Easter is a time of year that always seems to sneak up on us ... and unfortunately, fly by without a great deal of meditation. On Maundy Thursday, we were having our special service at church to remember the Last Supper that Jesus had with his Disciples and the time leading up to his crucifixion and ultimate death. I don't know what made this service different, but I was really moved to stop and think about what I was doing at that service and what I was supposed to be remembering that week.
The past few years I have been a college student, and as a college student Easter-time means one thing: Midterms! There is no extra time for reflection for the meaning of Easter. The ironic thing - I was a RELIGION major studying Jesus Christ. I KNOW what Easter is about. But it's more than just knowing what Easter is all about. "Easter" occurs each year so that we may celebrate and reflect on the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Yes, the traditional Easter Bunny, Easter Egg Hunts, and receiving an Easter Basket full of goodies are great things at Easter-time, but we must not forget why we have Easter. If we do not stop and think about the true meaning behind it all, we have completely missed out on a great deal! My entire future as a Christian, as a human, and as someone with a hope for life after death all lies within the meaning of Easter.
Okay ... so the reason for Easter ... Jesus' resurrection from the grave. But wow! We are missing out on so much if we limit ourselves to Easter Sunday!
Palm Sunday! Jesus returns to Jerusalem. Jesus entered the city ... and all the peoples were praising Him! One would think these people finally had it figured out! Yes! He is the one who has come to save us! He is God's Son! He is the Messiah! Hallelujah! Amen! I mean seriously, these people lined up along the road waving palm branches singing his praise! How great that must have been. If I had been there, I would have never predicted that the very next week these same people would want him dead. But the awe-striking thing is ... Jesus KNEW His fate. He KNEW that these people would kill Him. That must be hard. How do you face people who are singing your praises and not say, "You hypocrites! Here you are praising my name ... but next week you will want me dead!" This has got to be working on the pit of his stomach. He must have been uneasy about all of it!
Maundy Thursday! Jesus gathers with his closest 12. The ones who have given up everything to follow Him for the past 3 years. They have walked beside Him on long journeys. Wondered how they were going to eat at times. Staying in a different place night to night. They gather to have the traditional passover feast as was a customary Jewish tradition. There really shouldn't be anything different about this feast. But all of a sudden, Jesus - the teacher, the leader of this group - gets up and takes the servant's role. He begins to wash their nasty, dirty, worn out feet! Wow! And of course, Peter stops Him and says, "Jesus! What are you doing?! You are our teacher! Please! Let me wash YOUR feet! It should not be the other way around." But Jesus says, "If I do not wash your feet, you will have no part of me." I think there are a few things that can be gathered from that right there. 1. Jesus must be the one to cleanse us from our sin so that we can be with Him. 2. Jesus is taking on a servant role to demonstrate what His followers must do. 3. I think this was a foreshadowing of what was to come. Jesus washing His disciples' feet was unexpected and not the "norm." But it was something He must do in order for His disciples to fully receive what Jesus had to offer. In the same token, Jesus dying a criminal's death was not expected or the "norm" for a so-called Savior/Messiah. But it had to be done. I think it was also a point to the disciples that if they tried to stop Him from what He was about to go through with, they would not be with Him in Heaven.
Just thinking about what must have been going through Jesus' mind through all of this is overwhelming. These are men that Jesus had come to know and care about deeply over the past 3 years. They have spent probably every day together. They have talked together, eaten together, shared together. He loves them as if they were his own flesh and blood ... his brothers, maybe even his children. As a mother, that's a powerful bond. Could you imagine him meeting together with his men, knowing that it would be their last meeting together? What was he thinking about? A normal person might have been thinking: "How do I tell them that they will no longer have me here to guide them? How will they take the news? Will they be able to make it without me? How will they react to me being arrested? Or killed? Will they do something irrational? Will they believe me when I tell them that death is not the end for me?" But Jesus must have known all the answers to those questions already. But He still must have been thinking about them. He must have been thinking about everything, all the while trying to maintain His composure.
And what's more! He was sitting in the room with the very person who was going to sell him out for a little bit of silver! This same man who had been with him for the last 3 years, whom he had loved and cared about, was going to betray Him. And He announced this to the group. Think about it. How easy would it have been for Jesus to have called Him by name, and put a stop to the whole thing. But that would have messed up so much (not to mention the whole laws of whatever science would have been messed up if Jesus predicted something of the future that was changed, then was it really something of the future, and then what would he have to predict - yeah that circle is another topic for someone else haha). But all jokes aside, if Jesus had done that, He could have put a stop to His death - at least for the time being. But He didn't. He simply said ONE OF YOU WILL BETRAY ME! And what did EVERY ONE of them reply? "Surely Not I!!!" That's got to sting Jesus. He must have been thinking something along the lines of "Are you serious? You are going to sit here, and look me in the eye, and tell me surely you wouldn't betray me? Are you serious?" You know ... it's a good thing we have a loving, forgiving, patient, PERFECT Messiah. I sure wouldn't have fit the bill. (Which is why I am human and not God!)
So after all of this, Jesus takes His disciples out to pray in the garden. Jesus is praying so hard and really thinking about all that is about to transpire that he is sweating blood. And what are His disciples doing? SLEEPING! Seriously men! Where is your wake up call? When Jesus is actually led away in handcuffs? Or the dying on the cross part?
But think about it! How often are we like those disciples? Do we pray with earnest? Or are we more likely to fall asleep or let our minds wander while someone else is praying? The disciples had been told that His time with them was coming to an end, and they needed to pray but instead they slept. We have been told that our days are numbered and we must be ready, but instead we spiritually sleep. Where is our wake up call? Jesus has already been killed! How many times must He die before we get the picture? This is why we remember Easter each year! We need a wake up call because we seem to fall asleep throughout the rest of the year!
So anyways ...while they are out in the garden ... here come the guards ... and Judas - who betrays Jesus with a KISS! Nothing like saying I love you, but not more than money.
Good Friday! Jesus is crucified. Jesus is not just killed ... He is killed the death of a criminal. Pilate even offers to release Him to the Jews - as was the custom to release one criminal. But would you believe that those same people who at the beginning of the week were singing His praises were now demanding for a murderer to be released. They wanted Jesus to be crucified!
We've all seen the depictions of Jesus on the cross, or Him carrying His cross to Calvary. But the one movie that hit me hard was Passion of the Christ. It was gruesome! There was a lot of blood!! We've heard it said that Jesus shed His blood for us ... wow this gives it new meaning! I think the part in the movie that hit me hard was after they beat Jesus with the cat of 9 tails - ripping his flesh off his bones literally - his mother came in and began wiping up his blood with her head piece. To see the amount of blood on the floor was breathtaking - and not in a good way. Thinking about all the pain and suffering Jesus went through makes me cringe for real. And then they take him and drive NAILS through his hands and feet and then stand the cross upright. The only thing keeping gravity from pulling him to the ground were the nails in his hands and feet! Oh how that must of hurt!! When I saw the scene of Jesus on the cross in between the two thieves in the movie Passion of the Christ, I couldn't get over the skin coloring portrayed. The two thieves had "white" skin ... not bloody at all. But Jesus' entire body was red from blood from being beat so much before being put on the cross. If you want to think of it this way - Jesus was our scapegoat. The crowds took their shots at Him - I think because they were too prideful to look at their own sin, so it's easier to make someone else look like the bad one! And the ironic thing - Jesus never once did a single thing wrong! Where is the justice in this world?
But you know ........ as horrible as all of this is ..... it saddens me to realize that I am the reason that Jesus went through all of that. Before I was created, He loved me. He felt that I was worth all of this agony He went through. He knew that if He did not go through with this ... if He didn't cleanse me of my sins, I would never be able to spend eternity with Him. For this, this is why we have Easter ever year. This is what we are supposed to reflect on during Holy Week.
We should be humbled by this act of servitude by Jesus. We should be sorrowful that we are sinners. We should have a desire to turn from our sins and do anything that is asked of us by God. We LITERALLY owe God our lives!! It is not a figure of speech because we should do something for Him, it is a literal thing: Jesus LITERALLY gave His life when He was brutally MURDERED on our behalf. The LEAST we can do is serve Him! Don't we owe Him that much?
The following song was playing while we took communion at the Maundy Thursday service. I had heard the song before, but to sit in silence and really listen to these words during this service - when I was already deep in reflection - was very touching. I can't explain it. Except that I am the reason that Jesus was named a criminal and killed as such. He took on all of our crimes and paid our debt so that we will never have to. Because of Him we are free peoples.
Glory Revealed - By His Wounds Lyrics
(Feat. Mac Powell, Mark Hall, Steven Curtis Chapman and Brian Littrell)
Isaiah 53:5
He was pierced for our transgressions
He was crushed for our sins
The punishment that brought us peace was upon Him
And by His wounds, by His wounds we are healed
He was pierced for our transgressions
He was crushed for our sins
The punishment that brought us peace was upon Him
And by His wounds, by His wounds we are healed
We are healed by Your sacrifice
And the life that You gave
We are healed for You paid the price
By Your grace we are saved
We are saved
He was pierced for our transgressions
And crushed for our sins
The punishment that brought us peace was upon Him
And by His wounds, by His wounds we are healed
We are healed by Your sacrifice
And the life that You gave
We are healed for You paid the price
By Your grace we are saved
We are saved
He was pierced for our transgressions
He was crushed for our sins
The punishment that brought us peace was upon Him
And by His wounds, by His wounds we are healed
And by His wounds, by His wounds
What can wash away my sin?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I want to pose a question.
If you were to have gotten into a bad car accident that left you trapped in the car with death imminent. (Even go as far as to say that accident was your fault.) While you are trapped, so many people have driven by and ignored you. Maybe some have stopped, but they simply just told you what to do but didn't want to do anything themselves. They felt that you got yourself in to the situation, you should get yourself out. But then, just when you've come to terms with dying, a stranger stops and puts his/her life at risk to save yours. How would you repay that person? I don't know about you, but I feel that I would be forever indebted to that person. I sure wouldn't treat them like a burden or put them on the back burner. I've just made a new best friend and would be continually repaying them forever.
Isn't that the way we should be with God? We are alive because He DIED - literally!
But you want to know the great thing about the God we serve? He didn't just die ... He conquered death itself and came back to life. Not too many people can make that claim. And because He conquered Death from Satan, we know that our God is The All Most Powerful! I am glad that My God is the best in the world! He is the ONLY GOD! All other gods are nothing. Satan has no power over me because I belong to Jesus Christ - the one who has defeated Satan once and for all.
THIS IS WHY WE HAVE EASTER!!
I know it has passed this year. But that doesn't mean you can't reflect on this throughout the year. But when Holy Week comes next year ... don't let it sneak up and pass by without giving it any reflection!!
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