26 March 2015
So the crowd that had been with him when he called Lazarus out of the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to testify. It was also because they heard that he had performed this sign that the crowd went to meet him. The Pharisees then said to one another, “You see, you can do nothing. Look, the world has gone after him!” John 12:17–19 (NRSV)
Then [Pilate] handed him over to them to be crucified. So they took Jesus; and carrying the cross by himself, he went out to what is called The Place of the Skull, which in Hebrew is called Golgotha. There they crucified him…” John 19:16–18 (NRSV)
From popular adulation to lonely crucifixion. Through the coming Holy Week we will follow our Lord Jesus Christ on that journey.
It’s important that we don’t rush into Easter without walking this journey first. The prelude to his resurrection is suffering and death. Without it, resurrection, and therefore our salvation, would not be possible. Jesus Christ, true God and true human being, resolutely took on himself the sins of the world. Because of this choice, voluntarily taken on in love and out of obedience to his Father, “the third day he rose from the dead, he ascended into heaven, and sits on the right hand of God, the Father almighty, whence he shall come to judge the living and the dead.” (Apostles Creed, Second Article)
This is ‘ground zero’, that God should love the world so much as to give his only Son. It is our hope, and our life. I pray that you can find some time this Holy Week and Good Friday to be still, pray, and worship. In the words of the Apostle Paul, “I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
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