Suddenly

“And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the LORD of hosts.” (Malachi 3:1b)

On Palm Sunday we commemorate the day that Jesus Christ entered into Jerusalem in the fullness of his messianic mission also known as the Triumphal Entry. The narrative is found in all four gospels (Matthew 21; Mark 11; Luke 19; John 12:12-19). He had been ministering for at least three and a half years and had been in Jerusalem before but had not come in with the crowds. On this day, he came in surrounded by two crowds—the crowd following along with him from Bethany down from the Mt. of Olives to Jerusalem for the week leading up to Passover and the crowd of people in Jerusalem who, having heard that he had raised Lazarus from the dead, went out to meet him. The crowds shouted and sang “Hosanna!” while spreading the cloaks on the road in the expectation that he was entering as a king. They waved palm branches and added them to their cloaks in the road alluding to the last time that Israel had thrown off the yoke of a foreign oppressor (1 Macc. 13:51) in hopes that he would cast out the Romans. But that was not God’s plan.

The date palm was surely a symbol of Israel as “a land flowing with milk and honey” and represented national victory. However, there is another place that we find palm trees in Jerusalem besides in victory parades… they decorated the walls and doors of the temple itself! This was Jesus’ destination that glorious day… his Father’s house.

 

The accounts in the gospels of Matthew and Luke, conflate the entrance of Palm Sunday with the cleansing of the temple with happened the next day. Ironically, it is in Mark, the Gospel of Action, where events often happen “immediately” (35 times), that the author makes a special note that, “And he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple. And when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve” (Mark 11:11). Why is this important? Because the "cleansing of the temple" did not happen in a fit of anger but after a night of thought and prayer.

Jesus had come suddenly into the temple, and the priests and leaders of Israel had not recognized “the day of their visitation.” So the next day, saddened (Luke 19:41-44), but with a wholehearted effort, Jesus re-entered the temple and drove out those who were abusing the people who desperately needed it to be “the place of prayer for all peoples.” In Mark 11:17 Jesus quoted from this passage in Isaiah 56:6-7,

The court on the modern
 Temple Mount, Jerusalem.

“And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord,
    to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord,
    and to be his servants,
everyone who keeps the Sabbath and does not profane it,
    and holds fast my covenant—
these I will bring to my holy mountain,
    and make them joyful in my house of prayer;
their burnt offerings and their sacrifices
    will be accepted on my altar;
for my house shall be called a house of prayer
    for all peoples.” 

The Outer Court, or Court of the Gentiles, had been entirely co-opted by the sacrificial concession business at the sanction of the High Priests. It was noisy, smelly, and crowded with injustice. Not only were the people being oppressed economically with the “dishonest scales” condemned so often in Proverbs and the writings of the prophets, but those who had no covenant access to the other sections of the temple essentially had been denied access to meet with God. Where could they pray and who would hear their cry? These, the unprivileged and dispossessed, would have included all God-fearing Gentiles, as well as any of Israel who were ritually unclean (including the blind and the lame).

Jesus came that day, on a mission from God in answer to their prayer, “Hosanna!” (lit. "Save now!")  to restore the temple to them by driving out the merchants and moneychangers and by preventing profane and secular short-cutting through sacred space. Jesus restored the temple of God to the people for a place of prayer! 

I love that for a moment, we get to see the Temple functioning as it was intended. Matthew 21:14 pulls back the curtain of history for us to observe, “Then the blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them.” The Messiah, God with us—healed them (answered their prayers) in the temple and they praised him for it.

Of course, when there are “wonderful things” to be seen, some are always “indignant” and this was no exception.  

But when the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying out in the temple and saying, "Hosanna to the Son of David!" they were indignant and said to him, "Do you hear what these are saying?"

And Jesus said to them, "Yes. Have you never read,

'Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants

     You have perfected praise'?"   (Matthew 21:15-16)

As bothered as I am by the attitude of the priests I am encouraged by the first word of Jesus’ answer…”Yes.” He heard what the poor and marginalized were saying. He heard both their prayers and their praises. That gives me hope for myself and the church today. God hears his people! 

On that day, he restored the temple to them by making it again a place of prayer for all peoples, and for the blind and the lame he restored them to the Temple…for now, there was nothing to prevent their full participation in the covenant community.

Jesus restored the temple to them, and them to the temple…suddenly. 

Today, as the church, we need to be cleansed afresh by the Spirit of Jesus so that we might be more fully than ever a place of prayer for the nations, a place where desperate people meet God for the first time and praise him for having been heard.

Heaven Come to Earth & Earth Come to Heaven

One night recently, at a church’s regular night of prayer and worship, I noticed the emphasis in what we said, what we sang, and what we prayed touching again and again on the phrase “your kingdom come” from the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6:10 which says,

“Your kingdom come,
your will be done,
    on earth as it is in heaven.”

It resonated with me at the time because just a day earlier I had been journaling through the tail-end of John 17—which is known as Jesus’ high priestly prayer for his followers—and I was struck by the way that Jesus prayed for “Heaven to come to earth.” He was praying for the kingdom to come, just not in those words.

“I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. (John 17:20-24)

While Jesus prayed, it was not only for his disciples at that time…but by extension for all believers down through history…which includes all true Christ-followers today.

This section of Jesus’ prayer is first of all, that we might be one, in perfect relationship with each other. The church has an “invisible” spiritual unity in Christ, but often we lack that visible unity between denominations and congregations that we need to be a convincing witness to the world (v.21). Thankfully, while we have a long way to go, I think this is getting better all the time. I see new trans-denominational partnerships developing. Yet we have to stop seeing others as competitors in a market-driven approach to church growth. We were saved by the grace of God to be one body, woven together like strands in a great tapestry that as a whole testifies beautifully of the love and grace of God in Christ. In order to do this—to be one—we will need to trust in the glory Jesus has shared with us all instead of trying to produce our own. Unity takes humility and an intentional effort most of the time to develop brother/sister relationships with other congregations. Jesus' second prayer for us, in this section, is that we might be with Jesus in heaven to see the shared glory of God and experience that perfect Trinitarian love for ourselves.

Waiting for dawn in Jerusalem

We pray “your kingdom come, your will be done” and Jesus when he prayed for us, told us what the answer to our prayer looks like. He prayed for our unity with each other in the here and now (heaven come to earth) as evidence of God’s triune presence, and he prayed for our unity (earth come to heaven) with God in the future. That we could be with him where he is in the glorious love of the Father was the longing of our Lord Jesus. God in his shared glory invites us to eat with him in unity at his table (Luke 13:29).

So when we pray for the coming of the Kingdom of God perhaps we should start looking with the wide-eyed wonder and expectancy of a child for the ways in which it is already present in the midst of us (Luke 17:21) and seek to experience it together as “righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 14:17).
 

As we seek to live out heaven’s kingdom convictions on earth, many will see it and desire to “immigrate” in order to worship with us in the Spirit and in truth. May we walk worthy of such citizenship.

And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God. And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death.” (Revelation 12:9-11)

 



The Empty Tomb

As we continue through the Lenten season in preparation for our celebration of Jesus’ resurrection, perhaps we would make Jesus’ prayer our prayer as well.
 

 Will you join me?

 

Lent and the Garden

In the first chapter of the Bible (Genesis 1:1-2:3) we have the story of creation. Most Christians are familiar with the story of God creating everything in six days. As you recall that passage, what words would you think might occur most often in the creation story? "Earth" would be a good guess. Sure the words "day" and "good" occur seven times. If you take the text of the entire narrative and create a word-cloud with the relative size of the words dependent on how many times they were used you get a graphic like the one below.



Can you find "man" in this Wordle based on the text of Genesis 1:1 - 2:3?

Like the caption says, can you find "man" in this graphic? You may need to magnify your view of this page. Still no luck...I will put a clue at the bottom of this page. However, the relative size perhaps contains an important lesson for us.

I like this graphic because it shows us pretty clearly that the most prominent player in creation is God. In 34 verses, "God" is mentioned 34 times. He is the hero or primary protagonist in this passage. Here in this word-cloud it doesn't take much imagination to picture God as Creator whirling all that he has made above his head like so much pizza dough!

And yet, having taken a step back from our respective western-culturally shaped dominant-culture God-complexes, we can humbly acknowledge that God did what he did to prepare a land for his people. He wisely and lovingly formed environments and then filled them. He did not make what he has made to be empty (Isaiah 45:18).

So when we read further into Genesis 2 we see the cosmic and terrestrial focus has further narrowed to focus on the creation of mankind and his placement in the garden. Here "man" is much easier to find.

So why play with all these words? Isn't it just a waste of time? Perhaps it is, yet I like to think that we are more than just an insignificant speck in the universe. When we allow God to shape us and to place us in the garden he has for us to work, we can be more than we ever dreamed we could be. When we respond to his loving-kindness with joyful obedience, the plot of ground he has given us to take care of will produce amazing fruit that will bless many. When we make ourselves the center of the universe we forfeit the abundant goodness of God's creative work on our behalf and our lives produce only bitter wild grapes (Isaiah 5:1-5) and as they say in Israel, "use up the ground" instead of "keeping" it well.

I am writing this during the season of Lent leading up to the church's celebration of the resurrection of our Lord. Our unseasonably warm weather has caused the grass and the weeds to grow vigorously in my yard. It is still February and I have had to start regular mowing and weeding already. It is a picture of Lent. To turn the phrase, it causes me to remember that our days and seasons are borrowed from the Lord and not our own. They must not be wasted. This is a time for each of us to consider the garden of our own hearts, and then for us to collectively consider the condition of the vineyard we call the church. What needs to be plowed up, pruned, hauled away, composted, fertilized, etc. in order to be fruitful in the coming seasons of ministry?

In this life our greatness is not measured by the surveyor's transit or the economist's ledgers, but by the depth of our love. How can we love our community well in these days? The proof of our Christian discipleship is in how well we love each other. Let's use this time leading up to our joyful celebration of Resurrection Day to prepare the soil of our hearts, our families, and our communities for the seeds that the Lord wants to sow, grow, and harvest.

Jesus, in one of his last messages to his disciples before his arrest and death is recorded in John 15:1-9...

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love.

Sometimes we get impatient and out of line. That's when we need to hold on to our long view... that we are loved and have not been left alone.

[Hint= Trying to find "man" in the first graphic? It is near the center, just to the left of "expanse".]