oppressors, but the most hopeful vision is peace and even salvation for all nations.

In order to interpret this symbolic, dramatic act of Jesus properly, we must follow him through the rest of the week  — to the cross and the empty tomb.  And then, as if fulfilling the prophesy of Zechariah, we must hear his Great Commission to the disciples at the end of Matthew’s Gospel:

“All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,  teaching them to observe all things that I commanded you. Behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen (Matthew 28:18-20).

RESPOND: 

I remember well when I was  a kid looking forward to Palm Sunday, when the ushers would hand out palm branches and we got to wave them and shout out loud during church.  I thought that was really great fun.

And I also remember preachers telling us that Jesus wasn’t a “political” figure, but a “spiritual” one.  And I bought it because of course if Jesus was a King, he would probably have come into Jerusalem on a tank, or at least in a chariot drawn by white stallions.

But now I think I understand that Jesus is both a political and a spiritual Messiah.

Spiritually, of course, he delivers us from the power of sin and its lethal consequences through his own death; and through his resurrection he gives us new birth and abundant life.

Nevertheless, I have come to understand that Jesus is also a political Messiah in the best sense possible.  He came to announce that the Kingdom of God was near, and that it was being inaugurated.  It was beginning to grow even then, like the mustard seed that begins as a tiny thing and then grows into a great tree (Matthew 13:31-32).  And the final fulfillment of that Kingdom is drawing ever nearer, when God’s will on earth is truly realized, just as we have learned to pray every Sunday:

Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven (Matthew 6:10).

Aren’t the promises of God’s Kingdom the same promises that earthly kings and politicians would like to guarantee us?  Freedom from oppression, from hunger, from suffering?  These “freedoms” and much, much more!  Except that the promises of our King will be fulfilled forever.  As the angels proclaim from heaven in Revelation:

The kingdom of the world has become the Kingdom of our Lord, and of his Christ. He will reign forever and ever! (Revelation 11:15).

That is a King and a Kingdom I would vote for!

Lord, you are triumphant over sin, death, the devil, oppression, hunger and suffering.  But I do not lose sight of what your triumph cost you — your own suffering and death. I do look forward to the day when we shall no longer shout “Hosanna!” but we shall wave heavenly palm branches and shout “Salvation be to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” (from Revelation 7:10).  Amen. 

PHOTO:
“Zirl Parrish Church-Jesus entering Jerusalem 1” by Flying Pharmacist is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.