When Jesus entered Jerusalem, as when he comes into our lives as the presence of God, it was a time of rejoicing. If people hadn’t cheered, even the rocks in the street would have cried out!
The week soon turned into a different direction.
Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who were selling and buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer’; but you are making it a den of robbers.”
MAUNDY THURSDAY was the day Jesus met with his disciples in the upper room and washed their feet and instituted what we call the Lord’s Supper. “Maundy” comes from the Latin “mandatum,” which means to mandate or command. Jesus commanded his disciples to “do this in remembrance of me,” and to “love one another.”
GOOD FRIDAY is the day we remember the suffering and sacrifice. What part of ourselves is found in the shadow of the mob that streamed to Calvary? What part of ourselves creates nails in other forms that wound our siblings? Complicity, apathy, and guilt oppress us and stifle our joy; let us bring our sins to God in genuine repentance and discover what God will do for us!
God’s love is not destroyed at Golgotha, nor diminished by our unclear reflection of its saving power. God reaches out to heal and revive us, and to reveal again the love that will not let us go. Thanks be to God!
Shalom, Paul