The next day the great crowd that had come for the Feast heard that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem. They took palm branches and went out to meet him, shouting, "Hosanna!" "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!" "Blessed is the King of Israel!" Jesus found a young donkey and sat upon it, as it is written,"Do not be afraid, O Daughter of Zion; see, your king is coming, seated on a donkey's colt."
At first his disciples did not understand all this. Only after Jesus was glorified did they realize that these things had been written about him and that they had done these things to him. (John 12:12-16)
REFLECTION
Devout Jewish believers came to Jerusalem for the annual Pesach feast to celebrate the exodus - the liberation from slavery in Egypt. A long time ago the people of God were deprived of their freedom and treated as slaves. God Himself noticed their suffering and called a powerful leader and liberator to their rescue, a man called Moses. The people of Israel regained their freedom and entered the promised land after a long and exhausting journey of forty years through the desert.
When Jesus makes his entrance in Jerusalem, the Jewish people are again oppressed by foreigners. This time they were not taken away to a foreign country, an army of strangers had overwhelmed them instead and these Romans were now in charge of their holy land. Maybe God could send a liberator once again to set His people free? And that Liberator, that Messiah, who else could that be than Jesus, the man who was able to call dead people back to life. Surely he was able to start a liberating revolution too...
PRAYER
Lord, the people in Jerusalem were excited about your majestic entry but they only received you because they had their own political schemes and agendas in mind. You were welcomed in as a king by people who were too blind to see and too deaf to hear. Crowds of people shouted ‘Hosanna’ and a lot of them blessed you that day. Many of them called for your horrendous execution and they cursed you with the same passion - not long after all this happened. Your very own disciples only understood the real meaning of your majestic entry after you were lifted high and restored in heavenly majesty as the great Conqueror of death and hell.
Dear Jesus, please forgive me if I've welcomed you out of wrong motives. Don't let me sing your praises and shout for joy when my heart isn't completely changed. I'd rather be like that little donkey who humbly carried you into Jerusalem as the King of kings. I thank you, because now - looking back in history - we can see what an incredible liberation and exodus out of slavery you have made possible for all of us.
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3 comments:
Isn’t following Jesus with less than a perfectly clean heart preferable to not following him at all? I imagine some of those followers abandoned him during his trial but returned after He rose from the dead. I am afraid I probably would have been one of them, even if I want to think otherwise—after all, personal experience of His life was limited to very, very few people. Any way I’ve gotten here, I’m happy to be here.
I think about that a lot these days as I deal with questions about the imperfect church. Is there a point at which I should excuse myself from the crowd, or should I worry about my own heart and ignore what’s happening around me?
Commentators often point to this verse as a fulfillment of Zechariah 9:9:
Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion!
Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem!
See, your king comes to you,
righteous and having salvation,
gentle and riding on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
To me the selection of a donkey to carry Jesus into Jerusalem is yet another indication that we aren’t dealing with a false Messiah. A myth would have put the Messiah on a horse (a Lexus), not a lowly donkey (a Ford). And the foal in question was unridden; i.e, it was young, and Jesus might have looked rather silly perched on the little animal.
(Having said that, I don’t believe a donkey the size of the one in that picture could carry an adult man.)
Isn’t following Jesus with less than a perfectly clean heart preferable to not following him at all?
Yes! We can only start with less than a perfectly clean heart and you are right: our life is imperfect, our churches are imperfect and this whole world is imperfect. But Jesus is perfect and He knows perfectly well what the maximum weight is for a young donkey: 1 perfect Messiah! ;-)
http://inspirationalmoments.blogspot.com/2006/05/donkey.html
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