Shade Tree Wisdom 3/29/10

It really, really is getting a bit warmer each day, and spring flowers are showing their colorful faces to make it feel like Spring here. And people are beginning to get a handle on just how much plant life they lost in their yards during the cold spells just past.

Palm Sunday, the beginning of passion week. Pastor pointed out that palms were a symbol of political independence which had been used in the Maccabean revolt in 141 B.C. It says the crowd looked at Jesus as a King who would come to overthrow the hated Romans. So the crowd that first Palm Sunday was expecting a different thing altogether.

As we know, even the disciples did not really understand. We remember the incident St. Matthew reports in chapter 16 where Jesus told them He “Must go unto Jerusalem and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed and raised again the third day .” and Peter’s reaction was, “This shall not be unto thee’. And Jesus called him Satan, because he did not understand the things of God, but was thinking as a sinner. Matthew 16, 21 – 23.

For us, let Holy Week prepare us, and this happens when we see sin as the horror it really is. One hymn has this stanza:

Ye who think of sin but lightly,
Nor suppose the evil great,
Here may view its nature rightly,
Here its guilt may estimate.
Mark the Sacrifice appointed,
See Who bears the awful load,
‘Tis the Word, the Lord’s Anointed,
Son of Man and Son of God. TLH 153,3.

Think of these things during this week. In his sermon after the Resurrection Peter said that what had happened was this. “Being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God you have taken, and by wicked hands, have crucified and slain; Whom God raised from the dead, having loosed the pains of death; because it was not possible that he should be holden of it.” Acts 2, 23.24.

And when we so prepare, the joyful resurrection news at Easter becomes much more meaningful, for we truly have been given “peace with God because this happened for us. Thanks and praise God for His mercy.

GPD 3/29/10