Holy Week

 

  Pastor Ben started off Holy Week by preaching out of Mark 11:1-11 and the Triumphal Entry. Ben encourages us to place ourselves in that day to help get us thinking. For those of you who know of or grew up on Adventures in Odyssey I want to stop by Whits End and take the trip in the Imagination Station to experience this week. Here are my thoughts that I am processing through

  The first one is that people are fickle. What I mean by this is that as Jesus was riding into Jerusalem on a donkey, the crowds were praising Him and waving palm branches. By weeks end, the same crowd was yelling crucify Him and demanding the release of Barabas. It proves that people are corrupted enough to run a smear campaign without the use of social media to get what they want. The scarier aspect is that people were gullible enough to fall for it. As people, we generally want to go with the flow and be a part of the cool crowd, so whatever the cool kids are doing or the people who have influence over us tell us what to do, we do it without much rationale thought. So whatever is it going for us to not only use our brain, but also follow the leading of the Holy Spirit and stop being so fickle or gullible?

  The second one is that our view of kingship is different than Jesus.  In the first century, there were groups of people known as Zealots whose soul purpose was to over throw the Romans and to set up Gods Kingdom here on earth. It comes across that they wanted to rule with an iron fist and only let people in that they deemed worthy. This kingdom is about laws, shame and power. Gods Kingdom is something different, because it is about not self promotion, but dying to one’s self, grace, forgiveness and glorifying God. In essence, it is more about serving than being served and pointing others to Gods goodness. So our we more concerned about serving our own agenda than being transformed by God?

   The third one is how we see Jesus correlates to how we relate to Him. If we see God as a father, which He is, we often relate to Him as we related to our earthly fathers. For those of you who had horrible fathers, (I am extremely sorry if you fall into this category) we often expect God to treat us as they did, and we respond to God as we would to our earthly fathers. For those with great earthly fathers, we often respond to God as we responded to our earthly fathers. To bring it home, not only is God a good Father, but He is also has authority over all. So are we going to submit to His love, grace and authority. In essence God is calling us to live a transformed life by being a living sacrifice. Being a living sacrifice means that we make a daily choice to get on that altar. So here is my question, what keeps us from being a living sacrifice and continuously jumping off of the altar? 

  May we take this Holy Week to find a way to grow closer to God and to be transformed into Gods image.

Grace and Peace

Tom Boustead