If you read the account of the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, you notice that immediately following the story of Palm Sunday comes the story of Jesus clearing the temple. If you have not read this recently, I encourage you to look in either Matthew 21, Mark 11 or Luke 19. For those who would like to pick apart the scholastic holes or intensely study the differences in these accounts, we can do that another day. For today, I have two questions.
Jesus is headed for a brutal end. He knows this is coming. He sees the writing on the wall of the call on his life. This leads me to believe that if he is spending his last days once again sharing with the world that it time to get our act together, this is important business. So question #1 - What do you need to clean up in your life to be ready to receive the gift of Resurrection? Are you hosting a swap meet of values? Are you trying to make space for the unimportant rather than holding the court of honor for the sacred and holy?
For me, this week is about returning to a space of sacred YES. I spent tonight doing yoga with my oldest. I will spend much time this week in my faith community. We will intentionally slow down. If we rush right through this week with packed calendars and full days and hurried emotions, we will find ourselves there on Sunday morning as well.
The same is true about our churches. For those on church staffs, we WORK this week. We want it all to be perfect and polished and excellent. We know that for some folks, this will be the last time we see them until December 24th. Here's the truth, if we are not journeying with Jesus through this week, everything we try to polish up for Sunday will be empty. May we take tomorrow and Wednesday to walk though our worship spaces and pray that people will encounter the depth of the gift of new life. May we weep with those who are experiencing death and yet claim with them, even when they can't that resurrection is the promise.
I feel certain that if Jesus was to walk through our lives and our churches and see us spiffing up the carpets and scrubbing the bathrooms and planting new plants on the front walk, he would check our hearts. And if he found that our polish and pretty was about the exterior only, he would flip the tables of our churches and our hearts just like he did in scripture.
May the Savior find our hearts ready for the journey of this week. All of it.
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