"The People Received Their Messiah"
March 24, 2013
PALM SUNDAY
Zechariah 9: 9 – 13/Psalm 118: 15 – 16; 25 – 29/Revelation 19: 11 – 16/ Luke 19: 28–40
His Eminence
The Most Reverend Archbishop Loren Thomas Hines D.D.
Archbishop of Manila
and
Primate
of the
National Church in the Philippines
and
the Territorial Church of Asia
International Communion of the Charismatic Episcopal Church
How excited we become as a people when we see something that causes our emotions to rise. Palm Sunday is one of those days when the Church expresses her expectation, her joy, her sense of thanksgiving because of God, His commitment to His people.
Some would ask, “Why is it necessary for us to have a procession? Can’t we just say this is Palm Sunday and this is enough?” Knowing humanity, without action, there is no life. Our words are empty, our intentions shallow. When we put things into action, there is something that happens to us.
Can you imagine a young man telling a young lady, “I am in love with you,” then walks off and forgets her for the rest of his life? She perhaps would come and say, “If you love me, then tell that to me in front of the whole congregation. Tell that to me in front of the Bishop. Tell me and put out your effort to support me, to take care of me. Prove what you say that you are and what you feel.” We wouldn’t allow something like that to be a part of our lives because actions speak what we really are. Without the actions, we are empty. Without the actions, life is boring and has no meaning.
Jesus was in distant relationship with Jerusalem in most of His ministry. He spent the time in the provinces around Jerusalem. There came a time that He understood that it was the time set by God. He gathers His thoughts together. He recognizes now is the hour and the time. He could have just thought in His heart and just said it, but He did not. He lived it out. He told His disciples, “Get the colt of the donkey, I am going into Jerusalem.”
Christ enters into Jerusalem and as He does, there was a great crowd of people that gathered around Him. They began to praise Him, began to lay on the road their branches and their clothes that would express their thanksgiving. Scriptures show us that as Jesus approaches Jerusalem, He is crying because He understands that Jerusalem is going to reject Him. They are not going to receive Him. He said that they do not understand His visitation. True enough, seventy years later, Jerusalem was totally destroyed.
Christ led them into this week. He was not looking at the natural and the circumstances around Him. He understood spiritually what was taking place. He understood the plan of God. He understands what He had to do. Even today, He leads us into this week which is one of the most powerful times in all of history. He wants our attention. He wants our commitment. He is looking for us to pay attention to what we are to say to Him. He is calling mankind to return to the Father.
In history, man walked with God in the Garden. There was a relationship in the Garden, and this is what man was created for – to have a relationship with God. Man failed and lost that privilege. Then later, God speaks to Moses and says to him, “Build Me a tabernacle so that I can be among the people.” There was this hunger, this heartbeat of God to be in unity, to be in oneness and in relationship with man. He built that temple and God was with His people.
David later built the city of Jerusalem and a temple in Jerusalem. It was a place where God would meet His people. The instructions went to all of mankind, far and near, that at least three times a year, they have to come to the temple and meet with God. They had to come and to understand how much God loves them and the commitment that God was giving to them. It was a time when Jesus was calling everyone and He calls to us even now to reflect and to meditate on life itself.
Three days of this week are valuable and important. Thursday commits to us the principle of love. Man has to be committed to each other – not seeking to be greater than someone else. Even as much as washing the feet of others, lifting them up, taking care of them –that which was seemingly way below us. Love was a proclamation that Christ wanted all to understand.
The message on Friday speaks to us that Christ takes up the sin of the whole world. He takes it upon Himself to a point of death on the cross, the lowest death that man could suffer at that time. He does this so that we can be free to break the bonds that held us in slavery, the chains that has held us in prison. God wanted to restore the relationship with man. In order to do this, someone had to pay the price to redeem man from the curse. Christ gives His life to do this. This is the provision of man’s failure cleared by the Son of God Himself – shedding royal and holy blood on behalf of love that God has for mankind.
The message on Saturday is one that says to us that He destroyed the power of evil to ever reign and rule again and to be in dominion.
Three major activities of the week speak to us very powerfully of God’s commitment and love to us. Look at the history that shows us that many have written about these three days, especially Friday. Thomas Becket, in his life as Bishop, speaks very powerfully and loudly of bringing out the purpose of Friday. Composers Haydn and Beethoven also bring it out in music so that we would understand the value of this day and this week, the purpose of God in sending Christ into Jerusalem.
Christ was not in a chariot of power, not on a horse of majesty, but in a donkey in peace. He came to offer the peace of God to man. God was not coming to destroy man because of His rebellion. God was sending Christ to say, “I forgive you. More important to Me is My relationship with you than for Me to be offended and to take out My vengeance on you. I love you; you are My people; I am your God. I want to restore that relationship.”
Christ comes to fulfil the desire of God. He wants this relationship to be built again and to be restored and healed. He comes in peace. There will be a time as written in Revelations 19 when He will come in a big horse, with an army. He will not come to destroy but He will come to build His kingdom. He will come to speak to His people and say to them, “The Kingdom belongs to Me.” He comes in peace that even though He is rejected and killed, He accomplished the task.
Understand the words, the values that Christ speaks to us on Good Friday. Understand the importance of these words because this is God speaking to man. This is God’s heart being unveiled to us.
Christ first words, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” Do we hear that cry? He is hanging on the cross; He has been humiliated. He has been judged, guilty of something that He is not guilty of. They have mocked Him, beaten Him, and dragged Him through the streets down the Via Dolorosa. He was at a point of collapse, even at a point of dying when they put Him on the cross; but yet He could speak out and say, “Father, forgive them they know not what they do.” They did not understand what He had come for. They did not understand His purpose of entering Jerusalem. He was bringing attention to the love of God for man. He was bringing the attention of mankind to forgiveness and to hope and man was rejecting it.
The second word He spoke was, “Truly, I say to you, today you shall be with Me in paradise.” This was to one of the thieves on the cross. He was the one who turned to Him and asked in a simply way for forgiveness. “Remember me when You enter the heaven.” The thief had awareness, something within him that said that he knew that Christ was coming into His kingdom. He understood what the people did not understand. He cried out to say, “Remember me.”
Christ’s showed compassion, even as He hang on the cross, with the pain, the skin taken off His back and His raw back rubbing against the roughness of the wood. Seeing His mother in tears, seeing the pain of her heart, He speaks to her and says, “Woman, behold your Son.” He said then to John, “Son, behold your mother.” He was concerned for His mother, not for Himself. He was showing and demonstrating to us the very care, the compassion, the very love of God toward man. He wasn’t demanding anything. He was giving even His life.
Christ then turns His attention to His Father. He shows the desperation that He is in at the moment and cries out, “My God, My God, why have You forgotten Me? Why have You forsaken Me?” He felt alone. He felt as though He was hanging with no support. God had to pull back because of the sin. Christ was there now on His own bringing forth the plan of the Father but all alone.
Then Christ says, “I thirst.” This probably was more than just natural thirst. This was a hunger, a drive for something to strengthen and to give Him just a little bit of encouragement. He was giving of Himself for all of mankind. He had gone through the Passover, but He had not drink of the last cup. In the Garden He said in His prayer to the Father, “Father, is it possible this cup can pass from Me? Not My will by Thy will be done.” When He says He thirsts, is He not saying it is time for the Kingdom to be fulfilled? Is He not saying that it is time for sin to lose its power and for man to be restored to God? This was His heart and desire, why He was there for.
Then He said, “It is finished.” He realized He has done all that God had assigned Him to do. He has completed His ministry. Man had been given what God wanted given. So He proclaims, “It is finished!” These are the words of Christ, the Son of God. These are the words of the One assigned the commission, the responsibility of redeeming man. He speaks out and He says, “It is finished.”
Then it tells us that there was this loud cry that came from Christ. It was a cry of almost a verge of desperation. Words don’t tell us everything, but He cried a loud cry, “Father, into Your hand I commit My spirit.” The trust Christ had in His Father; the confidence He had and His father completing the task. Christ realizes that He is at the end perhaps of His physical ability and He needs God to finish the job, “Into Your hands, I commend My spirit.” At this point, He died. He did what we call die, but I am here to tell you that He did not die because He had the life in Him and life does not die.
This is the week. This is what Palm Sunday speaks to us. It calls us to pay attention this week. Sad to say that many people would go to the mountain and to the beach and will say, “This is the time to relax and take it easy.” They forget the price that was paid. They become like residents of Jerusalem. At the end of the week, they are crying, “Crucify Him! Crucify Him.” They have forgotten what happened on Palm Sunday. They forgot that they were shouting, “Hosanna! Hosanna!” They have forgotten that they were proclaiming Him King.
Sad to say that perhaps, even today, many of us will go out and we will forget the cry and we will pay no attention to the activity of the week. We will not have a reality of the salvation that God brought to us.
Palm Sunday is a time of exuberant joy. It is a time of thanksgiving. God is bringing into reality, into completion His restoration of man. He is bringing to reality the forgiveness of sin. He is bringing to an end the power of the devil and his ability to hold man in dominion. He is bringing to reality the restoration of relationship with His Son.
This is much like last Sunday’s homily about the vineyard and how they killed the son. Here again, God was reaching out to man and man was rejecting it. Jerusalem was destroyed. There is coming a time when it will be restored. It is a time when Christ will bring it back to its reality. In Revelation 19, Christ comes to claim the nations; but in Revelation 18, the anti-Christ has been destroyed. The ways of man are gone. In Revelation 19, Christ comes to establish His kingdom. In Revelation 20, the New Jerusalem, the holy city comes down out of heaven – the plan and the purpose of God.
May today call us to a remembrance and to an acceptance of the new life that Christ is intending to bring to us. May it become so vivid in our being that we recognize the price He paid and we have thanksgiving and praise in our hearts to toward Him.
Palm Sunday is a time of rejoicing. This is the week of our redemption. This is the week of our salvation. This is the week of our healing. This is the week when the kingdom of God comes into its fullness for the glory of God. Will we still be with Him at the end of the week?
LET US CONTINUE OUR REFLECTION
WITH
CARDINAL OF HOLY MOTHER CHURCH
AND
VENERABLE PRIMATE
OF THE PHILIPPINES
THROUGH
THROUGH
THE WORD EXPOSED
Walang komento:
Mag-post ng isang Komento